Four Other Augmented Reality Stories You May Have Missed Yesterday
If you remove pun-based jokes, the phrase “geek out,” and disclaimers about The Fate of the Furious, the most talked about topic during the first Keynote of Facebook’s F8 developer conference was Augmented Reality (AR). The first few months of 2017 have passed with very little fanfare thrown in the direction of AR. Today, that all changed. And, while it may represent the loudest party championing the future of AR (and Virtual Reality), Facebook’s announcements on day 1 of F8 were hardly the only voices shouting for attention.
Snap Inc.
We’re going to be reading stories about feature-sparring between Facebook and Snapchat for a good while longer. To no one’s surprise, Snap Inc. announced its own live AR feature inside of Snapchat prior the noon keynote at F8. For all the celebration around Facebook’s reveals, Snapchat’s AR enhancement to Lenses seems so much sexier, mostly because it’s available now. (Facebook presenters were quick to offer caveats about their technology not being ready just yet).
Let’s also remember that Facebook’s pride in camera-as-central-interface has been Snap’s design from day 1. Yes, Facebook is the 5 billion pound gorilla, but Snap will remain the more nimble player in social for at least a little while longer.
Warner Bros.
It seems that the next generation of 3D glasses will be devices like Microsoft’s Hololens, at least that’s how the patent obtained by Warner Brothers states it. With the patent, the company appears to be creating a future where seeing a movie is actually an individualized experience. For instance, it may be possible for theater goers to see a film from different angles. This experience would likely respond to where a viewer is located within the theater, which begs the question, will movies become interactive events (and if so, what happens to all those dine-in theaters with reserved seating, gasp)?
According to Next Reality News, it would also be within the realm of possibility that objects in the films themselves would be fully interactive, turning the entire idea of one-to-many films on its head. Of course, as with 3D technology, the industry’s ability to convince movie-goers to spend money and time on an AR movie experience is as much in the hands of the storytellers as it is the technologists.
Pornhub
You can’t really talk about digital media without discussing porn. Pornhub announced its new app, Trickpics, which lets users apply basic AR filters to photos. The goal, according to The Next Web and Pornhub marketing material is to give folks who are already taking nude selfies a way to make those body shots just a bit more shareable. A company VP stated that Trickpics “provides graphic animation which overlays an image’s NSFW components to create a SFW, shareable image.” Gone are the days where only the biggest players in the social space are capable of ideating and launching basic photo manipulation apps like Trickpics. With the barrier to entry falling exceedingly low, expect other companies and independent developers to begin pushing the limits of digital media creativity.
SketchAR
A new app for iOS devices is making it simpler for wannabe artists to trace digital images onto real paper. The app, which is supposed to be coming to Android devices soon and is said to be using Project Tango for object recognition in the future, will project an image through the user’s iPhone screen onto a piece of paper. Users can then trace the image onto a piece of paper. Reading up on how SketchAR works, it can be difficult to understand the exact transition between physical and digital spaces, so I recommend watching the demo video on the SketchAR App Store page.
Facebook and AR Studio
Finally, one of the most interesting announcements from the first day of F8 was the company’s beta release of AR Studio, a Mac OS app that gives users the power to design 3D AR experiences inside a platform that looks like the design tools most designers are already familiar with. Unsurprisingly, media are predicting AR Studio will be a key catalyst in making AR a mass-appeal technology. For its part, Facebook hopes the platform will make it simpler than ever for advanced developers to build interactive AR games while also enabling hobbyists to create bespoke masks and gizmos for their own use.
Doubtless, 2017 will be a fun year as we watch brands and developers take advantage of new technology like AR. While the large majority of brands won’t have a clear business reason for experimenting with AR, the most forward-thinking organizations will let the technology inspire new ideas to grow and engage their audiences. The AR playbook is being written today, and its lead authors have, for the most part, already made a name for themselves through ruthless experimentation.
