Layar recently released Layar Vision, an extension of the Layar platform enabling visual search on the mobile phone, recognizing real world objects and showing digital content on top of them.

We organized the Layar Creation Challenge as a way to kickstart the Layar Vision launch by encouraging developers to create immersive Augmented Reality experiences with the beta client.

More than 200 developers registered for the Challenge, and we reviewed many great submissions, but we narrowed the list down to these 15 concepts that we believe best meet the Challenge criteria.

“We encouraged developers to think big and to come up with creative, smart business ideas with lasting value for both the user and layer publisher,” said Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Layar co-founder and General Manager. “We were very excited to see diversity beyond publishing among the entries, including very strong concepts ranging from creative storytelling to shopping. We believe this shows augmented reality is at the stage where it can add real value to existing businesses.”

Our expert jury will select 10 of these concepts and award each of those developers a portion of the $55,000 prize money.

The finalists are featured in the Layar Creation Challenge Short List PDF (where you can try the layers yourself using the images provided) and in this video mashup! 

You can also visit the Creation Challenge page for a brief description of these 15 submissions.

Congratulations to the 15 finalists and a big “thank you!” to everyone who participated in the Challenge. It won’t be long now until we have the winners and dish out that $55,000!