Gadgetory

augmented reality has been a dream for smartphones for years it offers the promise of putting futuristic technology on a device that billions of people already own but it's only recently that reality is started catching up with companies like Apple Facebook and lots more onboard now one of the biggest players here is Google and today it's introducing a new Android based augmented reality platform that it calls a our core now wait a minute doesn't Google already have an augmented reality platform well yes in 2014 it revealed tango which Maps the world with depth sensing and motion tracking cameras but tango is only on a few devices and air whores appeal is that it doesn't need special components it's launching on the existing Google pixel and Samsung Galaxy s8 and Google promises support for a hundred million Android devices by this winter a airport can't do everything but dedicated tango hardware but it's supposed to offer a lot of tangled like experiences to a much broader audience a our core is built around three basic capabilities there is environmental detection which looks for flat surfaces or other recognizable features there's motion tracking so you can put an object to one place and walk around and there's scale and lighting estimation which makes objects more realistic we match their environments aircore isn't magic things pop out of place if say you lower your phone and walk around a big ground but it nails the core experience of putting down a digital object and keeping it in place while you look at it from any angle or distance without drifting or jittery you also get some basic environmental awareness like shadows falling in the right direction or virtual characters reacting to the lights going out Google is trying to attract a our core developers who may not think of themselves as dedicated 3d app creators people can important models made with its simple blocks gr design tool and there's an experimental version of chromium with air core so you can use augmented reality features in ordinary websites it's trying to make Google AR development easy in a way that until now it hasn't been the flip side is that you can't use every tango out in AR core either that dedicated depth sensor for instance can capture more detail than an ordinary camera right now though AR cores real competition isn't tango it's apples AR kit we couldn't directly compare AR kit an air core in Google's offices but they offer similar experiences while Google hasn't shown anything that would massively outshine AR kit that's not really the point Apple has shown that people will trust fun experiments for augmented reality if it's easy to access if Google can let Android users get in on that fund it makes AR as a whole a lot more attractive for developers on both platforms of course that's the big question will air core be common enough that people take it for granted ubiquity was supposed to be a big selling point for Google's daydream VR but a year after launch it's still pretty neat AR core has some advantages here it's launching on a popular existing phone runs with both Android and Android N and doesn't require extra hardware like a headset google says it's working with Huawei LG a soos and other manufacturers to put air core on new and existing phones given how much Android has suffered from fragmentation though it's still a valid concern google has a roadmap to a world of ubiquitous high-quality augmented reality but it also has a long way to go over the next months we'll be watching to see if Google can make AR core feel like a real part of Android not just a special feature on certain phones if it does that's great news for Android users augmented reality fans and really anybody with a phone