The Augmented Tarot

The Augmented Tarot started as a weekend sprint and became our first released app, on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Point a phone or tablet at a card from the Rider-Waite deck, originally illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, and the app shows the card's traditional meaning in place. Upside-down cards get the reversed interpretation. The 22 Major Arcana get full magical effects, while the 56 cards of the four Minor Arcana suits get subtler glowing borders and descriptions.

It ran in two modes:

• Mono for an ordinary phone or tablet screen.
• Stereo for Google Cardboard and Daydream headsets.

We showed early versions on YouTube and at Los Angeles VR events before the 1.0 release. The beta video runs through every Major Arcana card and was recorded directly from the device, with no postproduction beyond trimming and a title card. The app arrived the same summer Pokémon Go introduced augmented reality to the public, and people who tried it told us, "Now I get it!"

Part of our mobile XR R&D.