15 Sep 2023
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Mike Boland
AWE Talks: AR Everywhere, All at Once
Augmented Reality
Welcome back to AWE Talks, our series that revisits the most engaging content from AWE’s catalog of conference sessions. Now that AWE Asia 2023 has concluded, we have a fresh batch of sessions to dive into.
This week, we spotlight Niantic's evolutionary path from hit AR game to bonafide AR platform. What are the biggest lessons and success factors in that evolution? Niantic's Brian McClendon breaks it down.
See the summarized takeaways below, along with the full session video. Stay tuned for more video highlights each week and check out the full library on awe.live and AWE’s YouTube Channel.
Speakers
Brian McClendon, Niantic, Senior VP of Engineering
– Niantic is best known for its hit game, Pokémon Go, but its true potential is as a platform
– It has the game architecture of PGO as a launchpad for a powerful geo-local AR toolset.
– This includes expanding tools that AR developers use to build immersive experiences.
– These experiences can be built around both visual AR and location AR.
– The former is all about interactive graphical overlays on the physical world.
– The latter is all about experiences that are triggered based on location relevance.
– Together, they're a powerful combination to create immersive and engaging AR.
– This all comes together in a series of tools that let developers infuse their own creativity.
– Lightship VPS for example empowers precise AR experiences at real-world locations.
– This builds on Niantic's spatial maps that enable geometric and semantic understanding
– With that capability, developers can build AR experiences that interact with environments.
– Lightship ARDK meanwhile hands these capabilities over to developers in a development kit.
– Niantic Maps SDK lets developers incorporate map interfaces into apps & games.
– Skatrix used this to infuse more geolocal capabilities into its interactive skateboarding app.
– Niantic's 8th Wall also factors in by making all the above web-enabled for easier activation.
– It also has brought generative AI into the picture to create serendipitous AI experiences.
– This brings the creative capacity of generative AI to 3D and AR use cases.
– For example, users will be able to summon AR graphics on the fly through text prompts.
– This will be one of the most promising areas of AR, as it continues to converge with AI.
For more color from McClendon, see the full session below...
