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Here in the middle of 2017, the biggest players in tech continue to rapidly develop consumer-grade augmented reality. Apple’s ARKit is about to release, bringing AR to millions of new users. Google continues its steady march forward with Project Tango, and specialized solutions like Pointr are finding their niche.

Apple’s long-awaited entry into AR became a reality when Apple revealed its AR development platform ARKit, at the 2017 World Wide Developer’s Conference.

As we mentioned in an earlier article, Apple has long-promised to make a major splash in the AR market. With the recent release of the Apple augmented reality developer framework, ARKit, consider the market properly splashed.

Augmented reality, like its cousin virtual reality, has been experiencing explosive growth and development in the last few years. Here are 15 of the most interesting, unique, and just plain fun augmented reality startups to keep your eye on in 2017.

At the recent WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) in California, Apple announced a tool called ARKit, which has been designed to provide advanced Augmented Reality (AR) features and capabilities on iOS.

Following the 2016 successful launch of Lineage II: Revolution in its native South Korea, Netmarble Games released a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) version to the global market in May of 2017. It earned $176,000,000 (USD) the first month.

A riddle for your noodle: What do you get when you combine trending technology with a live adventure game? If it is virtual reality and escape rooms you are talking about, you get VR escape rooms — the next big thing in real-world adventure gaming.

The VR market is heating up, with projected revenue expected to top $120 billion by 2020. Fueled by advances in both software and hardware, virtual reality, it seems, is finally ready to invade mainstream consumer markets — and I don’t just mean the gaming sector.

Mobile game development has become big business. With the VR game market expected to reach $45.09 billion by 2025, the mobile game industry is where many investors and innovators, alike, will find their fortunes. Problem is, recognizing the market potential and having the technical skills to exploit it are two different things. Even though Unity — the de facto mobile game development platform — makes game development “easy,” most investors, and more than a few developers, lack the basic skills needed to develop the kind of cutting-edge games that the market demands. The solution for many is to hire a Unity developer to create the goods.