Niantic, a developer of augmented reality experiences, including games like the well-known Pokémon GO, has just announced the Launch of Lightship VPS for Web, its new browser-based technology that makes augmented reality experiences more accurate and realistic through web browsers on mobile devicesavoiding the need to use native mobile applications.
For this, it will not only be able to know the location of the users with a high level of precision, but also, they will obtain virtual elements located precisely in the real environment, to the point that the virtual elements will be able to interact with the elements. existing physical elements, even reaching the occlusion of elements.
Behind this technology is its Visual Positioning System (VPS), which makes it possible to fix virtual elements of augmented reality very specifically to places to offer relevant information and other interactive experiences.
It will be able, among other things, to recognize general places such as parks and walks, and even much more specific places, such as fountains, statues, among other more specific elements, to be able to integrate related virtual elements depending on the experience that you want to offer.
As defined by Niantic:
This first-of-its-kind browser-based technology connects the real world with the digital by pinning WebAR content to locations and allowing virtual objects to interact with the space in which they are located. This makes the augmented reality experience feel more personal, more meaningful, and more real, and gives users new reasons to explore the world around them.
They further add that:
Lightship VPS for Web also gives WebAR developers, for the first time, access to the 3D mesh of a location for use in an augmented reality scene. This game-changing capability allows developers to create WebAR experiences that make use of occlusion and physics and adds a higher level of interactivity between virtual objects and the physical world.
This new technology It will mark an important milestone both for the Internet in general and for the Augmented Reality segment in particular, by unlocking better interactive augmented reality experiences by creators, developers and brands, being able to initially add specific locations to a map or choose from the more than 100,000 locations available initially integrated.
This new technology is currently available to developers present on the 8th Wall platformwhere they have the necessary tools to create interactive augmented reality experiences.
Niantic lays out some usage examples in their official announcement to showcase some of the many possibilities of what can be done with their new technology, but to better understand the possibilities, live demos can also be found on the 8th Wall Discovery Hub.
More information: Niantic
