Bring a Life-Size Augmented Reality Panda, Goat or Bear Into Your Home With This New Google Search Feature
Next time you Google Search for an animal such as an alpine goat, tiger or lion, you may be able to bring an augmented reality version of that animal with you into your room.
This week Google released a new search map that lets you bring virtual animals into your space if you have an AR-enabled phone.
For this to happen, all you have to do is find the animal. In the search results, you will see a button “Meet a life-size [animal].” Click on it to make a bear, emperor penguin or hedgehog appear in front of you with realistic sound effects to complete the game.
They also don’t joke about life size. When he showed up, the lion took over most of my home office, and the giant panda on my couch left no room for anything else. When I took the bear out to my street, he looked like he was going for a walk.
Obviously, this is a bit of a novelty for adults who have probably seen these animals before, but I see this feature especially useful when explaining the size of an animal like a giant panda to a child. Sure, you can tell a child (or adult) how tall an item is or how much it weighs, but that’s nothing compared to seeing it sit on your couch.
This feature works for a variety of animals, including giant pandas, lions, European urchins, angler fish, alpine goats, and sharks.
Google originally announced the AR feature at Google I / O last month. Although animals appear first, it was stated at the time that they were also working with NASA, Volvo, Samsung, New Balance, Target, Wayfair and others on finding augmented reality items, so this is probably not the last use of the feature. we’ll see.