Digital News South Africa

Use augmented reality to select restaurants

Dining-Out, described as a premiere online restaurant guide and the only one offered in an online mobile format, has added augmented reality (AR) to its applications for Apple iPhone and Android. The application combines three key elements - smart phones, the Layar Reality Browser and the 9000+ visitors that the site receives each day.

Layar shows what is around users, by displaying real time digital information on top of the real world as seen through the camera of a mobile phone. It works by using a combination of the mobile phone's camera, compass and GPS data to identify the user's location and field of view, retrieve data based on those geographical coordinates and overlay that data over the camera view.

The Dining-Out AR application is a free application that can be selected from the browser to give rich content on over 1000 of the region's best restaurants. It has three modes - reality view (default), list view and map view.

Practical applications

You are visiting a location with which you are not familiar. In the street you see some restaurants. Open the application and point the phone's camera at any restaurant to see full details about it including the menu with prices. You are staying at a B&B or Guesthouse and can use the list view to see the closest restaurants to where you are staying. Check out the rich content and click to book. Use the map view to see where restaurants are located in a location you want to visit.

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