Wikitude Drive for Android beta released

Turn by turn navigation is going to get a lot more fun If Mobilizy has its way. The brains behind the Wikitude augmented reality apps for Android, Nokia, and iPhone have announced Wikitude Drive for Android phones with Android 1.6 or later installed. This is the first augmented reality turn by turn navigation app that uses the phone's GPS and camera together to layer the selected route over a live view of what is in front of the car.

2,000 lucky beta testers were allowed to begin test driving (sic) the app on Thursday after downloading the app from the Android Market. After download number 2,000 the app will disappear from Android Market until either the beta expands or is ended.

Checking out the video below, the app seems pretty interesting although I could imagine that the app would be a pain to use in high traffic areas and other places with a ton of things going on. The view can be changed to a regular 3D GPS by a tap of the screen so changing back and forth would be fairly easy. I see this as more of a fun diversion than a major change to how we view our GPS but hey, anything to make that 10 hour drive to Grandma's house more interesting, right?