If you’re like me, then you’ll occasionally look up at the night sky, filled with awe at the majesty of the stars and planets floating above… and realise that you have absolutely no idea what you’re looking at.
If you’re also like me and own a Nokia Lumia, then that situation is about to change with the launch of a new, free app from everyone’s favourite biscuit people, Oreo.
Oreo Skies shows you what you’re looking at, replicating the skies of the Northern Hemisphere and the position of the constellations where you are standing. You can view this either inside the app, or in an augmented reality view overlaid on whatever your camera is pointing towards.
[do action=”boxout”]Download Oreo Skies
- Press the Search button on your Nokia Lumia and then tap Vision
- Scan the QR code
- Tap on the link when it appears on the screen
- Install the application from the Windows Phone Marketplace
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On a Windows Phone 8 device, you can also set the app to create new images for your lock screen, showing a selected constellation and a snippet of information about it.
That’s all neat enough, but there’s also a social networking and game side to Oreo Skies. You can send your friends messages attached to stars in the sky, which they can pick up either in the app, or its companion Facebook app. Stars with messages shine brighter, so you can see when there are messages attached. If they are dimmer, then you’re free to attach your own.
Send enough messages and you get to create a public message attached to the moon – which looks remarkably like a split open Oreo biscuit. And at any point, you can see your ranking compared to your friends on the in-app leaderboard.
The Oreo Skies app is available now, for free, in the Microsoft Store, exclusive to Nokia Lumia devices.