back to article Android app puts signs where they should be

Augmented reality offers many exciting possibilities and applications, but encouraging drivers to gaze at a mobile-phone screen when behind the wheel surely isn't one of them. Wikitude Drive overlays directional arrows, lane guides and text onto reality, as captured on an Android handset's camera. This enables a driver to see …

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  1. Scott A. Brown

    Battery Life

    Blimey, the battery goes on my HTC Magic quick enough as it is without that!

  2. Ian Michael Gumby
    FAIL

    Forget the eye off the road...

    More importantly, your hand is off the wheel.

    So you're driving down the road, using one hand to hold the camera phone, looking at the road through the phone, trying to pay attention to the driving instructions, and you're trying to turn, using the other. What happens if you have a manual transmission and you have to downshift?

    Lets not forget that if you are paying attention to the sat nav, you should be looking at driving directions that are ahead of you. Imagine being told to get in the center turn lane, and you're looking at the road via your camera phone. What happens when you need to change lanes and you end up cutting someone off to make your exit?

    Sorry but this feature rates a fail. Right up there with the Apple iPhone app that overlays a city map with the locations of known prostitute hang outs and their rates.

  3. SmallYellowFuzzyDuck, how pweety!
    FAIL

    Designed for Fuckwits

    Well lets be honest someone is going to try this on the road. I have seen people texting holding a phone in the same way.

    I see enough people on the roads using mobiles and reading books, even saw someone using a laptop a couple of weeks ago balanced on their lap while driving in lane 3.

    This morning I saw a van swerving across the road as the driver tried to roll a cigarette on the go.

    Just more technology and toys to move driving even lower down their list of priorities on the road.

    (Biker, fed up with idiots on road)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    I think it's great...

    ...I mean, there they were stuck behind a van, then it just magically dissapeared behind a blue box.

    Wahoo, no more being stuck behind caravans for me, just load this up and put my foot down...

  5. Paul Murphy 1

    Sounds like an ideal app for a mini-projector

    Connect the phone to a mini-projector and point it at the windscreen, what could possibly go wrong?

    ttfn

  6. Alex 32
    FAIL

    heh

    you can see how proud the "screen presser" is by the way the finger gets flicked towards the screen..

    Shame it's no good on a phone..

    Now on a windscreen..! Now that's an idea for a HUD

  7. micheal

    This is a good way forward if only

    On my trip up the M11 last week, i was passed in the outside lane by dildo in a golf reading his map (i wasnt hanging about either) and almost hit by woman with satnav realising at the last second that she was in the stanstead airport lane and crossed the hatches in front of me so I implore sat nav and smartphone makers.....design an add-on heads up display (say for between driver and passenger parts of the windscreen) and it'll sell, many responsible companies supply hands free in their cars, they'd buy them too.

    Anyone notice that the plod seem to ignore golfs, bmw's and such drivers on the phone unless they do something wrong at the time?

    the mobile law's dont work mate!!!!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mirror mode.

    Surely you just fix your mobile under the windscreen so the screen reflects of the windscreen. Put it onto a reflection mode and voila, head up display.

  9. Bilgepipe
    FAIL

    Impact Warning

    Hopefully it will also warn you about the vehicle in front you are about to hit. With your eyes on the screen, that will be the most useful feature.

    And you can guarantee that someone WILL try to drive with this.

  10. Christoph
    Grenade

    How up to date is the data

    So you're driving along the road as it is today, and the phone which you're watching instead of the road is showing you the road markings from a year ago, before they completely redesigned the layout. What could possibly go wrong?

  11. SuperTim

    @ Mirror mode.

    Good idea, apart from the next sharp turn, when said phone flies across the dashboard and out the open window......

  12. Mathew White

    Well at least...

    At least rally drivers could give their co-pilots one... oh wait, it says signal lost.

  13. The Avangelist
    Grenade

    I would love it if

    Wikitude actually worked full stop, but in the UK it's a bit on the pants side.

    It's nice to have an alternative for a sat nav system, but I still go back to the paper map to get anywhere and I never use my phone to listen to music. Why? You may ask. Because I want my bloody phone to be able to call someone when I have piled my little car off the M25 into the hard shoulder because I was too busy drinking my coffee and watching a dvd in the folded down passenger seat's head rest.

  14. Simon Peters 1
    Paris Hilton

    Well I wonder...

    ...if this can / will be supplied with an on-screen suction cup for the iPhone / Android, like every satnav has now. It's not like you'll frequently change your route after you've set off and the video says you can voice command it, although I know how reliable that can be from Windows Mobile :(

    Mind you, a suction cup is quite difficult to download so you'll still get the odd cheapskate moron ploughing through the pedestrians using this in the handheld style regardless, I suppose... and if it's as pants in the UK as the Avangelist says it'll probably have those arrows pointing the wrong way up one way streets and all sorts.

    I believe Paris has been well mapped though...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Surely this isn't as useful as a 'normal' map display?

    I can already see what is in front of my vehicle through the handily provided windows, what I want to know is what is coming up out of my sight, like roundabouts, junctions and the third turning on the left I'm supposed to take in a mile or so.

    A 2D map display shows me all this with little visual clutter, and with voice prompts I don't even need to look at it, although a quick glance to see the distance to the exit I need off the motorway allows me to make sure I'm in the right lane nice and early.

    My girlfriend with a map could do the same job probably just as well, but she can't sit in the passenger seat for more than five minutes without falling asleep. :)

  16. FreeTard
    Thumb Up

    Why not

    Surely this is no different to using a sat nav?? Why not have a screen mount?

    How would that be any more dangerous?

    Thumbs up for me, but I'll never use it as sat nav's are pointless anyway.

    Nowt wrong with rolling down the window and asking directions, or reading a map.

  17. amoney
    Linux

    SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT

    Basicly if one can not navigate on their own (without an asisted sat nav) people should not be on the road.

    One excellect possibility would be to tell the fuckwits that drive slow in the passing lane to move the F over!

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