Pocket Universe Brings Augmented Reality to the iPhone

I’ve always been interested in astronomy but would hardly call myself an expert. Now though with the help of Pocket Universe, I will be able to learn quite a lot.

The coolest feature is hands down the virtual sky which offers an augmented reality type of experience. As you are not looking through the camera the data is not viewed as a layer, but at night that would be pretty hard to see anyway. As you’ll see in the short video below, the full feature set of the iPhone 3G S is called into action. On launch, my location is queried, and then the compass guides your view of the sky to reveal exactly what can be found at a given time and place. It’s awesome! In this video I do a quick search for the big dipper and you’ll see Pocket Universe guides me to find it …

I’ll apologize for the blurrycam … the Flip Mino HD apparently does not like close up night time photography. I should also note this AR feature is part of an unreleased beta but coming soon …

I’m looking forward to exploring the night skies with the kids on our upcoming vacation and now that summer is here, we can get the telescope out as well for a closer look. Pocket Universe is amazingly rich source of astronomy info and to be honest I’ve just started to scratch the surface, but I really like what I see. It’s well worth $2.99.