For the past few years, Google has pushed a particular technology for implementing augmented reality in phones. Known first as Project Tango and now as Tango, Google’s AR platform used to have specific requirements for its cameras that required specialized hardware. This reliance on custom sensors doomed Tango in the wider market, and only a handful of devices have supported the capability to date.
Now, Google wants to take Tango out of the lab and deploy augmented reality capabilities to a much wider segment of Android users. Doing that means pushing AR into devices that already exist, as opposed to hoping customers and manufacturers will buy specialized phones with limited hardware specs. Google’s new ARCore SDK is available as a preview starting today, on devices like the Google Pixel and Galaxy S8, and it’s supported on both Nougat (Android 7) as well as Android Oreo (Android 8).
Google has released a video demonstrating what ARCore can do, along with artist impressions of how the effect works in real life:
Google wants to push ARCore support to 100 million devices, such as those from Samsung, Huawei, LG, Asus, and “others.” ARCore works with OpenGL, Unity, and Unreal. Its features include:
Motion tracking: Sensor data from the camera and the IMU (inertial measurement unit) inside the phone are combined to determine the phone’s location in relevant space. Virtual objects stay where they were placed, rather than rotating or moving with the phone when it tracks around the room.
Environmental understanding: ARCore can detect horizontal surfaces.
Light Estimation: ARCore can parse available light levels, and allows developers to light their work in a way that mimics one’s surroundings. Presumably this means that in a use-case like Minecraft, sharply slanted light from a nearby artificial source would be treated like the world’s “sun.” This example is strictly hypothetical, Minecraft being Microsoft’s property.
It’ll be interesting to see if pushing AR to a wider audience results in increased developer uptake. So far, both AR and VR have been decidedly niche products. Customized hardware for both has only reached a relative handful of people, while simpler devices (Google Cardboard, for example) have issues of their own. Pokemon Go was a brief flash in the pan and probably did more to make people aware of AR than any previous game or product, but the battery constraints of smartphones turned it into a significant power drain. That problem, at least, is unlikely to go away any time soon.
ARCore enables specific types of augmented reality, and developers aren’t required to use it. But ARCore is clearly meant to put Google on parity with Apple and its own ARKit. I’m split on the entire concept. I’ve yet to see an AR use case that justifies turning my phone into a molten slab of plastic (AR apps being power hungry). HoloLens, while nifty, isn’t really a consumer-facing product. It’s not clear to me that AR will be more successful than 3D was long-term, and the 3D push had huge industry titans behind it and studios full of content that couldn’t wait to sell people TV shows and movies “in 3D.”
That said, AR and VR are far more capable than 3D, but that doesn’t mean developers will automatically create compelling content. Still, tools like this are a step towards finding out whether people want that content or not. For now, developers can experiment with the SDK, comment on GitHub, and demo their work with the #ARCore hashtag.