Niantic, best known for creating Pokemon Go -one of the most successful mobile games ever- is also committing $20 million to fund new companies building AR apps.
Called Lightship, the platform will let mobile apps identify whether a user’s camera is pointed at the sky or water, map the surfaces and depth of an environment in real time, or place a virtual object behind a physical one. The company is “opening the vault of tech that we’ve been using to build our products” to help others build “planet-scale AR apps,” CEO John Hanke says.
By using the new system, glasses with displays in them will be able to understand exactly where they are in the real world, which will let virtual objects stay anchored persistently to real-world locations. It’s a critical component needed to make AR glasses, such as the kind that Niantic is building with Qualcomm, useful.