I'd love to see a breakdown of ARKit vs something like Vuforia. Here's a video with the equivalent functionality to the WWDC demo -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvE_7filGsY
Ignoring all that other stuff, it's officially sanctioned and supported, part of the platform, requires no external libs, has Cocoa level documentation, and tons of developers will be using it very soon.
I would stay as far away from Apple as possible when it comes to gamedev tools.
[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/33260910 [2]: http://geeky.gent/reasons-to-not-use-spritekit-for-game/ [3]: http://kotaku.com/5955318/apples-game-center-seems-to-be-mal...
Sadly this also means Apple will only update it in subsequent versions of the OS. This is a big deal when choosing a target platform, e.g. ARKit 11 vs ARKit 12.
For example when iOS 12 comes out your target audience will be split, some with ARKit 11 and some with 12. You'll have to decide if you want the new features in 12 or ability to run on devices still using iOS 11.
Compare with other game platforms, which insulate you from underlying tech changes. For example a Unity app can be updated and use the latest Unity features, even on an old iOS.
[FWIW Apple could update ARKit independently of iOS, but that's not been their pattern]
It makes for a compelling proof of concept. Having a lot of individual things interacting with the environment independently is most of what you need, technically, for the high-quality overlays you're talking about. If you can do the former you can do the latter, it's just a sexier way of showing off the capabilities.
Oh, I get it, then it's not AR. Well, maybe AR is not such a good fit in this case to begin with.
This is still new and doesn't quite make full use, but there are many reason why you'd want to see the environment. For one, it gives a sense of scale. For example if you put a real life size dinosaur, seeing the surrounding allows you to understand the scale better. Next up, the AR application could very well interact with the world too, which brings new possibilities.
These are pretty new technology and no one knows the best way to use it yet. Maybe in the future we'll start putting a sky in the background. Maybe we'll find better ways to use AR. Both AR and VR are still in their infancy.
Prior to this, as a developer, you might think AR is limited to what Pokemon GO and the first example (like a cup of coffee on a table) show. After seeing this, if you were thinking of doing anything simpler than what they were showing, you'd likely see it as much more feasible than you previously did and perhaps look into including some of those features.
And this was at WWDC (their developer conference), so it certainly applies to a developer audience.
Doing AR from scratch is a huge endeavour but this should make it simple enough so that we start seeing more applications using it for more useful stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yphh1Ue3D6g
I realize on Google I/O 17 demoed Tango using Asus ZenFone with low frame rate is still not impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey47-i33bLI
I thought Samsung S8 should have AR on a premium phones.
Compare to 60-120fps on iOS 11, yup, Apple Metal 2 could boost by reduce latency from 16.6ms to 8.xms and even more with direct display, it matched PlayStation VR refresh rate, real world tracking is what we need. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yphh1Ue3D6g
Or is there some consumer product not listed on their page?
Also, Apple has almost never been the first to do anything. Tim Cook even admitted this yesterday. What Apple brings to the table is an actual polished solution. Which having used Hololens extensively it absolutely is not.
Yes, badly and expensive. And didn't follow up on it properly.
Meanwhile; https://www.metavision.com/
Unfortunately, the old-fashioned keyboards also worked when they weren't hard up against the screen - thank god we have these new 'smart' keyboards that have to lie flush against the screen to work.
ugh
I know that YouTube on Chrome uses VP9, which is not a web standard - or at least not more of a web standard than HTTP Live Streaming (which is what Apple uses for its keynote).
As for why there isn't a web standard video encoding and container, all the major browser vendors except one have announced support for VP9 and its successor and Webm.
The double standard here is really quite breathtaking. Apple doesn't implement a feature: Apple's fault. Google doesn't implement a feature: Apple's fault too.
I don't see the double standard. All but one browser on GP's platform support the royalty free option. Only Safari on his platform supports the encumbered option, and he doesn't want to be forced to use it. On my own preferred platform, no browsers support HLS.
Since the votes on this thread won't let me reply:
@pjmlp: I choose to use a platform where developer experience is the primary goal because developing software is both my vocation and avocation and why I am reading "Hacker News." If I wanted a walled garden media consumption toy, I would get a LeapPad. Look, we can snark all day, but that doesn't change the conclusion that tommoor was right about web standards.
@millstone: There are no royalty-required formats that are web standards for a reason: to make the web free and open to all. That is why it is not a red herring. Bringing Google into it, on the other hand, is — whether Google pays the fees has no bearing on whether the format should be a web standard. Apple chose not to implement hardware decoding for the unencumbered format. All other major consumer hardware manufacturers have.
Apple, as usual, wrote their own private format. A pretty sucky one at that. But don't get fooled, DASH is not much better, and for the few things it offers over HLS it comes with a massive implementation difficulty. There is basically no DASH compliant player around, not even the one developed by the DASH Industry Forum implements all the standard. It would be way easier for every browser vendor to support HLS than DASH.
I appreciate the free software position. It seems MPEG-DASH is indeed better suited for it, though maybe only slightly [1]. (Regardless, turns out Apple did not release anything as copyleft this year, so maybe it's better that free software purists could not have watched the video?)
The case for "encumbered" options is simple: it's what's decoded in hardware, for users who prefer their device to last the entire video.
[1] http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Online-Video-New...
Ironically fMP4 is royalty free thanks to its original developer, Apple.
Then chose platforms where the overall desktop experience is a primary goal of developers.
Any developer on this community can watch the video.
Forcing people to use macOS to view recorded sessions or events goes against that.
You can also use VLC to watch it.
However, the default experience is a little box that says "Streaming is available in Safari and the WWDC app". Now I have to go out of my way to learn that they stream via HLS, obtain the stream's URL and feed it to VLC. †
Compare this with Microsoft's and Google's videos (available through Channel9 and YouTube, respectively) that are accessible "virtually" from every operating system and device.
If your goal is to attract new developers to the platform, maybe adopting a more widespread industry standard (such as DASH, which all other browsers implement) is probably the way to go, IMO.
--
† By the way, the box also breaks the "Copy Video Location" menu item, so I have to open the inspector or install an extension to find out what the real URL is.
To me it really looks like a statement against people without macs; Apple doesn't care about them, not even in its own interest of making money. They won't speak to you as long as you don't have an iDevice, full stop.
It were IBM "mistakes" that made the PC different from all other computer eco-systems, however the current trends of commodity hardware and race to bottom prices are making PC OEMs go back to the 80-90's full integration of hardware/software culture.