Homework 4 - Stars

For this assignment, I downloaded the SkyView application on my android phone. The purpose was to observe certain celestial objects in augmented reality in order to gain a better understanding of constellations and how to spot other planets using just our phone.

If I'm being honest...the application was pretty crappy (unless I have a complete misunderstanding of how this works). No matter what I did, all the planets and constellations just kept rotating around the sky and I couldn't actually get an idea of where everything was supposed to be. Specifically with Saturn and the Moon, I couldn't even get them into the sky! So unless I'm wrong and these photos are accurate, I think the technology here needs some improvement.

In the future if/when this technology would be integrated into smart glasses, I don't see it providing a whole lot of value to most people. If I were using smart glasses that could overlay information like this when looking at the sky, my reaction would almost certainly be "Oh. Neat." I probably wouldn't use the feature much, though I'm sure there would be some people that might use it. It certainly wouldn't be a selling-point for me if I was considering spending a lot of money for a new piece of technology.

Keeping with the topic of the sky, though, I think some other applications for this technology, you could create applications that could look at the sky and tell you the potential incoming weather judging by your location and the type of clouds on the horizon. I think that real-time weather updates using actual measurements from your surroundings and the sky rather than waiting for weather services to notify you could be pretty valuable.

Additionally, what if you could point your camera at an airplane and using your location and airline data, you could see where the plane is going? I think that would be kind of a pointless idea, but still cool nonetheless.

I think a potentially useful application of this could be for hiking. By using your location and the sky as a guide, you could keep track of the distance you've traveled and the path you've taken. This could prevent you from getting lost while in the wilderness, which I am confident some people would make good use of.