Earlier today, Thomas Carpenter posted this video and asked whether the augmented reality mode adds anything to the application.
The answer is probably not. In my opinion we are seeing AR evolving into a cool feature for location based services, much like rounded corners was the cool thing to have if you were a web 2.0 application. Yes, in some applications, like Layar and Wikitude, augmented reality is currently a major feature, but in the long run its the location-oriented content they should focus on, not on how to present it.
Having augmented reality as just another cool feature is not a bad thing. It can actually be the thing that saves it from following the same path that virtual reality went by. Obviously, the hardware today is not good enough for terminator-vision grade of AR. However, having augmented reality play a low-key role for now may keep it around till we’ll have the right hardware.
Or maybe I’m just reading too much into a Youtube video. Oh, that reminds me – the application is called WorkSnug, and you can find more about it here.
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Games Alfresco 
I think you are definitely right here – most corporations if they are looking at AR at all, will be considering what extra eye-candy it can offer on existing location based services they already have at their disposal.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t genuine value in alternative presentation Augmented Reality applications offer as I truly believe there is. Maybe it goes a little bit beyond rounded corners to something that gives us some additional context to that same core information (maybe something like when we first started getting isometric games for instance – we were essentially still operating in the same 2D game space but we felt like there was an additional dimension).
Id have to disagree slightly. Applications like this, Layer, Wikitude etc. Arnt just adding a nice visual touch by using AR.
For people (like myself) with a horrible sense of direction, having the location overlaid is probably the quickest and most intuitive way to work out where I should go.
Its not a major use of AR, but I do think it adds to the functionality of the application.
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