Introduction of the Arcona solutions for shared AR

The newest of current summer augmented reality trends is multi-user platforms. They offer a fascinating frontier expanding social networking, change the very format of gaming and communication, education and business — beyond all recognition.

It is therefore not an exaggeration to say that all the use-cases of AR would benefit a lot from offering a multi-user experience.

This trend opens up a new dimension for the whole industry, significantly raising up the interest towards its development and enhancing the capacity for its application. We have already seen this huge shift with MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games). It has blown the gaming world, hasn’t it?

AR multi-user experiences is what the best minds have been focusing on for quite a long while. Microsoft started their development in 2015 in Jaron Lanier’s laboratory. Pretty much all the IT giants recently been working on the issue, so small and ambitious independent companies been too. Among them there was the technology company Piligrim XXI, that around the same time initiated the development of its own unique platform intended for multi-user simultaneous shared AR experience.

Just this summer a long silence has finally been broken and there are some results being recently presented.

Google has introduced its Cloud Anchors. Its library brings to the users this desired opportunity to have a joint AR experience. Namely, two users can interact with the same AR content, placed at the same location.

Apple INC has announced ARKit-2 aimed at creation of single seamless augmented reality spaces and making AR experiences on iPhone and iPad even more exciting. The users can game and work together. There is even an opportunity of co-viewing — those who have an access could watch the game-play from another iOS device.

Five first applications for long-awaited Magic Leap One are also multi-user AR related. For example, Cast и Avatar Chat.

But the most massive solution based on impressive combination of several cutting-edge technologies is about to be offered by the Arcona project, behind which there is that same Pilgrim XXI.

Shared AR experience is the main goal of Arcona since its start. And if someone still wonders, that’s the best answer to the question about how it differs from ARCore or ArKit. The project aims to meet one of the most exciting, yet unsolved challenges — of creating a global AR layer, where virtual objects will be already placed identically for all the users, tied to GPS location.

So, the user won’t need to share some frames to make it work. Having the Arcona Viewer — own project’s viewer — on quite any personal gadget and being registered in the system will be enough to share this new amazing mixed reality with other users.

Moreover, to place interactive content the user won’t need any special coding skills. Simply specify the type of content, get some ready-to-use code, choose the location (which the user can actually obtain) for its positioning, moreover — remote positioning. All this is possible within a specific augmented reality layer, perfectly linked into the real world, generated automatically by the Arcona Core. Divided into plots available for purchase, it is the space where the most creative ideas and AR projects could be realized, and all the people of the world could be its viewers and users.

Every week the Arcona developers team takes a step further. Here’s the first shared AR multi-device scene video demo, framed in a smart-city case and displaying the interactive content at a random bus stop.

Here is a full demo-video.

Join the Arcona Telegram channel to stay tuned for the coming updates!