Since the launch of Pokémon Go in 2015, players have been coordinating raids and battles in games on platforms like Reddit and Discord. This summer, its parent company Niantic launched Campfire, a social app designed to help mobile augmented reality (AR) gamers connect.
Niantic's games inspire users to use their technology to go outside and meet other people — which is why it calls its AR development a "metaverse of the real world." Campfire wants to make it all easier (or an alternative to a long-running Pokémon Go Discord server), and this part of the technology is the equivalent of a real-world version of the "homepage." It follows in the footsteps of Snapchat, which also includes the ability to connect with people, find nearby events, join communities, and leave messages. Users can also share their location with friends (don't share it with strangers!). ）。
Speaking at Niantic's Lightship Summit, CEO John Hank said, "There is a Niantic gaming community that has formed around the world, and there are tens of thousands of passionate explorers. These local groups already exist. We're giving them a platform to do their campaigns better and find these groups and other players for players. Basically, we're just offering tools to make it all smoother and easier for these users. "
Campfire is the next step in its mission to build a "real-world metaverse" and is part of a new line of AR products released today, including Niantic's much-hyped Lightship VPS, known as the Virtual Positioning System.
For years, Niantic has been inviting users of Pokémon Go and Ingress to scan local landmarks and even offer rewards for this crowdsourced data in the game. Short video clips of these real-world locations are then validated by the developers and then processed to become part of the AR map of the world. At the launch, Tory Smith, Head of Mapping Product at Niantic, said San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, London and Tokyo have the densest concentration of maps. By the end of this year, the Optical Spaceship VPS will be launched in more than 100 cities around the world. With the help of Niantic's recent acquisition of 8th Wall, these features will also be available in mobile web browsers.
With a Lightship VPS, if a user scans their location, the VPS can determine where they are, almost like a GPS. Sure, GPS can show you where you are and what's around you, but vPS adds another layer that shows you a user-generated experience designed to improve your authentic experience.
The Lightship VPS feature will be available to AR developers through Niantic's Lightship AR Developer Kit, which is available to developers today.
Further reading:
Niantic is building an AR map of the world, with a Snorlax every time
The company's visual positioning system will help developers build location-based AR games and experiences; a new social app is designed to help users discover AR content.
Niantic, maker of Pokémon Go, has been quietly building a 3D AR map of the world. Now, the company is preparing to share the fruits of its labor with third-party developers. Niantic announced the launch of its Lightship visual positioning system at the Developer Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday. Niantic said the VPS will allow developers to build location-based AR experiences for tens of thousands of public spaces.
Niantic also announced a new service called Campfire, adding a layer of social discovery to AR, starting with Niantic's own games. The two announcements show that Niantic wants to be more than just a game developer with just one or two popular apps (and a few failures). Instead, it aims to play a key role in the future of AR — it relies on millions of Ingress and Pokémon Go players to help build that future.
30,000 Poké Stops became AR portals
In short, Niantic's VPS is a growing map of places that have been scanned and enabled for AR. At launch, the VPS included about 30,000 such locations, mainly in public spaces in San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, New York, Tokyo and Seattle.
Over time, Niantic intends to massively increase the number of VPS-enabled locations and rely on players for its existing games to do so. For about a year, the company has asked players at Ingress and Pokémon Go to record videos of selected PokéStops and Ingress Portals.
Sheil Brown, senior director of product management for the company's augmented reality and geodata platform, said: "We did a lot of work to make sure anyone could scan. This does not require lidar. "
Pokémon Go players aren't just asked to scan individual locations — they also help companies determine which locations to prioritize. Bronder said: "We can see where the most popular locations are. We have very good heat map display".
Once a location is captured by multiple players, Niantic uses video and additional sensor data to create a point cloud, ultimately enabling developers to place AR objects in three-dimensional space with centimeter-level precision, as Bronder calls it. This will enable developers to not only place ar experiences in approximate locations, but also incorporate buildings, statues, and other objects into their games and add persistent AR tags to the physical world.
In addition to tapping into the collective intelligence of players, Niantic also enables developers to scan their own locations through the new Wayfarer app. Each location will be added to the VPS, with the goal of eventually ARvalanizing millions of public places. Bronder said: "We want to unlock the whole world".
Players and developers will also help Niantic maintain the accuracy of the VPS: for example, when a store goes out of business or a sculpture is being renovated, it is updated. Bronder said: "The world is constantly changing. Keeping this map up to date is almost a bigger challenge than building it."
AR discovery, starting with Pokemon
In addition to announcing the VPS, Niantic also used its Developer Summit to release a range of other news, including investments in immersive meditation service Tripp and music game startup Pixelynx. The company also plans to apply location-based AR to the web with the help of 8th Wall, a WebAR startup it acquired in March.
Niantic also released a new consumer product, which it calls Campfire, which it calls a "real-world social network." At launch, Campfire added a social discovery layer to games like Iningress and Pokémon Go, allowing players to find people nearby, spot events, share content, and more.
Niantic is adding a social layer to its games; Campfire will also be available as a standalone app
In addition to integrating directly into Niantic's existing games, Campfire will eventually be available to third-party developers using the Niantic platform. The company plans to launch a standalone Campfire app that lets users discover AR content in games and experiences. Bronder said: "This is what we can come and find out... In the place of content around [us]."
In a way, it's a comeback to Niantic. Long before the company was incubated as a subsidiary of Google, it launched an app called "Wild Travel, which aims to discover the world around you. Field Trip is not a game, but a position-aware "lonely planet" that alerts you whenever someone passes by a sculpture or a house with an interesting background.
Campfire has the potential to be the same thing, simply connecting AR content to real-world locations, effectively turning what used to be an interactive version of a 2D map into a 3D discovery experience — something that will be even more important when people start wearing AR glasses in public.
Bronder said: "You could say it's like adding an extra dimension to Field Trip."