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We live in a three dimensional world. Information comes at us from all angles in the form of
sounds, views, smells... We are immersed in our world. But our technology is not. Smartphones,
for all their gadgety wonder, present a very much two dimensional view of the world. Or,
at least, they did. Google glass looks set to change all that with augmented reality
of a sort, and other technology is sure to follow.
And now, Google themselves have come up with a new solution - a smartphone that creates
a detailed 3D map of the world around you. The phone, known as project Tango, scans the
world in 250,000 different dimensions every second, creating a detailed 3D map of the
users surroundings. Why? Well we're not sure. And to be honest we're not sure Google know
either. They've listed possible uses as indoor mapping, gaming and helping the visually impaired,
but that's a big bit of technology for some fairly niche uses.
Which is possibly why they're releasing 200 prototypes to app developers to create examples
of what the platform can actually do. Certainly, for augmented reality, self driving cars,
directions and getting real time information about the places you're passing along the
way, it could be very useful.
But that's not really smartphone kinda things to be doing, so whether Project Tango will
ever see the shops, or whether we should look at this as a test bed for other technology,
remains to be seen.