News: Follow in the Footsteps of Forensic Detectives & Solve Crimes with Oxygen's Augmented Reality App

The crime procedural show is the perhaps the most direct path to the average TV viewer's heart. Could the same hold true for augmented reality games?

Exhibit A: Forensic Detective: Inside the Crime Scene, a new, iOS-only mobile game for iPhones and iPads, that will be available in the App Store on May 31 (although attendees at CrimeCon 2018 in Nashville will get a sneak peek at the app on Friday).

The app uses augmented reality to reconstruct a crime scene in the player's environment. With voiceover narration providing exposition, players collect and examine virtual clues and narrow down their suspects until the perpetrator is identified.

"Oxygen is a leader in the crime genre for multiplatform storytelling, and as with all our original content, we strive to allow our viewers to play along as they try to solve a case," said Lisa Hsia, executive vice president of digital for Bravo & Oxygen Media, in a statement provided to Next Reality. "By taking advantage of the latest AR technology, we can push boundaries and give armchair detectives a unique opportunity to get out of their chairs and put their puzzle solving skills to the test using very real crime-solving methods."

To achieve a greater sense of realism, the game's developer, Neo-Pangea, leveraged the new vertical plane detection available via ARKit 1.5 to achieve room-scanning capabilities within the app. For example, the toolkit makes it possible to examine AR bullet holes in a real-world wall.

"ARKit 1.5 gave us the ability to weave in vertical plane detection as part of the game's narrative," said Matt Marsters, a mixed reality strategist at Neo-Pangea. "It's a real differentiator, making the user experience exceptionally rich since the app can render full-scale 3D thanks to spatial recognition. It's a bit like having an 'Escape the Room' experience right in your pocket."

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Exhibit B: For Android users, there's an alternative suspect in A&E Crime AR, which is available now in the Play Store for $0.99.

Also inspired by the true crime shows that A&E is known for, the game's premise is almost identical to Oxygen's AR app, with ARCore standing in for ARKit to display clues in the player's environment.

So if the "dun-dun" from Law & Order gets you excited, now you can get off the couch and into the investigation, in augmented reality.

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