Until a couple of weeks ago I’d never heard of augmented reality. However, like all things these days, once you’ve heard about something you keep hearing about it. The term augmented reality has, according to Wikipedia, been around since 1990.

Unlike virtual reality, which is a computer simulation of a real or imaginary world. Augmented reality is a term for mixing a live direct or indirect view of a physical real world and mixing it (augmenting) with virtual compuer generated imagary.

A great example of this is when you see the football scores whilst you watch the game on tv.

So what’s all the excitment about. Right, well, as you know, the number of apps available for the iPhone is increasing all the time – at the last count this is over 60000. For some time, developers have been trying to find new ways of using the features in the iPhone 3GS (and other smartphones), especially the camera, GPS and compass – which brings us neatly to the subject of iPhone v’s augmented reality.

At the weekend, I came across an app called Layar which combines the above features and uses the GPS and compass to work out which direction the camera is facing. The layers are essentially overlayed web pages over the camera view image.

As you hold the phone in front of you with the App open, you can see information being displayed on the camera display view.

Then as you turn around the information changes to various points of interest.

In the street of course, this effectively means that you point the camera at the building and it will tell you the building you’re looking at.

Now, this would all be a bit complicated, but you can apply filters so you just see the information you’re looking for.

I’m just trying this out at the moment, it looks fun and the best bit is it’s a free app to download.

Check the Layar site here.