Imagine running alongside the cascading waterfalls and granite rocks of Yosemite Valley. Perhaps you want to visualize the route before you go, or relive it after the fact. A new augmented reality experience will recreate the route in a digital 3D map for you to explore.
Putting Apple’s new augmented reality developers kit, ARKit, to use, a new app called Fitness AR aims to visualize routes by building a digital terrain map that will appear in a person’s physical environment (think on the coffee table akin to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ holomaps experience of the Quicken Loans Arena renovations).
“I’m an avid cyclist and when I discovered what was possible with ARKit, the first thing that came to mind was how powerful it would be to be able to share the exhilaration and challenges of a ride in 3D,” Fitness AR creator Adam Debreczeni said in a statement.
“The long awaited promise of the capabilities and the genuine utility of AR is here and we’re thrilled to be among the first to see how the world will react to experiencing it.”
The $2.99 ioS Fitness AR app has partnered with athlete social networking platform Strava, which enables its users to connect their accounts to visualize bike rides, runs and hikes on a map powered by the Mapbox Unity developers kit.
Mapbox, a real-time location and mapping platform that counts Strava, the National Park Service, Weather Channel, CNN, National Geographic, Github and Airbnb in China among its clients, also provides the mapping technology behind Red Bull Heavy Water, an extreme paddle boarding race taking place Friday in San Francisco.
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When Strava users connect their accounts, they can browse past activities, friends’ activities, and the routes built by Strava, including famous routes like Alpe D’Huez, Mont Ventoux and Yosemite Valley.
After choosing an activity or route and bringing up the AR camera, users can tap to place the map in the real world, swiping to rotate, zoom, and reposition it. They can also record video in AR to track routes and create customized videos.
Non-Strava users can’t do everything, but they can access some of the more popular routes.