Say hello to ARCore

Recently I wrote about the possible impact of ARKit on the augmented reality market. We didn’thave to wait long for the first effects, the ARCore.

What is ARCore ?

ARCore is a platform for building augmented reality applications on Android. That sounds like a very good slogan, so let us try a bit simpler.
ARCore is nothing more than a set of tools that handles the most complex operation for the programmer, it brings AR capabilities to a wide audience.
ARCore does not need any special equipment, it uses standard camera in your phone to bring AR to life. It focuses on three main elements:

1.       Motion tracking – phone can understand and track its position relative to the world

2.       Environment understanding – phone can detect the size and location of horizontal surfaces

3.       Light estimation – phone can estimate the environment current lightning conditions

All this combined, gives us a lot of new possibilities on Android phones.

Limitation

On current stage it is hard to talk about limitation. For sure the biggest problem is the small number of supported devices. At the moment of writing this article, only three phones are officially supported: Pixel, Pixel XL and Samsung Galaxy S8. Why S8+ or Note 8 are not supported ? Only Google knows. The amount of devices should increase with time as Google is talking with other producers. We will see.

In terms of software limitation as I wrote it is hard to say. Currently it is even hard to find any interesting NEW project based on ARCore beside those officially introduced along with the information about ARCore. For sure possibilities are big, but how big, where do they end, those are the big questions. Again, we need to wait to get the answer on that.

What next ?

What can we do ? We need to wait and observe. I`m guessing that in short time we will see a lot of interesting tests done by individual programmers and companies. Those ideas, concepts, prototypes will show us how far we can go with the current version, what we can build with ARCore, will it be a good and true answer to Apple ARKit. I hope so. At the moment we have those two players on the field but we can’t forget about Facebook and their plans to invest 3 billion dollars in the AR platform. And of course we have Microsoft with the HoloLens. For sure thanks to Google and Apple, augmented reality is getting wider audience, people see that this technology carries huge possibilities. This can bring the demand and every time when there is a demand someone need to satisfy it. For sure we are standing in front of huge milestone for the augmented reality.

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Is Apple the game changer for Augmented Reality ?

Some time ago I wrote an article about how augmented reality needs Apple. Not for revolution ideas, not for revolution projects but just for the brand. For many years Apple is an icon of innovation, almost every one of their ideas is a bestseller. Now we have the ARKit. What now ?

Is this what we wanted ?

When I was writing my previous article I was sure that answer on this question will be very easy, but now…I’m not so sure anymore.

Yes, because it brings augmented reality to wider audience. Yes, because it presents possibilities which are brought by AR to our every day life. ARKit allows to materialize a lot of different and exciting concepts. This is fantastic ! No doubt about it. This is also a great boost for other producers. We are in the middle of technological war between manufacturers, if someone is entering market with a new idea, others will try to catch up. Just today I saw an article about possibility of a special version of the Samsung Note 8 with Project Tango. That is what I wanted, the race for augmented reality mounted into the smartphone. Just for that I must say “THANK YOU APPLE !”.

Is there a “no” ? Unfortunately yes. I’ve understood it during my research. It is not about technology itself. It is rather more about content that it is providing. Recently we saw similar situation with Windows mobile platform. The operating system was cool, it was something new and fresh BUT it didn’t provide enough content so it was disqualified for many. ARKit itself is great, it gives the developers a lot of new possibilities but we still do not have enough content. Of course you can say “give them some more time” but I think it is not the only factor. We still have problems with finding useful use cases for augmented reality.

How to sum this up ?

1.       Apple done a fantastic work for spreading augmented reality to consumers

2.       It is an interesting tool that gives great possibilities for experiments

3.       We need to find usage for AR in our lives. Without that it will be just a gadget for small group of geeks

I’m looking forward for new projects, I want to observe what this will bring for us, AR fans.

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