A Peek Inside the Niantic Real World AR Platform
nianticlabs.com
nianticlabs.com
The only issue is they always seem to be a step ahead of themselves, in terms of their ideas being just a little too far ahead of the technology.
It will be interesting to see how truly real-world AR shapes the world when it becomes widespread. I'm sure that some day anthropologists will look back on this era with fascination, at how both society and individual human development/behaviour were shaped by technology, in terms of things like the way that access to information and exposure to 'realities' not restricted to the real laws of physics shape development.
>If you think beyond video, Pokémon's AR was a home run.
>My kids know where Pokémon are most likely to live. They know where the gyms are. Their reality has definitely been augmented.
I seem to recall that there are ongoing jokes regarding existing AR games that one basically have to bring a generator (aka car) to keep up with the battery drain of the game.
We should start seeing more experiences designed specifically for low power renderability soon.
As people start to realize there is more to seeing than just photography, we will enter an era of discovering more sparing uses of computation.
Look to painting for a possible progression. Realism/classicism was just an early maximum. Impressionism followed. And then many other movements. Contemporary painters can do much more with much less.
It's like playing a shooter game in the real world, but having to have the device pointing in the right direction in order to see what's actually there. Like using a torch in pitch blackness (Doom 3). This is where a Google Glass / VR-style headgear kind of interface would be perfect.
But since this is all just in "tech demo" stage, I'm probably being too critical. It is "cool".
Tertiary worry: AR advertising.
- participants will predominantly look around in 360 degrees
- participants will be manipulating the objects they’re seeing projected in 3D
- participants will have prolonged engagements with virtual objects
- all people present in the room will also be interacting with the same virtual objects
If these are all true then your analysis is correct: headsets are the only way.
If all of these presumptions are at least somewhat false then handheld “opera glasses”-style AR experiences will be very popular.
Personally, I think even people who have headsets and spend a lot of time in VR will also use handheld displays, for transient use and when others are present.
From cack-handed (inept; clumsy)?
You can't just come out with glasses because there is too much you don't know about how multi-user and persistent content AR interface and communications work from a standing start.
And yes, I think Niantic are more of a technology / platform company than they are a game developer, and I think that's the level of their involvement in the Wizards Unite game.
Google "just came out with glasses", but that didn't go very well, probably for the reasons you gave. Google Glass time may be upon us again soon, however, given these tech demos.
Hopefully they've hired better management with boatloads of cash they've made with Pokemon Go.
Yet I am not sure I would call that bad management, in that they kept the game running, core players are still there in decent numbers while casual players seem to be coming back in waves.
They can surely do better and the game is riddled with bugs, but no one is operating at that scale without significant issues, and they managed to not ruin the game while making impacting changes to the whole system for two years now.
I have my frustration with the games, but I genuinely think they made a very decent job.
- https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16019404/pokemon-go-fest-...
- https://www.destructoid.com/niantic-is-handling-pokemon-go-p...
The people who play Pokémon Go nowadays, they do it for the novelty of being Pokémon, not because it is a good game. Also, Pokémon Go is popular the same way Flappy Bird was popular: it's an effortless game to handle and it's very convenient to play when you already spend a lot of time on the phone.
Niantic managed to turn a multi-billion dollar game into a multi-million dollar one.
Whatever beef you might have Niantic or the players of Pokemon Go, the numbers suggest that the game still has some stick, beyond novelty.
[0] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-06-27-pokemon-go-pla...
The first 3~4 months I remember seeing a lot of youngish and very active people, the heavy players being those travelling all day around the city to complete their dex.
Now I end up a lot more with elder people who manage to play during their jobs, do a lot less “grinding” but do it more efficiently and can pop real money here and there when it matters.
I am not surprise by the number of players rising again while there is no huge 30~40 people croud rushing everywhere: we don’t need to rush anymore, and the main events can easily be planned 30~15 min in advance.
If you are interested in huge crowds, public parks during community days might be the remaining attraction.
They have, on the other hand, figured out how to run a live game with Pokemon Go, which is encouraging.
However, I don't think they have the necessary skills to operate as a platform for other game/app makers.
It was obvious that the popularity was going explode.
A lot of startups work this way. They have an ambition to do something but really no chance of doing it. But if they can attract enough attention and raise enough money they might actually be able to attempt it for real.
Crowd funding overtly works like this, but it's really common in regular companies as well. If you can show there's a chance, maybe you can raise enough money to actually do it.
If you think of AR as video overlays on reality, for sure.
If you think beyond video, Pokémon's AR was a home run. My kids know where Pokémon are most likely to live. They know where the gyms are. Their reality has definitely been augmented.
On the other hand AR, as in augmented world map, is the core of the game and is brilliant.
that said, it's almost time for me to do another 1km walk to try to eek out 400m of "egg distance" in pokemon go.
Whenever they get the form factor right for AR, I think we'll get to see some really interesting apps
I thought Pokemon Go got dull rather quickly (played upto level 35, I liked Ingress a lot more) and I still can't understand why they didn't opt for round based battles. I've recently been playing Jurassic World Alive very casually and like the overall design more. Each "catch" is sort of meaningfull and the DNA-extraction sequence is more fun than catching a pokemon. On top of that the battle system is cooler and rewards good play to a certain degree.
Before playing Pokemon Go I thought of AR in terms of overlaying 3D models over a camera feed (which is the feature I turned off in Pokemon Go). It certainly gave me a different perspective as I thought of some other use cases for geo-location overlay.