Yo in an attempt to end the onslaught of derivative AR pet sims and furniture apps, here’s a list of some cool, accessible next-gen AR tech I’m playing with right now that I think you should play with too:

Aryzon

The Aryzon 3D headset is a $35 Hololens made of cardboard. Though unlike the Google Cardboard that came before it, the components inside the Aryzon reflect your phone screen up onto a piece of transparent combiner glass (very much like the Hololens.) Combine this with Vuforia or ARKit/ARCore and you have a fully competent 6DOF AR/MR headset with stereoscopic depth.

Manomotion

Manomotion tracks your hands without the need for external hardware *cough cough* LeapMotion *cough*. All Manomotion requires to track your hands in three-dimensions is an everyday smartphone camera, so if you want to build next-gen interactions without the need for controllers or trackers, consider requesting access to their SDK.

8th Wall

If you’ve released an ARKit app as of late, your #1 complaint is probably that your app doesn’t download or just doesn’t work. You scratch your head looking for bugs only to realize the person whom was adamant they had iPhone 6s, actually had a 6.

8th Wall automatically manages cross-platform ARKit/ARCore development while allowing for (okay-quality) AR on older smartphones. It also has a bunch of extra convenience features like sun-oriented shadows and “instant AR”, which takes care of that frustrating boot-up tracking delay.

ARKit 1.5

ARKit 1.5 is awesome and if you aren’t experimenting with it already you’re missing out. I know it sucks to download the new OS, get the new Xcode beta, and download the newest ARKit repo, but in exchange you get high-performance image rec. It’s door-opening to say the least, allowing developers to finally build contextually-aware ARKit apps. Read more about it here.

Have you seen or tried any exciting, accessible AR tech lately that didn’t make the list? Let me know with a reply below or tweet me at @Aidan_Wolf.