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10 best augmented reality games (AR games) for Android
Augmented Reality (AR) can be a fun technology to play with. The basic premise of AR is to overlay digital content on top of real things using something like a map, a camera, or sometimes the sky. Unlike VR, it grew slowly in the background over many years. There aren’t a ton of huge, great AR products yet, but the list grows slowly every year. AR has tons of potential applications and it’s only a matter of time before they become more rampant. Here are the best AR apps for Android
The best-augmented reality apps for Android
Assemblr Studio
Price: Free
Assemblr Studio is a great place to jump in if you are new to AR. A wealth of pre-made templates from all facets, including printing, marketing, and presentation allow you to test what the app has to offer to your heart’s content. After that, you can advance to creating your own AR products. The build option in the app allows you to create unique scenes with pre-built and custom creations.
Google Maps
Price: Free
Google Maps is one of the best uses of AR in an app so far. The app recently added Live View, a way to navigate with your camera viewfinder from the app. Maps then impose information on the screen about businesses and directions as you walk or move down the road. It’s a super neat concept and excellent for directions in cities where you may not know all the street names. Plus, we can see this technology improving over time to work even better than it does now.
Google Translate
Price: Free
Google Translate is arguably the best translator app out there. It supports a ton of languages. You can translate back and forth between virtually any of them. You can even have it translated in real-time so you can have conversations with people. The augmented reality part of the app lets you point your camera at text from another language. The app then translates it in real-time. This can help you do things like read street signs or menus. Like the barcode scanner above, this is one of those super handy AR apps that a lot of people install. Microsoft Translator has a lot of the same features as well.
Halo AR
Price: Free
Vuforia View
Price: Free
Zenni Optical
Price: Free
Sky Map
Price: Free
Sky Map is one of the oldest AR apps out there. It was originally developed by Google. You turn it on and the phone displays a star map. You hold your phone up to the sky. The display will show the stars in the sky right above it. You can use it to find constellations. It’s a little tough to calibrate at first, but it’s reasonably accurate once you figure it out. It’s fun for entertainment, especially when you’re enjoying the gears. It’s free with no in-app purchases.
Snapchat
Price: Free
Snapchat is one of the most popular messaging platforms out there. You connect with a person on the app and then you can send pictures and videos of whatever you’re doing. The app has a variety of special filters that you can augment right on top of your face. It can look like you’re a dog or a cat or whatever else Snapchat happens to have available on any given day. It’s some really basic augmented reality, but it works shockingly well. The app is a battery hog and not overly optimized. However, it’s still fun to use.
AR Ruler App: Tape Measure Cam
Price: Free
The AR Ruler app does exactly what its name suggests. It measures various objects you point your phone’s camera at using AR. The parameters you can measure are impressive, including height, length, distance between two objects, and angles between two surfaces. It’s extremely user-friendly. All you have to do is open the app, select the parameter you want to measure, point your camera at the two reference points, and tap on them. The results should be displayed as an overlay.
TikTok
Price: Free
TikTok is on this list for the same reason Facebook and Snapchat are. The company has an augmented reality platform where developers can build out AR experiences for users to play with. The news was announced in August 2021 so there aren’t a ton of examples at the time of this writing. However, as the platform expands, more and more AR effects should become available in the TikTok Effect Studio for creators. Social media has long been one of the biggest driving forces for AR and I guess TikTok is contributing to that. Given what we’ve seen from Facebook and Snapchat, the results could be very interesting.
If we missed any great augmented reality apps for Android, tell us about them in the comments! You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists!