Niantic is announcing the general availability of the first set of AR tools from the Niantic Lightship platform, enabling developers across the world to realise their visions for augmented reality using the gaming company's tools.
The Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Developer Kit, or ARDK, is available for AR developers around the world at Lightship.dev. To celebrate the launch, Niantic is sharing a glimpse of the earliest AR applications and demo experiences from global brand partners. Apps in development using the Lightship ARDK shown during the Lightship keynote include Historic Royal Palaces, Shueisha, the PGA of America, Coachella, Tripp, and Science Museum Group.
The company is also announcing the formation of Niantic Ventures to invest in and partner with companies building the future of AR. With an initial USD 20 million fund, Niantic Ventures will invest in companies building applications that share its vision for the 'real-world metaverse' and contribute to the global ecosystem it's building.
The Lightship Platform is the foundation for Niantic’s products, built on years of experience developing titles ranging from Ingress to Pokemon Go and Pikmin Bloom. As part of the Lightship Platform, the ARDK is a cross-platform software development kit that runs on billions of Android and iOS devices around the world. It brings together the tools and technologies that power the top three AR features — Real-Time Mapping, Understanding and Sharing — so developers can create AR experiences that use some or all of the ARDK tools. Over time, the company plans to make more Lightship Platform features available to developers.
The core APIs in the Lightship ARDK, including Semantic Segmentation and Meshing, are currently free to use for developers, no matter how many people use their apps. The Multiplayer API is free for apps with fewer than 50,000 monthly active users; a fee applies for apps with more than 50,000 monthly active users. Multiplayer APIs are free for the first six months of use, regardless of the the number of people using the app.
These terms apply to all developers who sign up for the Lightship ARDK before 1 May 2022.
3D mesh mapping
Relying on Niantic’s advancements in using smartphone camera sensors to build depth understanding, Meshing APIs in the ARDK create real-time 3D mesh maps, understanding the topography and surfaces around the user. A mesh persists throughout the app session, expanding and improving as the user moves.
Niantic’s depth technology automatically adapts to any Android or iOS device’s camera, from standard RGB sensors to the newest LiDAR-powered devices. The result is a dynamic 3D mesh map that enables developers to create more visually realistic AR layers, taking into account both location and contextual understanding of the unique space surrounding any user within the AR application.
Semantic Segmentation APIs ensure digital objects will interact correctly with different surfaces in the real world, and appear, or not appear, where they realistically should. Semantic Segmentation APIs in the ARDK use computer vision-based functionalities to instantly identify different elements of a real-world environment, such as ground, sky, water, buildings, and more. These elements inform the way virtual content will react within a real space.
Sharing is a critical component to making all of these AR experiences feel real. ARDK’s multiplayer APIs enable developers to create AR sessions supporting up to five players concurrently. This allows for more interactive and collaborative applications that feel realistic and seamless, keeping virtual content, players, and their interactions in synchronisation, all in real time.
To keep the shared experiences fast, the ARDK is backed by a P2P networking stack and managed server, so developers don’t need to write code to support multiplayer experiences. In addition, ARDK provides some lightweight multiplayer gaming functions, including a player lobby system, a synchronised clock, and session-persistent storage.
Visual Positioning System
Niantic CEO John Hanke also showed a demonstration of the next step on its 'Lightship' 3D world roadmap — the Niantic Visual Positioning System, or VPS. Its VPS enables people to place virtual objects in a specific location so those objects can persist to be discovered by other people using the same application. Using live production code, the company already mapped thousands of locations, and its plan is to open VPS access to a select group of developers ahead of a full launch in selected cities in 2022.
