More ARKit demos: Falcon 9 rocket landing, Van Gogh bedroom tour & more

Wouldn’t it be great if you could take a tour of Van Gogh’s virtual bedroom in augmented reality? How about witnessing a Falcon 9 rocket descending from the skies?

ARKit, Apple’s new framework for building augmented reality apps for iPhone and iPad, has captured the imagination of many iOS developers out there who have already created some truly awesome examples of what’s possible with ARKit.

For starters, here’s an example of ARKit’s accurate tracking.

Developer Mark Dawson used ARKit to create a virtual copy of Van Gogh’s bedroom which you can walk around and examine detailed furniture, paintings on the wall and more.

ARKit has “amazing tracking,” Dawson said.

ARKit combines live camera feed and sensor data to find tables, floors and other horizontal planes in your real world. Speaking of which, This example shows ARKit’s plane detection.

And this is adding geometry and physics with ARKit.

In this demo, ARKit is tracking a virtual cube and providing a light estimate for the scene, which makes it easy to change the light intensity of the virtual object to match the real world.

Notice how when the lights are dimmed down the virtual cube also automatically dims, then when the lights are raised the virtual cube also gets brighter. Pretty neat, wouldn’t you say so?

And here you can see ARKit detecting horizontal planes in the real world and rendering content using SceneKit with physically based rendering.

Developer Tomás García shared this cool demo depicting a Falcon 9 landing at the ASDS in a swimming pool, which he accomplished using ARkit and Unity.

And lastly, German company Econsor Mobile GmbH has been working on an ARKit-powered app for commissioning of construction projects directly on the construction site.

Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks augmented reality is a big idea like the smartphone.

“The smartphone is for everyone, we don’t have to think iPhone is about a certain demographic, or country or vertical market: it’s for everyone. I think augmented reality is that big, it’s huge. I get excited because of the things that could be done that could improve a lot of lives. And be entertaining,” he said in the past.

How do you like these latest ARKit demos, which one is your favorite, and why? Does ARKit show a lot of promise, do you think? Share your thoughts by posting in the comment section.