Pokémon GO developer Niantic will make its Lightship platform for AR apps available to all developers on Monday. The Lightship AR Development Kit allows developers to develop their own Augmented Reality applications.
He. She floating beaconplatform contains According to Niantic Various technologies the company uses in its AR apps, such as Pokémon GO and Pikmin Bloom. AR devkit allows developers to take advantage of these technologies when developing Android and iOS apps. Coachella, Softbank, Universal Pictures and Warner Music Group, among others, will use the platform.
The devkit initially offers three of the features of Niantics AR. Among other things, it makes the toolkit real-time mapping possible. Smartphone sensors are used to create deep images of the environment. The developer Niantic can use regular cameras for this, but can also use depth sensors such as lidar sensors in some iPhones and iPads.
The platform also includes several partnerFeatures, which should allow multiplayer sessions with up to five players. In a multiplayer session, AR objects are synchronized between different participants via the p2p network stack. AR device also makes ARto understand possible. This ensures that virtual objects interact with the real world in the right way.
The Lightship Toolkit is pretty much free, although in some cases you have to pay for the associated multiplayer API. The multiplayer features are free for the first six months of use, and will remain free for apps with less than 50,000 monthly active users. Developers with more than 50,000 users will have to pay for the multiplayer features after the first six months.
Niantic continues work on Lightship, and expects to release an update in the future that will add “Visual GPS” to augmented reality glasses. The AR company will also invest $20 million in “companies working on the future of AR.” The company will hold a developer conference in May 2022 where it will share Lightship’s new future plans.
