Palo Alto, California-based augmented reality company 8th Wall Inc. early today launched a cloud-based authoring and hosting platform to will bring frictionless AR creation to developers and business users.

With the platform, developers will have a unified in-browser solution capable of creating and hosting WebAR experiences. The vision of the platform is to help developers get their AR projects off the ground quickly and launch sophisticated WebAR projects with ease.

The 8th Wall’s platform does that by providing all the tools necessary to produce and publish browser-based WebAR projects in one place. This means access to templates, the ability to collaborate across teams and built-in hosting, developers will be able to prototype and publish large scale AR experiences and thus bring them to market faster.

“8th Wall’s authoring and hosting platform is a game-changer for creating in-browser augmented reality and a significant milestone for the immersive web,” said Erik Murphy-Chutorian, founder and chief executive of 8th Wall.

“Our SLAM and marker-based AR engine has powered WebAR for partners and developers since its launch last year, but required the use of third-party software and the need for a hosted environment to get out to market,” said Murphy-Chutorian. “This release delivers on the demand from our customers in wanting a single end-to-end solution to create and host WebAR projects.”

The cloud-based WebAR platform is available today for Agency and Business account holders at 8th Wall and provides a number of useful functions.

They functions include the creation of SLAM – a six-degree of freedom markerless tracking system that is loaded from a browser script – and image target-enabled WebAR experiences that can pop out of any location or thing that a mobile device camera can be pointed at. It also allows teams to collaborate on the production of one project from anywhere in the world using an in-browser version control system to resolve editing conflicts.

Users can also publish and host WebAR projects in different deployment states, including a password-protected staging environment.

Early access partner and ad agency 72andSunny recently used 8th Wall’s new tools and platform to publish a WebAR experience with Italian lingerie brand Intimissimi’s “Bra Twist” campaign, featuring Sarah Jessica Parker.

“Any product that allows us to both collaborate and manage teams working in different time zones and locations is a plus for us,” said Benny Everitt, creative director at 72andSunny Amsterdam. “We deliver global campaigns for our clients from Amsterdam, so 8th Wall’s platform was the perfect solution for this project. The fact that the platform integrated both a hosting environment and a code editor tool made our job so much easier and was fundamental to both the success of our WebAR campaign and to maximize our final output.”

The in-browser AR experience developed by 8th Wall uses WebAR and therefore requires no app downloads and therefore removes friction between users and the potential experience.

AR Insider, publisher of AR Weekly, estimates that WebAR has the ability to reach nearly twice as many smartphones as native AR apps. That means it has a potential global market of over 2.97 billion with compatible devices. And, according to data collected by 8th Wall, half of users spend greater than two minutes interacting with a single WebAR experience.

Further details and account signups are available on the 8th Wall’s website.

Photo: 8th Wall