The history of augmented reality and a City Lens reminder

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It's a fair cop, this is a fairly insubstantial link of interest for All About Symbian for a Monday morning - but it does give me an excuse to remind people about my walk through of getting augmented reality, in the form of Nokia City Lens, up and running on a modern Symbian device. In theory it shouldn't now work - yet it does. Read on for quotes and links.

From the chatty Nokia Conversations piece:

The Master Key

Writer Frank L. Baum, best known for his Oz books, came up with the idea for augmented reality back in 1901, in his story The Master Key, in which a kid gets a pair of fancy specs which tell him whether the people he sees are good, evil, wise, foolish, kind, or cruel.

War games

It took another ninety years for anything like that to become operational, but, in 1992, the US Army trialled an AR system in combat vehicles that used two-way streams to channel real-time simulation data between live and virtual players. Obviously these guys were thinking of developments in weaponry, but they also suggested how the tech might be used in civilian life—in architectural and scientific visualisations, manufacturing, training, and gaming.

From my original tutorial:

  1. Say 'No' to starting 'LiveView' if prompted.
     
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  2. Find the Nokia City Lens icon in the app menu and tap it, then immediately press the red/hangup button on the phone.
     
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  3. Wait. City Lens will start normally after a second or so and will work perfectly.
     
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Comments welcome. How useful do you find augmented reality?

Source / Credit: Nokia Conversations