layar

My new phone (hopefully delivered soon: http://is.gd/38QgB) seems to contain an electronic compass (see http://pocketnow.com/hardware-1/lcd-test), so it seems to fulfill your hardware requirements. I really hope to be able to start using AR within the expected life time of this phone, or two years. Please, could you make this happen?

My new phone (hopefully delivered soon: http://is.gd/38QgB) seems to contain an electronic compass (see http://pocketnow.com/hardware-1/lcd-test), so it seems to fulfill your hardware requirements. I really hope to be able to start using AR within the expected life time of this phone, or two years. Please, could you make this happen?

...or dynamic sub-layers. For instance, I have an unknown number of categories of POIs that I can display, availability may depend on location. What I envision is this:

Request for dynamic radio button filterlist is sent together with the regular location, accuracy, radius, id parameters.

Client API decides which filter options to send back, e.g. {culture,sport,health,finance} but not {accounting,design} because these are not available in the area and would return an empty result set.

Also, my application can add a new filter category on the fly, without needing to go through the deployment process manually.

I have found what appears to be an issue on the HTC Dream with the app. First off, the app is mindblowing, and that's one of the reasons i am giving feedback to try and be able to use it properly...

The problem occurs 9 out of 10 times i use layar (1 in 10 it doesn't). Basically, when i hold the phone upright (portrait mode), and i turn 90 degrees (in reality view), the points of interest don't apear to shift! sometimes they do, but not exactly 90 degrees, and usually in the wrong direction. After lots of experimenting, i found the following:

1) This issue only occurs in reality view. When i switch to map view, everything suddenly rectifies itself, and the app works 100% (the radar spins round to the correct orientation imediately). Back to reality view, and things jump back the way they were (i.e. disoriented).
2) If i hold the phone in landscape mode (sideways), then things suddenly line up (even though the screen is on its side - i use the radar view at the top to determine this). If i turn, the radar turns correctly with me (so, i get a sideways view of the world).
3) Apps that use the camera and compass in landscape mode work fine. Apps that use only the compass, in either mode (i.e. google sky maps) work fine. As soon as a portrait mode app is combined with the camera, then things go wrong.

It appears as though the app believes the compass to be operating in landscape mode, even though the app iteself is running in portrait (the issue appears to be that the camera preview that is used forces the phone into landscape mode, even though the app is written in portrait mode).

So, the long and short of it is that i can see 3 possible solutions to the issue.
1) Allow a landscape view "setting" on the reality browser.
2) Have some form of detection to detect the phone has been set to landscape as opposed to portrait, and adjust all read compass values accordingly.
3) Changes on the Android side itself where the camera does not force the phone into landscape mode (i have checked the camera itself, and that only operates in landscape mode, regardless of the position of the phone or if the keyboard is slid out or not). Obviously not yours to do, but is worth noting.

Otherwise, keep up the good work! I have not been able to use the app the way it is intended to work yet (well, i can 1 in 10 times), but the potential is clearly there!

We already have the layar://layarname intent (wil be enhanced in the next version as I understand).

Req: enhance this with an optional POI specification, so you could directly access or bookmark a single POI in the application or on the web.

Proposed scheme:

layar://layername/poi_id where poi_id can be the internally used ID string for the POI.

This intent should open the Layar app, load the POI (through a new API call), select the POI in the AR view and show it, bypassing range settings, so you could navigate to the POI from anywhere ("get me there action") or otherwise invoke actions for it