Niantic Inc., the developer of the popular augmented reality game “Pokemon Go” and the Lightship AR platform, announced a number of major updates to its developer tools that will enable deeper integrations and hardware compatibility for extended reality software creation.

The announcements today at this year’s Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California, a conference for augmented reality and virtual reality, unveiled updates to Niantic’s Augmented Reality Developer Kit 3.0 that integrates with the Unity game engine and extensions to 8th Wall, the company’s browser-based AR platform.

ARDK allows developers to build immersive and imaginative AR applications that use cameras on mobile devices and headsets to change what users can see. Augmented reality blends what’s visible, through the camera, with additional added computer graphics overlaid on it that tracks and follows the movement of the user as if it’s part of the world and can interact with the user’s gestures and actions.

With Lightship ARDK 3.0, Unity developers will be able to add Niantic’s AR features onto Unity’s own AR Foundation extended reality developer library. AR Foundation is an AR engine that includes core features from across the augmented reality ecosystem such as device tracking, plane tracking, point clouds, anchors and similar. With the addition of ARDK’s capabilities, Lightship developers will be able to add Niantic’s own semantic segmentation, occlusion, meshing, mapping and other features.

Lightship Maps will also become available for Unity, allowing developers to use the same base maps that Niantic uses for its own games such as “Pokemon Go” and “Ingress.” Using the updated Lightship Maps SDK, developers will be able to connect existing and new games to real world and provide missions and additional game mechanics that respond to where people are standing.

Niantic also announced a partnership with Qualcomm Inc., which will be the first to provide compatibility for AR and XR headsets, starting with Snapdragon Spaces-powered devices. Snapdragon Spaces is a cross-device software development kit and an open development ecosystem that the company announced for head-worn XR devices.

Qualcomm will be the first of 10 AR companies that will gain access to Niantic’s precise, persistent world mapping system, called the Visual Positioning System, in its headsets.

8th Wall embraces extended reality headsets

Developers who use the web for augmented reality using WebAR can now also have their users enjoy their content on mixed reality and extended reality headsets using the 8th Wall platform’s Metaversal Deployment service. It allows developers to build once and deploy to any device, be it a flat screen or wearable headset.

Metaversal Deployment now supports also the Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2.

To celebrate this, Niantic released its first mixed reality experience powered by 8th Wall recently called “Wol,” an artificial intelligence-enabled owl that transforms a space into a redwood forest and will then talk to the user.

Wol is a northern Saw-whet owl that has lived in a forest its entire life and joins the user through a portal. The owl is powered by AI and can speak to the user and have natural conversations about the plants on the forest floor, the trees and insects and other creatures.

“The web is a powerful place for augmented reality and we are excited to highlight how the 8th Wall platform can be used to create browser-based content that works across devices including smartphones and mixed reality headsets,” said Tom Emrich, director of product management at Niantic.

The experience was built using technology from Inworld AI, a developer platform for AI characters that uses machine learning and character AI models to produce human-like personalities, with contextual awareness and responsive to user questions. Powered by this technology, Wol can answer questions, tell jokes and even sing songs on request.

Wol is available for users to experience in browsers on the Meta Quest 2 or Pro headset, and iOS or Android smartphone – no app required – just visit MeetWol.com to try it out.

In March, Niantic began exploring the use of generative AI – the same technology behind OpenAI LP’s chatbot ChatGPT – in its WebAR experiences with a cohort of developers through its Innovation Labs. The developer said that the introduction of a similar technology with Wol is just the beginning for augmented reality experiences.

Image: Niantic