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Google Unveils ARCore, Its Answer To Apple's ARKit (fastcompany.com)
Google has taken the wraps off its answer to Apple's ARKit -- a new augmented reality development platform called "ARCore." In a blog post, the company said it's releasing a "preview" software development kit for ARCore to Android developers today. From a report: Google released its Tango AR platform in 2014, but AR experiences built on that platform could run only on a few phones sporting advanced sensors and cameras. With ARCore, Google says, developers can create AR apps and games that run on virtually any Android smartphone -- existing and forthcoming. "We've been developing the fundamental technologies that power mobile AR over the last three years with Tango, and ARCore is built on that work," says Android Engineering VP Dave Burke in today's blog post. Developers who have already developed on the Tango platform, Burke says, can use that experience to help them create on the ARCore platform. ARCore games and apps will use an Android phone's camera to determine the position and movement of the phone itself within a real-world environment. The camera will determine the location of horizontal surfaces on which to place digital objects. The camera will also measure the ambient light in a given space, so that digital objects will appear to reflect light in convincing ways.
Seriously, is that all that anyone can do today? "My version is incrementally better!"
Does it matter? They'll probably discontinue it within a year.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Augmented Reality. You turn on the phone's camera, you display what the camera's picking up, and you overlay information on top of it. ....You ever play Pokémon go? It's when they make the pikachu actually stand on the ground in front of you.
Augmented Reality
iOS 11 introduces ARKit, a new framework that allows you to easily create unparalleled augmented reality experiences for iPhone and iPad. Introducing ARKit
Today, we’re releasing a preview of a new software development kit (SDK) called ARCore. It brings augmented reality capabilities to existing and future Android phones. Developers can start experimenting with it right now. ARCore: Augmented reality at Android scale
OOOO. Look. Another extraneous feature to turn off.
Let us not fix the search in our store. Lets us not fix our apps to be less shitty. Lets add more features!!! Fucking idiots.
I really truly wish there was a way to truly damage these companies to make them stop.
Augmented Reality
From TFS:
Google has taken the wraps off its answer to Apple's ARKit -- a new augmented reality development platform called "ARCore."
Emphasis mine.
WHAT THE FUCK DOES AR STAND FOR?
couldn't be Arsed Reading? The article summary describes it as "a new augmented reality development platform" so take a wild guess...
They did explain their terms. Literally in the first line of the summary.
Yup, AR stands for augmented reality, and it's shaping up to be interesting. In the few months since ARKit was announced by Apple, developers have been putting out some really fascinating demos, some practical, some simply experimental. ARKit is due for its official release later this year with iOS 11, so these demos are giving us a notion of what sort of uses we may end up seeing for augmented reality in the real world.
For instance:
- Measuring real world objects without a tape measure
- Drawing without a pen
- Perusing menu options at a restaurant
- Becoming part of a music video
- Bringing fictional worlds to life
And these are just some of the early demos. There are demos for doing 3D sculpting, putting characters from existing video games in the real world, watching dance performances in your living room, and playing versions of everything from Pacman to Minecraft to a zombie game in the space around you. I originally thought this was all merely a gimmick, but now I'm starting to think that this technology will render a lot of single-use items we have in the real world obsolete, in much the same way that smartphones turned GPS devices, cell phones, and MP3 players into simple apps on our pocket computers.
a real life ad blocker would be awesome. As far as I'm concerned, advertisements are information pollution.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Oops, I meant to link to this measuring tape video, since I think it actually shows off the technology even better.
A few other videos I forgot to link before:
- Finding friends in a crowd using waypoints
- Trying out makeup live on yourself
- More portals to other worlds
- Laying out furniture (I believe IKEA has said they plan to use ARKit to allow people to virtually place IKEA's furniture in their homes so they can get a sense for how it'd look and feel)
For instance:
- Measuring real world objects without a tape measure [youtube.com]
But these are real-world objects. The only reason you'd want to measure them is to make a real-world modification, correct? So your digital measurements would need to be transferred to someone to make real-world changes. Unless you were making AR changes.... Yeah, not seeing it.
- Drawing without a pen [youtube.com]
Using your finger to draw. Helpful as long as you have a way for others to see your output. Very limited function unless you wanted a VR whiteboard which is, let's face it, lame.
- Perusing menu options at a restaurant [youtube.com]
Yeah, because lots of restaurants will hire coders to create interactive menus. It's really, really cheap to do and you'll get ROI super-fast!
No,
- Becoming part of a music video [youtube.com]
Wait. They still make music videos?
- Bringing fictional worlds to life [youtube.com]
Bingo! Porn. Where do I invest?
From TFA:
To start with, Burke says, ARCore will run on Google’s Pixel phones, and Samsung’s S8 running 7.0 Nougat and above. It’ll run on more phones, from more OEMs, in time.
"In time" is a handy phrase that can mean whatever they want it to mean. For instance, it could mean "once everyone with a current Android phone has replace it with a new one".
#DeleteChrome
Does google really have no shame if they immediately rush to copy Apple within weeks of their own announcement and release? They even changed the project name to further mimic it.
The minute Samsung/LG/etc comes out with their own version, fragmentation will render this library useless.
Fuck AR.
Except if it can give me a virtual 3D anime wifu, then get out of my fucking way - nobody will stop me from getting AR.
#DeleteFacebook
How about virtual wallpaper? I'd like the inside of my home office to look like I'm actually in a café in Paris while I code. Sort of a first step toward a holodeck, I guess.
Second step? Beautiful women in swimsuits sitting in the café.
Third step? Don't bother. We'll keep ourselves busy with step two.
#DeleteFacebook
Regarding the measuring tape, don't you ever hang pictures? Move furniture around a room? Want to calculate how much paint you'll need for your walls or how many tiles you'll need for your floor? My tape measures (yes, plural) are out in my garage, so they're rarely on hand when I want them for some quick work. This sort of thing would let me do small jobs (e.g. centering my media console under my TV) easily without having to go grab an extra tool.
Even better, if it can take a snapshot of the space as it's measuring, I could then immediately head out to Home Depot, Lowe's, or wherever else without having to waste time transcribing those measurements onto a notepad. Instead, I could just pull them up on my phone. Even better, I wouldn't have to deal with the situation where I forgot to transcribe an important nook or cranny that I didn't think would matter, since I'd have them all in that snapshot of the space on my phone. Oh, and if I decide I want to replace all of my lightbulbs in the room while I'm out at the store? I'd already have a snapshot with each of them visible, so I wouldn't need to remember how many to grab.
Hell, my wife already spent dozens of hours in the Sherwin Williams paint app, testing out colors in our dining room, kitchen, bedroom, and master bathroom to see what they'd each look like in a variety of colors so that we could narrow down our selections before heading out to pick up swatches and samples. If she could do draw the boundaries for surfaces like the tape measuring app did, then view the space three-dimensionally with more accurate lighting reflected in the virtual image (since lighting significantly impacts the appearance of the final color, and ARKit takes lighting into account when rendering objects in the real world), she'd do so in a heartbeat. That'd be a killer app for her.
Yeah, because lots of restaurants will hire coders to create interactive menus. It's really, really cheap to do and you'll get ROI super-fast!
No,
Few restaurants currently pay for fully custom, one-off apps. This won't change that in the least, yet you'll still see features like this one roll out. "How can this be?", I hear you ask.
The reason they'll be able to utilize this feature is because what they're currently doing is paying other companies for POS systems or white labeled apps that they customize with their branding. In much the same way that Squarespace and Wix provide affordable, white labeled sites to thousands of companies, there are developers doing the same thing in this space. And just as the sites guide companies through the steps necessary for customizing things (e.g. adding images, changing text, etc.), the POS systems and white label apps do the same. They'll simply add AR functionality as a feature that's available to the restaurants interested in it. Restaurants that want it will be guided through the steps to take the scans, likely using their phones to do so in much the same way that they take pictures of menu items already. Simple as that, and, just as they currently do, the developers will keep the cost affordable by selling the same feature to thousands of restaurants.
We don't have to wait for MLKit to crunch through the last 4 decades of industry activity to notice the following:
1. Industry comes up with an idea in a nebulous, fractured manner
2. Apple sees its potential, implements it better
3. Industry copies Apple's implementation, everyone benefits
4. Apple gets accused of unoriginality when it reimplements the ideas that flowed out of the previous disruption
Surely we've seen #1-3 enough by now to realise that #4 is a waste of hate?
annnndddd they will use is mostly to show us more ads...
Hang pictures? Move furniture around? Calculate paint? You want me to spend how much to do this? I suppose if you have money to burn and no experience doing basic house work this might be a bonus, but it sounds like a gimmick to me.
Menus? High-end restaurants don't bother with apps and low-end joints don't care. Hell, have you looked up most places? They don't even have decent web sites let alone apps. I know two restaurant owners and neither would bother with any tech that didn't promise ROI in one month. One of these joints is regional.
Listen, I write science fiction and take care of five buildings full of PCs, servers, switches and miscellaneous cruft and crud associated with computers. No one wants AR to become a reality more than me. It would be the answer to so many problems I face day to day and the idea of AR in every day life is a dream come true.
Not. Google is a parrot or an ape. The day they have an original idea is the day . . . ha, ha, ha! Who am I kidding? They'll never have an original idea.
there always is one with these guys...
AR will be interesting the day it's used with something like Google glasses, Hololens or some type of contact lenses and you don't have to look at a screen. Or at most a very headset with cameras.
So the next big advertising push will build on ARcodes, and use ARcodes to jumpstart AR local experiences with phones.