Google's AR update lets you unleash ancient creatures in your living room
With an app update for Google Arts & Culture, your cat can stare down a 500-million-year-old creature in your living room with augmented reality.
The Opabinia, a 500-million-year-old creature with five eyes, can visit your living room in all its weird glory, thanks to an AR update to the Google Arts & Culture app. Google partnered with a variety of history and art museums to add a collection of prehistoric creatures, cultural artifacts and historic artwork as augmented reality objects that you can view through the app in your own home.
The Google Arts & Culture app is available for iOS and Android, though you'll need a newer smartphone to take advantage of all of the AR functionality.
Google announced the update on Tuesday in a blog post. You can see the full roster of available objects on the Google Arts & Culture site.
Well, I'm never going in my kitchen again.
Through the app, you'll be able to see creatures like the enormous blue whale to scale through your phone's camera and see how your own house pet measures up.
In addition to giant creatures, artifact options include the Apollo 11 command module and a variety of paintings including Frida Kahlo's self portraits.