Augmented Reality Games on the iPhone

Abstract: Augmented reality opens up a lot of possibilities for new types of games, where the real and the virtual world are mixed. Despite this, augmented reality games are still not very common, probably due to the fact that head-mounted displays (which are often used for augmented reality) are expensive. However, in recent years mobile phones have become more and more powerful, and since many of them have built-in cameras and rather large screens, they are a potential platform for augmented reality games. This thesis explores some of the problems and possibilities associated with the creation of augmented reality games for the Apple iPhone. In order to do that, a multi-player augmented reality game for the iPhone was implemented, and then a number of performance tests and a user study were conducted. The most important conclusion that was reached is that performance is a definite problem when creating augmented reality games for the iPhone.