Apple released a new beta of it’s iPhone OS3.1 (Beta 2) to developers yesterday and hackers and programmers around the world have been beating on it. One interesting find is that they now publish some API’s to allow overlays onto the live video available in the 3GS hardware. This seems to be a means to finally allowing developers to use the iPhone as an Augmented Reality interface, similar to what we’ve seen already done for Nearest Tube, Seer, and Layar. Currently those applications are stuck in App Store Approval Limbo as they use API’s that violate Apple’s rules for applications, these new API’s (while they will probably require some coding changing) seem to be a way for them to finally reach release.
Of course, this is just a Beta. Apple could easily retract these API’s prior to release.
iPhone OS 3.1 beta 2 released (update: disables tethering, enables AR?).
