Acrossair is showing off a great new location-based augmented reality app for the iPhone that helps New Yorkers work their way around the subway. As you can see from the video, it makes good use of direction detection the iPhone 3GS by showing you both which stations are in the way you’re facing the camera, as well as how far away they are. If they can include all of the functionality of Google Maps for Mobile’s transit directions, then I think we’ve got a winner for the new public transportation app of choice. Acrossair has already earned an award for their London tube version of this app, and testing is underway for San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., Tokyo, Berlin, and Barcelona, even though the software is still awaiting App Store approval. With any love, we’ll see versions popping up for even more metropolitan areas in the future.
I’m curious how it works underground in systems that don’t have data coverage – Barcelona won’t be a problem, but New York is still testing the waters. To keep up to date on the progress of the New York Nearest Subway app, be sure to check out Acrossair’s site.