GST[AR] – Release 1.1 iOS

We are delighted to announce the release of version 1.1 of GST[AR] on iOS. In this blog post we will be going over the main features that have been added to the app to get you up to speed. But don’t fret if you are an Android user: We are already working hard to bring the same features to the Android app as well. Keep an eye on the news section in your app to always stay up to date.

GST[AR] is a free iOS/iPadOS app which allows you to browse, download, view, and share 3d geological models in augmented reality (AR). If you can’t wait to get your hands on this new experience, you can download the app straight away: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/gst-ar/id1519232314.

Themes

Known from GST Web and GST Desktop, Themes have made their way into the app as well. While the custom sorting of features is not yet supported, the arguably most exciting feature of themes is now available directly from the AR view – custom coloring! You are now able to dynamically switch between all available themes that your endpoint provides while immediately seeing the impact it has on your model – no reloading required. To provide further information a little legend is shown to connect each color to its respective label. Should a theme be too complex and the legend too large, you can hide it by simply tapping on it. This allows you to provide a whole new layer of detail to the users of the app. Theme selection will be seamlessly synchronized in collaborative sessions to keep everyone looking at the same colors as well.

Feature Toggling

Realizing that a selection of features is not giving the desired output has always felt annoying since it was required to leave the AR view to make any changes. While it won’t be possible to load additional features into the AR view, we are happy to announce that it is now possible to hide individual features that have been loaded without the need to break immersion (and show them again if desired). To achieve this a toggle feature has been added to the vertical feature legend. Just tap the little tick mark to hide/show individual features and observe how your model instantly reflects your choice. And of course the model state will be synchronized in collaborative sessions. That way all your peers will still see the same model, no matter how many adjustments you make.

QR-Codes

While the endpoint library has made it much easier to get a basic selection of endpoints to use the app quickly, adding new or custom endpoints that were not included in the library remained clunky and slow. With this release we are starting to support QR-codes to alleviate and simplify previously clunky processes. After installing the update, you can use your normal iOS camera app to scan QR-codes to add endpoints to the app or open a model directly (depending on the QR-code). We will share details how you can create your own QR-codes to make use of this feature soon! Until then you can use our updated AR Endpoint Creator tool (https://giga-infosystems.com/view-your-own-models-in-augmented-reality) to quickly access locally hosted models or share endpoints from within your app by tapping on the QR-code symbol in the models list. We aim to add more and more functionality to QR-Codes, especially in regards to GST Web, to make it simpler and quicker to get your models into the app and into Augmented Reality.

As always we have made some smaller changes to improve your experience alongside these bigger features. One of the more notable ones is that the scale to super elevate a model is now exponential. That means that you can now super elevate your model up to 15 times while keeping fine grained controls in the lower ranges. If you have questions, comments or requests about these changes or the app in general, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at info@giga-infosystems.com. We love to chat about the app and the possible use cases it has. We hope you enjoy these new features while using GST[AR]!