lifecache 2022 — Collaborating With the Leaders in AR: Our Journey with Niantic & Magic Leap
Coming into this year, our plans were set. After time developing and researching in the shadows of a budding industry (Augmented Reality), we felt we were ready to bring our knowledge, our vision and our ambitions for lifecache to the forefront.
In this, we set an aim to integrate with the most ambitious companies building at the cutting edge of AR technology. As an end-to-end AR solution, our goal was to further iterate our interconnected platform that streamlines a location-based AR experience from mobile AR (smartphones) to headset wearable AR allowing people to explore the world in a new immersive way.
Understanding the ubiquitous access of mobile AR through the smartphones that just about everyone owns, we circled Niantic as the company who would help us push the boundaries on creating a refined and scalable mobile AR experience. Niantic is the famed company behind the creation of the world famous Pokémon Go mobile game and is one of AR’s greatest successes. Where Pokémon Go excels is delivering an engaging real-world AR experience where people hunt down digital Pokémon located in their real-world physical surroundings. Powering the Pokémon Go experience is Niantic’s Lightship ARDK which is the famed software treasure chest housing the world’s most refined mobile AR features.
Niantic opened their Lightship ARDK toolkit in late 2021, and from our Beta launch in 2021, we knew in order to reach our full potential, we would need to integrate Niantic’s Lightship ARDK into lifecache to truly deliver on a refined and interactive location-based AR experience.
It was at the eMerge conference in April of this year, when Chris Daniels (an amazing Miami startup connector) introduced us to the Niantic rep visiting for the conference in search of companies that fit Niantic’s overall thesis and strategy for their ARDK. In our meeting with the Niantic rep, it was apparent that this was a match made in heaven with two companies with compatible vision for the potential of mobile AR.
As conversations progressed we earned an official agreement as a Niantic Managed Partner company. Through many meetings of the minds, weekly syncs, build collaborations and close consultation on our lifecache mobile experience, we have grown close to Niantic team and have fostered a true relationship with one of AR’s premier companies.
As we look forward into 2023 and our upcoming launch, we are excited to show the world just how incredible journeying through cities can be through a platform built with the finest technology set AR has to offer.
“At Niantic, we believe that location-based AR technology has the potential to revolutionize the travel and tourism experience. lifecache’s development efforts atop Niantic’s Lightship AR platform are extremely promising, and point the way toward a potentially disruptive set of solutions for travelers and the hospitality brands catering to them. Khambrel and Sean are far-seeing entrepreneurs, and we on Niantic’s Lightship team look forward to a continued technical collaboration exploring this exciting space.”
Dan Morris | Director of Developer Relations at Niantic
In October, our much anticipated visit to the Magic Leap HQ occurred and the experience surpassed expectations!
Over the years we’ve kept a close eye on Magic Leap from afar. I personally was drawn to Magic Leap in 2015 doing research on the XR industry. I was fascinated by this company that preached of this unique technology called AR that would one day change life as we know it by combining our digital imagination with our physical reality.
My mind was blown by the demos that they strategically put out to the world showcasing the work they were doing. I remember Sean and I pinging each other daily on the latest news on Magic Leap and our theories on what’s to come from them. Embarking on our own startup at the time (lifecache), we circled this mystic company called Magic Leap in our notebooks as a company we would one day partner with to help shape our vision.
As we studied the industry and iterated our understanding of lifecache, it was a pivotal moment when we came to realize the enormous value of building one of AR’s first end-to-end location-based software solutions which streamlined a synchronized experience from the mobile experience (smartphone), to our web portal, and ultimately into the headset wearable future.
While bullish on mobile AR’s ubiquitous potential to drive our location-based AR experience, we also believed that wearable AR was the next mass medium — and that’s where Magic Leap came into play.
In 2021, our relentless efforts to make our presence felt by Magic Leap finally paid off as we were offered the opportunity to pitch them on our platform and it’s compatibility with their headset device. That pitch opened the door for our current relationship with Magic Leap as an official commercial partner, and like kids on Christmas, we were overjoyed by the vast opportunities to create alongside Magic Leap.
Fast forward 2022 — working closely with the development team at Magic Leap, we’re regarded as a top partner of the company, and have had the incredible opportunity to meet with key personnel at Magic Leap to advance our ambitions for our lifecache headset experience.
While further details remain confidential for now, the overall message is that we’re excited to continue pushing the boundaries of wearable AR technology and expand into the many commercial opportunities available through our partnership with Magic Leap.
While we continue our development breakthroughs, it’s cool to be able to do it alongside the leading wearable AR company in the world.
Overall, many noteworthy occurrences happened in 2022, and as a company whose primary focus currently is building an engaging and scalable platform in an emerging tech space, we set out two very distinct goals coming into the year which was the strategic alignment with the tops in our industry. Our relationships with both Niantic and Magic Leap represent success and we are excited to leverage the resources they provide to propel our launch efforts in 2023.
“Some might call it the mud, but we always viewed it as rich soil.” — lifecache Team
Stay the course.
