Use Google and Your Smartphone to Bring 3D Animals to Your Living Room
If you or your kids have ever wondered how big a wolf, shark or tiger really is in the wild, Google has a way to bring a 3D animated image of them right into your home. All you need is a little curiosity, a browser and an iPhone or Android phone with ARCore or ARKit support .
We stumbled upon this feature when Zach Klein tweeted that he stumbled upon it when he Google “How big is the wolf?” for his five year old son.
It turns out you don’t even have to google the whole question, just the name of the animal you want to see. If you’re not sure if your phone supports ARCore or ARKit (that is, it can use your phone’s camera to add computing elements to your environment), just open your phone’s browser and search for “wolf” or “lion.” If your phone has the option, you’ll see this “View in 3D” option at the top of the search results:
The lion will even move by flicking its tail and yawning slightly. After you click “View in 3D”, an animated animal will appear on your screen. You can select “AR” at the top to place the animal in its surroundings, or “object” to just see how it moves against a blank white background.
I personally found that finding wolf, tiger, bear, lion, horse, dog, eagle and shark worked. And that’s not all: Cnet’s Scott Stein also had some luck with the giant panda, alligator, penguin, Shetland pony, pug, raccoon and macaw. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for a porcupine, fox, owl, hippo, cow, pig, hawk, or bat. (Okay, I was kind of glad it didn’t work for the bat.) Ask your kids which animal they would like to pose with, and search to see if it’s available.
Keep in mind that this is not perfect science; depending on your position or location, the animal may be clearly too large or definitely too small. I photographed my entire house and found that if I was sitting, the animal loomed over me.
As soon as I got up and started all over again, the world made sense again:
Also, if the landscape was too wide open, the objects would appear much smaller than they should be, I suppose, because the phone didn’t have enough environmental cues to scale. The shark in my backyard looked more like a fish. However, in my living room, everything became a reality.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work with dinosaurs. (I’ve tried Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Velociraptor to no avail.) My son would really love to see a Tyrannosaurus in the cafeteria after school. But even so, I’m sure he will enjoy watching a penguin or an alligator stroll down our street tonight.