The field of augmented reality is becoming an important part of the mobile ecology. Enabling tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices to “see” and overlay reality with meta-information. Total Immersion, an outfit who write software to enable developers to take advantage of this meta-information revolution recently announced that they’re working with Intel on integrating hardware acceleration for AR features, such as gesture recognition, with Intel chipsets.

Speaking at Reuters Global Media Summit, Total Immersion’s marketing chief Antoine Brachet, spoke to what he sees happening with AR in the future and why partnering with Intel is so important.

“What we are doing together with Intel is working on their chipset … so inside the chipset you can have some AR features, like gesture recognition that can be transferred from software to hardware,” Brachet said.

Antoine Brachet said consumer acceptance will decide when products would reach the market, but he thinks this could happen in 2-3 years.

Running on smartphones or computers, AR overlays digital information — text, graphics, games — on images of the world around us.

Earlier this year, Intel Capital led a funding round for Total Immersion that net the AR developer $5.5 million. The outfit has come out with an iPad 2 app among other augmented reality products that have whet Intel’s appetite for working the next-generation concept into their mobile devices.

From what we’ve seen augmented reality is definitely taking off. Microsoft is already working augmented reality into their devices and operating systems and there’s no dismissing the Kinect as a powerful AR peripheral. It’s been argued by some that augmented reality is the next GPS—being able to overlay information on reality will be extremely useful for anyone with a mobile device—according to the augmented reality outfit Layar.

Keep in mind that Layar also got a fistful of money from Intel Capital for augmented reality technology in November this year—to the tune of $14 million.

It’s becoming obvious that Intel sees the AR horizon igniting with the rise of an augmented reality sunrise and that they’re reading themselves and their products to support what will probably eclipse or greatly augment artificial intelligence and expert systems platforms like SIRI.

By making sure that they’re funding outfits like Layar and Total Immersion, Intel is positioning themselves to usher in the augmented reality revolution.