Can I use Augmented Reality for landscape design?

Before we get into answering the key question of whether augmented reality is a right technology for creative functions like landscape design, we should take a look at current state of the technologies that provide immersive experiences.

Using your mobile phone to place life-size plants and other garden elements in your yard

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented reality overlays virtual objects onto real world. This is done typically using a smart phone, a tablet or specially built hardware like VR Headset or AR Glasses. Depending upon the capability of the device, you can interact with these virtual objects using touch, gesture or voice control. These objects can behave like real world objects e.g. a virtual ball bouncing on the floor and eventually rolling on the floor.

You might have already seen instances of augmented reality around us. For instance, Snapchat’s lenses which bring so much fun to your social network experience or IKEA’s app to virtually place a virtual couch or a dining table in your home.

Augmented reality enables us to try things out free or at much lower cost. It yields naturally to our desire to try things before we can buy.

Why augmented reality could make landscape design better?

Augmented Reality Technology’s key strength is rendering realistic looking objects in front of us, so that we can observe every little nuance without bringing such object physically in our space. Landscape Design also involves visualizing a design that would eventually turn into a beautiful looking garden in your front yard or backyard. Why not visualize it with realistic models of elements of landscape design - plants, shrubs, ground covers, garden features like pergolas, arbors etc?

You can try different combinations of garden designs by placing specific set of plants and shrubs that suits your taste, or a kind of look you want for your garden. Hence, we believe we have excellent application of augmented reality in landscape design.

DreamzAR App as a tool for landscape design with AR

DreamzAR app puts all the technology pieces together to give you a complete solution for designing beautiful landscape for your home. Whether you’re looking to take on a patio project or convert concrete driveway into a paved driveway or adding a white picket fence in your front yard, you’ll find everything you need in its catalog.

DreamzAR app has:

1. Built in tool to measure the area (sq. feet) and perimeter (linear feet) of the physical surfaces as you mark the work area outline. No tape measure needed at all

2. Collection of ground cover textures like mulch, lawn grass and artificial turf

3. Collection of various colored and textured paving stones (pavers) to add to your landscape design (50 Patterns)

4. Collection of 36 high quality plants, shrubs, hedges and grasses

5. Collection of variety of garden features like picket fences, benches, arbors and pergolas

6. Animate your landscape design with animation control. See your new design coming to life in real time. Record using device's screen capture button

7. Get estimate for your project (Feature available only for USA ZIP Codes)

8. Simulate different time of the day with realistic shadow control

9. Save projects for later review and edits

10. Take screenshot of your design and save it. Revisit and iterate over design as many times as you want

Does this sound interesting? We think augmented reality has so much potential to improve the way we live, work and play. We have built DreamzAR with immersive technologies that make it more efficient, and more fun. Experience it yourself. Tell us in comments below about your experience with DreamzAR.

Download DreamzAR on Apple App Store.