Project Tango is one of those Google projects that’s simultaneously futuristic and a bit clunky. It’s “augmented reality” from before that term referred to head-mounted displays like HoloLens and Magic Leap: a series of sensors that let a smartphone or tablet map 3D space, then overlay it with virtual objects that appear on the screen. There are some eminently practical uses of this, like helping people navigate a building the way Google Maps lets them navigate a city, and we’ve heard reports that Tango might be expanding to pursue them. At Google I/O, we’re still waiting on any news about that, but we’ve gotten a look at some of Google’s more interesting experiments.
Lots of people probably remember smartphone augmented reality apps…