Last year, it announced that it would provide an open Lightship development platform to all developers for free, and allocated $20 million to invest in the AR content market. Niantic announced at the Lightship Summit held earlier that it officially launched the Lightship Visual Positioning System (VPS) , and Campfire, a social app built by Niantic that incorporates augmented reality interactions.
Among them, the Lightship visual positioning system allows developers to locate the user’s location and direction, and use this as a coordinate basis to control the error of augmented reality (AR) within a few centimeters, and to achieve immersive expansion on a global scale. Augmented reality experiences, and developers can now add locations to Niantic’s augmented reality map to build and develop their own augmented reality applications and interactive experiences.
In order to build the Lightship visual positioning system, Niantic worked with many developers, surveyors and players to build a complete augmented reality map by providing real-world scan data, including more than 1.7 million points of interest provided by Ingress and Pokémon GO players , as well as tens of thousands of photos and Wayspot editing content across the world, allowing developers to quickly synchronize devices with location information through the Lightship visual positioning system, thereby providing augmented reality experiences that integrate with the real world.
At present, the Lightship visual positioning system has been applied in many cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, London and Tokyo, as well as in more than 30,000 public places around the world that can be simulated by the Lightship visual positioning system. JR Reality under Superblue, AREALM under FoundrySix, Pixelynx, Shueisha XR, Rhizomatiks, Liquid City, and TRIPP have joined the Lightship visual positioning system test partners.
This time, Campfire, a social app that combines augmented reality interaction, is also launched. In addition to integrating the real-world metaverse of many Niantic games, it also adds online community interaction functions, allowing users to meet new friends and explore unknown areas. And feel a whole new experience.
In addition to being the first to debut in Ingress, Campfire will also be available in other Niantic apps in the future.
The previously acquired WebAR platform 8th Wall will also be combined with the Lightship visual positioning system, and will allow developers to create various WebAR application service content through a charging model.