Apple Park’s Visitor Center opened for the first time on Friday and one of the features that people are the most excited about is the augmented reality experience that the company has built to show guests around the campus. 9to5Mac has had a hands-on look at the app to see exactly how it works.
Immediately after the release of the iPhone X in September, the site got a sneak peak of the AR demo. A whole third of the Visitor Center’s main floor is dedicated to an aluminium model of the park. This is crossed with gridlines and provides tracking points for a special ARKit-enabled app that the company has created alongside the Unreal Engine to work alongside the model.
When visitors use the app they can get a birds-eye view of the entire campus, as well as the ability to raise the roof of a building to look inside. The app overlays things like foliage, lighting effects, building details onto the the plain aluminium model that respond to things like the time of day.
The app is installed on custom iPads that are branded with Apple Park iconography on the back instead of the Apple logo. You can check out the hands-on experience in the video below (via 9to5Mac):
