The augmented reality arena just became a bit hotter with Urbanspoon’s implementation of augmented reality into the existing feature set. You can now browse or search for a good restaurant or, with a simple shake your iPhone will reveal a random local restaurant. Building upon the results the new “Scope” feature uses Google Maps to show your position in blue and the local restaurants in red pins.

Point your iPhone at the horizon and the real fun starts, the app detects the change via the accelerometer and flips the phone to camera mode, in doing so revealing an augmented reality overlay for each of the restaurants within the viewport. Bright circles map to the restaurants, closer the restaurant, larger the circle. Urbanspoon is a social rating system that allows app users to rate each restaurant, the average rating then appears in the circles – most liked restaurants appear bright orange and restaurants with a low rating fade into shades of grey.

Sadly, the scope feature will only work with the latest iPhone 3GS.

Urbanspoon iPhone Demo