In the last week I’ve been beta testing junaio, Metaio’s new mobile augmented reality app for the iphone 3gs. junaio allows you to author mixed reality scenes by adding 3D models to physical world locations, experience AR scenes on location in live video overlay mode, and share your scenes with other people on junaio and Facebook. My thoughts here are based on a pre-release version that does not include broader functionality such as online scene editing through the junaio.com website.

My overall impression is that junaio is a fun, interesting app that is very different from other mobile GPS+compass AR apps. Popular mobile AR apps like Layar, Wikitude, Robotvision, GeoVector and so on are mostly information centric, focused on finding and presenting geoweb and POI data about the world. In contrast, junaio is about personal augmentation of the world with visual models — it’s essentially a storytelling environment where users can express themselves through 3D world-building and share their creations with a social community.

A slight disturbance on the stanford quad

I found the creative authoring process surprisingly absorbing and satisfying, much more so than experiencing the scenes through the live “magic lens” for example. I was also impressed at how much could be done with a few finger gestures on a tiny device out in the world. Here’s an example scene I created while driving up Alpine Road last night (definitely not a recommended authoring process!):

kids, don't try this at home

Although junaio is a unique and engaging application with great ambition, I will warn you that it suffers somewhat from its high aspirations. junaio proposes to make 3D environment authors of us all. It does a reasonable job of simplifying a complex process and making it possible on a mobile device, but as a result it takes shortcuts that reduce the effectiveness of the end experience. For example the live camera overlay mode was a disappointment, because you do not experience the 3D scene that the author intended. I understand the technical reasons for this — limited GPS accuracy, lack of true 3D placement of objects, lack of camera pose data, physical world changes, etc — but my expectations were implicitly set that my scenes would turn out exactly the way I created them. Also, the user interaction model for the app is still rough in places, and I think many people will find it confusing and difficult to learn.

Despite the significant limitations of this first release, I actually think I will continue to use junaio. I really enjoy its creative aspects, and I think there is a lot of potential in the social community interaction as well. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I see it as a lovely way to live a few extra seconds into the future. Looking forward to the final release in the next few days.

In case you’re wondering, “Fiyo on the Bayou” is a song by the great Neville Brothers. Got a bit of New Orleans on the brain today, or maybe I’m hoping for a nice model of animated flames that I can place out on the Bay. Okay, mostly I just like the way it rhymes with “junaio from metaio”. YMMV as always. Cheers all.