Fishbowl adds AR to its VR consulting and testing portfolio

Virtual reality consultancy and testing firm Fishbowl has told UploadVR they have expanded their services to include augmented reality testing. The company produced their first AR usability test with Inkhunter, an application that allows users to see how a tattoo might look on their body before actually putting ink to skin. Describing the reason behind the expansion, CEO Geoff Skow highlighted the difficulties inherent in AR development, “There’s a huge gap between getting an AR app to work in staged environments and having it work for regular users in a real-life setting. Because everyone’s environment is necessarily unique (lighting conditions, surfaces, phone processors, a million other things) it’s absolutely critical for developers to test in as many different settings as possible.”

Skow said Apple’s new augmented reality SDK, ARKit, has triggered a stampede of developers clamoring to make their mark. With a standard SDK to work from, AR developers can now focus on big ideas instead of getting bogged down in minutia like camera calibration. Any would-be app maker can now tackle augmented reality with minimal overhead.