Mike Wuerthele
Making good on the previous promise that Apple would be taking an interest in augmented reality in the future, Apple Vice President Craig Federighi announced ARKit, a developer toolset that it will make available to nearly istantaneously make the iPhone and iPad the largest AR platform in the world.
In a demonstration of software produced by the new ARKit, the software identified a table surface, and applied a virtual coffee cup properly scaled to the surface. Following a lamp's addition to the surface, the lighting model adjusted dynamically as Federighi moved the lamp around the cup.
Federighi noted that Apple's integration with the iOS and the iPhone hardware allowed for the technology. Companies said to be given demonstrations of the technology include Lego, Ikea, and more.
Wingnut AR is "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson's company involved in augmented reality, and demonstrated live gameplay in Unreal Engine 4, with the audience clearly in the shot. A demo of Wingnut AR is expected in late 2017.
Apple will be providing code to developers for the ARKit at WWDC. The software will accompany Apple's iOS 11 beta releases.
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9 Comments
Very exciting. Tim's comments about AR & VR over the past 18 months are finally manifesting themselves in technology (for developers),and the impact on consumers will be huge as future hardware becomes available to exploit the software.
I hope that the demo in the image above wasn’t 100% pre-rendered, because if you could get a game (or whatever) with assets that dynamically respond to the “terrain” that YOU have set up (that guy falling off the table, for example), that would be absolutely amazing.
The Iphone coming out at the of the year will be a powerhouse, would not be surprised to see the first fully custom Apple GPU coming out then.
What a sick demo. I can't wait to see more of that.