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Google Unveils ARCore, Its Answer To Apple's ARKit (fastcompany.com)

Posted by msmash on from the competition-heating-up dept.

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.

40 comments

  1. AR? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    What - some sort of piracy application? That should be popular!

    Seriously though - explain your terms. AR I'd surmise, refers to augmented reality?

    1. Re:AR? by berj · · Score: 3, Informative

      They did explain their terms. Literally in the first line of the summary.

    2. Re:AR? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:AR? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Informative

      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)

    4. Re:AR? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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?

    5. Re:AR? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      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
    6. Re:AR? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      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.

    7. Re:AR? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

  2. Me too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously, is that all that anyone can do today? "My version is incrementally better!"

    1. Re:Me too! by MouseR · · Score: 1

      Without some level of feature parity, Google couldn't convince that developing for their platform would be profitable for developers to target both devices.

      And before we hear the "there's more Android phones out there", you just need to look at the version of these phones to know that it's inconsequential. Enterprise and high-paying users are the target. Not those stuck in 4 year old systems.

    2. Re:Me too! by fred6666 · · Score: 1

      Enterprise and high-paying users are the target.

      Wrong. Users are the target. The most popular applications are free and are made by companies such as Google and Facebook.

      You have to realize there isn't a single "app market" but there are various markets for different needs. Those wanting a GPS navigation software won't cross-shop with $2 games.

      $2 game developers will most likely target the platform with the most idiots buying their $2 crappy games, I agree. But that won't drive away other developers making useful stuff from Android. They'll remain because yes, Android has more users and the difference is widening every year.

    3. Re:Me too! by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      Popular doesn't necessarily mean profitable. It certainly can, but the popular apps you're talking about are outliers, not the norm.

      In contrast, my company routinely makes apps for engineering clients who are willing to shell out seven figures for something that meets their needs. The app may only ever be distributed privately, used by a few dozen people, and never make us a dime on an app sale to any given individual, but it'll make those few dozen employees so productive that it'll give their company the competitive edge they need to make the app well worth the purchase price to that company.

      Then back on our end, even as a mid-sized shop with just a few dozen employees, we can put out a half dozen apps like that year after year without being subject to the changing whims of consumers, playing the App Store lottery, or having to work on things that frankly don't interest us. We get to tackle tough problems that we enjoy working on, deal with (mostly) sane clients who work in adjacent fields of industry, and have guarantees in place that if we meet milestones we'll be paid specific amounts.

      We're hardly alone. There are tens of thousands of other businesses profitably and quietly doing B2B work that never appears publicly in the App Store or Play Store, simply because there's loads of money in B2B, tremendous demand, and a lot more stability than you'll ever find in the consumer market.

      So, yes, enterprise is definitely a target for this sort of tech. I could probably think of a half-dozen applications for AR in the apps we're building for our clients right now, since we're already doing a lot of related work in terms of image recognition, mapping virtual objects into the real world, and autonomous navigation, all of which could be enhanced with stuff like ARKit.

    4. Re: Me too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow spoken like a true iSnob.

  3. ARCore and ARKit by nitehawk214 · · Score: -1

    Oh yeah, ARCore and ARKit, everyone knows this. Very good info... yes...

    WHAT THE FUCK DOES AR STAND FOR?

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    1. Re:ARCore and ARKit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    2. Re:ARCore and ARKit by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

      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

    3. Re:ARCore and ARKit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Augmented Reality

    4. Re:ARCore and ARKit by berj · · Score: 4, Informative

      From TFS:

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

      Emphasis mine.

    5. Re:ARCore and ARKit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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...

  4. Does it matter? by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does it matter? They'll probably discontinue it within a year.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. Oh yah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  6. AR is what I want because... by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  7. "Virtually any Android smartphone"... in time by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:"Virtually any Android smartphone"... in time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "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".

      Technically, it means they have from now until the Heat Death of the Universe.

      Should have 50% market penetration of Oreo by then.

  8. Shameless imitation? by mr100percent · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:Shameless imitation? by Hadlock · · Score: 1

      They release Tango a while back, but only two phones support it due to needing two cameras and a specific distance sensor; this version is mostly the same but only needs a single camera (which most phones, including their flagship Pixel and the S8 have but one) and a more basic laser rangefinder. This opens up the same technology they already paid to have developed, to a much wider set of phones; no doubt they'll want to introduce this in to the daydream ecosystem at some point which they're also heavily invested in.
       
      I don't think they copied apple, they just poured a thick coat of marketing gloss paint over top of some technology they already had and removed the hard requirement of a second camera and precise distance sensor and re-released it under a name that matches modern naming conventions for this technology.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    2. Re:Shameless imitation? by Graydyn+Young · · Score: 1

      The go-to product for AR before both of these releases was an open source project called ARToolkit... The plot thickens!

    3. Re:Shameless imitation? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      No they didn't copy apple.

      Developing a production grade slam system is a huge amount of work. Not only in raw FTEs, but you'd have a hard job getting one done in under a year regardless of the team size. Twice that of you needed to ramp up the team, because it's a very specialist job and in demand so practitioners are either mid PhD at one of the few institutions working VIO, or (if you want someone worth the experience to deliver a commercial project) already employed and well paid.

      Google have been working on this for ages already

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re: Shameless imitation? by mr100percent · · Score: 1

      Google was working on Tango for ages. That was a major undertaking. But in this case it appears they stripped out many of its features and renamed it to match Apple's in a "Us Too!" strategy.

    5. Re:Shameless imitation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good for Google. Smack down the pathetic wannabe that is apple.

  9. Can't wait for everyone else to fork/rehash by mlw4428 · · Score: 1

    The minute Samsung/LG/etc comes out with their own version, fragmentation will render this library useless.

  10. Cool idea by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    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
    1. Re: Cool idea by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Third step could be a full suit that provides sensations. Something like racing and fighting games would be neat, and there's the porn aspect.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  11. Apple leads, industry follows. News at 11 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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?

  12. ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    annnndddd they will use is mostly to show us more ads...

  13. What a surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  14. what's the evil catch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    there always is one with these guys...

  15. The R of reality is failing by jgfenix · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:The R of reality is failing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apple is hard at work copying both Google Glass and Hololens right now

  16. ARcodes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So the next big advertising push will build on ARcodes, and use ARcodes to jumpstart AR local experiences with phones.