Layar Player lets others embed augmented reality in iPhone apps

Augmented reality company Layar said today that it has launched a new augmented reality player that can be embedded for free in iPhone applications.

The new Layar Player from the Amsterdam-based company came out of beta testing today and is available for agencies, brands and developers to embed into their own iPhone apps. Those apps can be used by the 1.4 million active users on the Layar platform. That’s in addition to iPhone users who have downloaded the apps that access the Layar Player.

By creating  a platform for augmented reality, the company will advance the cause of the technology a lot faster than if it tried to do all of the apps by itself.

Augmented reality offerings like Layar can add layers of data and information on top of what you’re pointing your smatphone’s camera at. So, for example, if you turn your smartphone’s camera towards a store or a landmark, Layar could overlay a store review from Yelp or details about the landmark right on your viewfinder. If you point your phone at a restaurant, the app could show you what you could eat for dinner. If you point at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, you could see a view of what the Berlin Wall would have looked like from that view in the past.

Today, three Layar Player apps are launching on the iPhone:

* Snowboard Hero (Fishlabs and Muzar) — an augmented reality game sponsored by Microsoft’s Bing that lets players earn points by approaching areas where they can pick up virtual coins

* Layar Trade — an app that lets people view recent projects from local builders

* VerbeterdeBuurt — an app that lets neighbors post suggestions for improving public spaces.

“This is about the democratization of augmented reality,” said Layar co-founder Maarten Lehs-Fitzgerald, who spoke this week at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich.

Layar promises more features later this year to make augmented reality even more pervasive. The Snowboard Hero app lets users collect extra credits in a game using augmented reality, where you point your camera at the landscape and can see virtual coins embedded in locations. If you walk to the locations, you can collect the credits. The goal is to collect as many credits as you can within five minutes.

The VerbeterdeBuurt app, created by TAB Worldmedia and The Saints in the Netherlands, lets Dutch citizens report disturbances within their neighborhoods or submit ideas for improvements. Trade Vision by AYR Communications lets people see the work of local building contractors before hiring them. Available in the United Kingdom, the app shows what contractors have built in a local area.

Layar is already available on Bada and Android phones. Lehs-Fitzgerald said cool uses of Layar include visualizing buildings that are proposed but haven’t yet been built, such as the Markthall in Rotterdam. He said Layar is talking with makers of mobile chip sets so it will be much easier to embed augmented reality functionality in smartphones in the future. Some 1,600 Layar apps have been built already.

The Layar Player requires developers to embed a simple line of code so they can add augmented reality to their iPhone apps. The player can then “play” your published layer in the iPhone app. Then the user can play the app without having to have a Layar Reality Browser app already installed on the smartphone.

As we noted before, Layar was one of the earliest companies to venture into augmented reality. It is available on Google’s Android mobile operating system, as well as the iPhone operating system iOS. Layar announced plans to launch on Symbian, the operating system that powers most phones manufactured by Nokia, last year. Yelp and Urbanspoon, two other apps that help discover new restaurants, also have some form of augmented reality built-in.

Unlike Yelp and Urbanspoon, Layar is more like a springboard that brings in developers to figure out just what to do with the technology. Layar launched a store for special layers of information and graphics that you can superimpose on the world around you through your cell phone. Publishers can create and sell special augmented reality layers that tag places with information like real estate listings or restaurants.

Layar has raised more than $18.6 million to date in two rounds of funding from Intel Capital. Rivals include Junaio, Wikitude, Nokia and others. The company has scores of employees and was founded in June, 2009. Check out the videos below of the Layar technology in action.