Simple but brilliant tape measure apps show just how useful AR is going to be [Video]

App developers have been having fun with Apple’s ARKit to put together augmented reality apps. We’ve seen a bunch of these already, and two developers have now shown how you can use an iPhone as a tape measure.

It might sound like a boring application, but just look at how much easier it is to measure things in augmented reality …

With these apps, you just point your camera at anything you want to measure.

ARuler lets you tap on any two points on your screen, and it will measure the real-world distance between them.

AR Measure also gives you a virtual ruler you can add to anything.

AR Measure turns your phone into a ruler you can use anytime, anywhere. Just point your phone and click a point to measure almost anything. The app uses the power of Augmented Reality to measure the distance between points in 3D space. So you can measure things like furniture, doors, plates, desks, carpets, paintings, chairs, etc.

The demo video below starts by measuring … a tape measure, just to give an idea of the accuracy, then shows how easily you can measure things like furniture.

This may not be the most exciting use of the technology, but in terms of real-life usefulness, these apps have to score pretty highly.