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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.
From TFS:
Google has taken the wraps off its answer to Apple's ARKit -- a new augmented reality development platform called "ARCore."
Emphasis mine.
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.
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)