As virtual reality starts to sound more and more like something from the 90’s, Augmented reality (AR) apps like Google Ingress  seem to appear everywhere. The idea is not to take people to visit separate virtual worlds – but to add virtual stuff and layers to the real world.

AR has widely been used in marketing already for a couple of years now but now, nearly 3 years later, it finally starts to be something that everybody has seen and heard about.  In the beginning of 2012 the awesome Alien-shirts were something that everybody wanted to have.  A similar technique has been used by for example Heinz in advertising-purposes (this is a good example of how AR literally adds things to product/reality).

As Nike has gamified their shoes, Adidas has decided to do something else and one can play games with their shoes thanks to the additional AR-elements.  Besides shoes, trying on clothes and accessories is a very used form of AR: good example is this clever Nooka-campaign that was based into luxury magazines.

Last but definitely not least: “The Minecraft reality” –app (watch the video above) allows one to bring their own virtual world creations to be a part of the real world. Users can actually import whole buildings to the streets via their smartphones – and even visit the rooms inside these buildings.