Apple invites developers, media to Cupertino HQ to showcase ARKit apps

Apple on Monday brought developers and the press to its Cupertino headquarters, seeking to promote its ARKit platform for creating augmented reality apps on the iPhone and iPad.

Examples of apps on display included IKEA Place, which samples how furniture might look in a room, and a "Walking Dead" game called Our World, which has players fight off a horde of zombies, according to The Verge. Giphy World takes Giphy's signature animations and brings them into 3D space.

Another app, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, was said to be a passive experience in which users occasionally feed a caterpillar crawling around the room until it turns into a butterfly. Multiple plays will eventually fill a room with butterflies.

A separate report from CNET digs a bit deeper into the inner workings of ARKit, noting the technology is currently limited to flat surfaces like tables and tops of chairs. Lending to ARKit's accuracy are underlying algorithms based on an extensive set of data generated by Apple, which collected motion, orientation and image information for thousands of real-world scenarios.

The first ARKit apps will reach the public after this fall's launch of iOS 11. On top of that software, people will also need an iPhone or iPad with an A9 processor or better — meaning devices no older than 2015's iPhone 6s.

Earlier today Google announced its own response to ARKit, called ARCore. While Google was an early pioneer in augmented reality thanks to Project Tango, ARCore is intended to reach a wider swath of devices than that achieved, beginning with the Google Pixel series and the Samsung Galaxy S8.

4 Comments

Marvin 15351 comments · 18 Years

About 7 years ago

AppleInsider said:
Another app, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, was said to be a passive experience in which users occasionally feed a caterpillar crawling around the room until it turns into a butterfly. Multiple plays will eventually fill a room with butterflies.

Nintendo might have another opportunity here with their Nintendogs franchise, the following demo is called RoVR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-2017HJVdU

Nintendogs sold 24m copies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kOMkTKSlNI

It uses verbal input to command the pets, perhaps Siri could handle that part. There could be some exercise tasks too linked with HealthKit with walking the dogs. It can have other animals (cats, hamsters, birds, goldfish) and they could introduce a multiplayer part where people bring their pets together to play. I don't know if they'd go as far as having virtual puppies but players could then sell or give the puppies to other players. They can have real-world events like virtual Crufts if players have trained their pets to do tricks, the pets would have obedience levels and people could watch kids' pets competing on big screens.

One thing that some online multiplayer games have done is allow users to create content, which they sell to other players. Valve does this with Steam games and it generated $57m, if users could create those models using 3D apps and scanning either on the iPad or Mac, they could sell them in the games. This is just things like hats, bow ties, toys and it could include baby animals:

https://venturebeat.com/2015/02/12/digital-gaming-goods-revenue-grows-as-valve-expands-the-tools-for-developers-and-community/

AR has some commercial potential with the right content.

macky the macky 4801 comments · 15 Years

About 7 years ago

AppleInsider said:
Earlier today Google announced its own response to ARKit, called ARCore. While Google was an early pioneer in augmented reality thanks to Project Tango, ARCore is intended to reach a wider swath of devices than that achieved, beginning with the Google Pixel series and the Samsung Galaxy S8.

Meh...that's less than 50K of units... A far cry from Apple's cool billion....

foggyhill 4767 comments · 10 Years

About 7 years ago

I can imagine ARKIT working on the Apple TV (they'd need a camera for that) and mirroring everything that's going on this room with the added beasts you put it :-). Children would love this. You could PIP the TV and have the rest of the TV reflect a virtual world.

cornchip 1943 comments · 11 Years

About 7 years ago

This is going to be the biggest thing to happen to apps since... I don't even know, the gyro & compas? I have a feeling it's going to be massive. Maybe I'm overestimating this? The Goog is going to be playing some major catch-up iyam.