Google I/O 2018: ARCore 1.2 adds social AR experiences to your phone

In Google I/O, The company announced major updates for ARCore. ARCore 1.2 adds social AR experiences to your phone and brings a ton of new functionalities to Google’s augmented reality platform for developers. 

ARCore is the successor to Google’s Project Tango, and the 1.0 version was launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in early 2018. With the new update, Google is introducing several new and improved features.

In a Google's blog post, director of engineering AR, Anuj Gosalia, wrote:

As announced today at Google I/O, we’re rolling out a major update to ARCore to help developers build more collaborative and immersive augmented reality apps.

ARCore brings enhanced and extended AR capabilities to over 100 million Android devices. Since its launch, developers have been able to push AR-capable apps with ARCore capabilities to the Google Play Store, which are compatible with 13 different models that supported the toolkit at launch, including Google’s own Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2XL smartphones.

Also Read: Google Adds Oculus Rift Support To Chrome Browser For VR Web Browsing

The update adds a variety of new features to the augmented reality app development platform, including:

AR All Around You:

Previously, ARCore apps only allowed users to place augmented reality objects on horizontal surfaces, like a table or on the floor. In ARCore update, supports a new feature called Vertical Plane Detection. The toolkit allows for more complete environmental capabilities, which allows users to place AR objects on more surfaces, such as textured walls, furniture and posters etc.

Also Read: The Biggest Sign of Apple’s Interest in AR/VR Headset

Shared AR Experiences:

ARCore 1.2, announced at I/O today, will add a new feature called Cloud Anchors. This allows multiple smartphone users to view the same AR content anchored to the same physical space. You could project a chess board onto a table and sit either side for a realistic match, for example, or view virtual screens from different angles. The shared AR experiences will come with cross-platform support for both iOS and Android devices.

Faster AR development:

For developers, some faster AR development is being made possible with a technology called Sceneform, which allows Java developers to build immersive 3D apps, without requiring them to learn complicated APIs like OpenGL. The feature will not only allow developers to create new AR apps from scratch but will also allow them to add AR components to existing apps.

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