Niantic recently held the first lightship summit developer conference in San Francisco. In this activity for the global ar developer community, the team officially opened the lightship visual positioning system (VPS), including more than 30000 VPS activated public locations that are immediately available. They also provide developers with a new application for quickly adding their location to the dynamic world map of nianticar.
The following is the main content of lightship Summit:
1. Lightship visual positioning system: the key to AR
Today, most ar devices can position themselves in any environment. For example, the AR head display can scan the surrounding rooms and use the relevant information to determine how the head display itself moves in the space.
However, if multiple devices want to interact in a shared space, they should not only locate themselves in the environment, but also locate each other. Basically, you need two devices to share the same map so that both users can see the same thing happening in the same place in the real world.
This is the goal of lightship visual positioning system. The team said the system would allow ar devices to access shared digital maps and determine their location in the real world with "centimeter accuracy", allowing content to be synchronized between multiple people and persistent content.
With lightship VPS, developers now have the ability to determine the location and direction of users and anchor ar content with centimeter accuracy.
"Localization" and "persistence" are the key to real-world immersive ar. Today's developers hope to enhance the immersion of AR experience by anchoring content to the surrounding world. But to do this, they must first know the user's location and direction accurately.
Lightship VPS can not only determine the user's world positioning, but also determine the user's positioning at the beginning of the experience and in the process of the experience.
1.1 working principle of lightship VPS
Before we can build a new map for users, we must first build a special VPS.
In order to build this map, the team collected the scans of real-world locations by Niantic developers, surveyors and players, and then processed the data to build relevant ar maps. Once a location is fully scanned, the team can activate it in lightship VPS and allow developers to use it to build ar experience.
Then, the user can go to the VPS activation location, quickly locate the device, and interact with the persistent ar content. Lightship VPS can quickly and accurately determine the user's six-dimensional position by acquiring an image frame from the end user's camera.
1.2 build a new map
Building this 3D world map is one of the major challenges facing AR, but Niantic has been building this map with developers, surveyors and players. Over the years, the team has continued to invite players to participate and draw a world map together. So far, professional players of progress and Pok é mon go have contributed 17 million related interest points, as well as millions of photos and wayspot editors around the world.
However, Niantic cannot rely solely on the developer and player community to build a map that meets all needs. Therefore, the team launched the Surveyor program in six major cities at the same time, and will continue to expand this effort throughout the year.
In addition, developers know what position is best for their own experience. So from today on, Niantic invites you to complete and add this map through the Niantic Wayfarer app (beta). It allows developers to build experiences in places that are most important to them and allows Niantic to quickly expand its vision of building a 3D map of the world.
1.3 available in 30000 locations worldwide and growing
Today, VPS provides services in more than 30000 locations in six major cities around the world (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, London and Tokyo). The location is not only a street landscape or public landmark, but a series of public places, including parks, paths, landmarks, local enterprises, etc.
Each VPS activation location is far more than one point on the map. They consist of multiple scans and create a localizable area with a diameter of 10 meters. For this level of detail, no matter where the user points the camera, as long as they are within the radius of the VPS activation position, the system can accurately locate the device.
To start using lightship VPS, developers can go to the official website, register an account and download lightship ardk.
2. Campfire
To help developers find audiences and help them build real business. Niantic offers a new social networking solution: campfire.
Campfire is a real social network that starts with maps and allows you to add people, events, communities and messages. The company regards it as the "home page" of the real-world metauniverse: players can find other local players here, transfer information and share content with each other, organize their own activities and gatherings, and cultivate all kinds of real-world social connections.
Campfire currently supports "ingress" and will soon become a part of all Niantic applications. Through this tool, the team hopes to help the community discover the fun of games, parties and activities, and provide people with new creative ways, so as to make the real world a more attractive and entertaining space.
3. 8th Wall
On March 8 this year, Niantic announced the acquisition of 8th wall, a webar development platform. By introducing its powerful AR technology into the web framework familiar to millions of developers, this team provides a set of creative tools for the community to create a webar experience for organizations and enterprises in vertical industries such as retail, tourism, entertainment and automobile.
Thousands of developers are already taking advantage of 8th wall's webar technology. In order to bring relevant tools to more developers, Niantic has released new pricing schemes and revenue generating functions.
Finally, 8th wall is working with the lightship VPS team to bring VPS to the web platform. Through this cooperation, webar can truly become an important part of the real world meta universe.
4. Niantic Ventures
In order to help future ar leaders and further accelerate the growth of unique AR applications, Niantic established an AR investment fund of US $20 million in November 2021.
The company announced two investments at the lightship Summit Conference (but did not introduce specific investment terms):
Trip: XR meditation solution trip has been committed to promoting physical and mental health through immersive technology. Trip is one of the original VPS partners of Niantic. The team has built an AR meditation experience, allowing users to plant a quiet ar garden during meditation.
Pixelynx: the team was created by musician and technical experts Joel Zimmerman, Richie hawtin and Ben Turner, Dean Wilson and inder phull. The company is building a music meta universe world aimed at changing the way musicians connect and interact with fans through game experience.