Key Highlights:
- Niantic is offering a framework for creating “real-world metaverse” app.
- Using the new approach, glasses with displays will be able to comprehend precisely where they are in the actual world.
- Unlike Facebook’s VR metaverse, he wants Niantic and Lightship developers to create AR apps that keep users engaged with the real world.
Niantic to offer real-world Metaverse app
Niantic is offering a framework for creating “real-world metaverse” app. The Lightship platform, according to CEO John Hanke, is “designed around the elements essential to weave together the digital and the physical world.”
Lightship will enable smartphone apps to determine if a user’s camera is pointing at the sky or water, map the surface and depth of a scene in real time, and position a virtual item behind an actual one.
Niantic is best recognized for inventing one of the most popular smartphone games of all time, Pokémon Go. Hanke describes Lightship as “opening the vault of tech that we’ve been utilizing to develop our products” to allow others build “planet-scale AR apps.”
A diverse world of AR
Using the new approach, glasses with displays will be able to comprehend precisely where they are in the actual world, allowing virtual things (such as a Pikachu) to remain constantly tethered to real-world places. It’s a necessary component for making AR glasses, such as the ones Niantic is developing with Qualcomm, functional.
Hanke, who formerly headed Google Maps before founding Niantic, said Lightship’s mission is to “essentially define a blueprint for what AR can be.” While internet behemoths like as Meta and Apple are developing comparable technologies, he believes Lightship’s compatibility for iOS and Android will make it an appealing option to developers.
“The world now is split 50/50 between Android and iOS,” he explains. “And I believe the world of AR glasses will be considerably more diverse.” So a solution that genuinely solves the developer challenge of being able to write and design something that works across various platforms is critical.”
Hanke described the metaverse as a “dystopian nightmare” in a blog post in August. He opposes the concept of technology luring people away from reality. Unlike the VR metaverse advocated by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he wants Niantic and Lightship developers to create AR apps that keep users engaged with the real world.
“There’s a fork in the road,” he points out. “One road leads to applications that are disconnected from the world around us and do not help us connect with the people we are around.” According to Hanke, the other direction Niantic is heading with Lightship is “encouraging individuals to do things together with other humans who are living.”
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