oogle Creative Lab’s ARCore’s Depth API, which the company had previewed in Dec. 2019, is now available to the public, allowing developers to build smart pathing, occlusion, collision, and more into their AR apps. Lines of Play from Google Creative Lab is pushing their developers creativity and putting their capabilities to the test.
Introducing the Depth API, a groundbreaking example of the integration of AR and AI, which uses Google’s ‘depth-from-motion’ algorithms to generate a depth map from a single RGB camera.
For years, one of the biggest obstacles faced by Mobile AR developers is creating realistic depth. This is in part due to occlusion, the blockage of objects from view when they’re behind others, as single cameras cannot see depth the way the human eye does through stereoscopy.
This information cannot be processed fast enough to seamlessly and believably integrate virtual objects into the real world. Resulting in a believable AR experience until something passes in front of the virtual object, only to get blocked by the virtual object, which is supposed to be in the background.
Another factor that has limited believable AR is collisions, however, the Depth API can remove all these barriers to help create seamless AR experiences without developers and users needing to upgrade to brand new tech like the LIDAR-equipped iPad Pro
However, if you’re not an AR developer with knowledge of the intricate tools to create AR experiences, it can be difficult to communicate these incredible advancements in a way that your audience can understand, but this is where Google’s creativity has come to the rescue.
To demonstrate new capabilities of ARCore, Google Creative Lab released Lines of Play, an open-source AR experiment alongside four other apps showcased in the Depth API preview.
The Lines of Play app is an AR domino effect experience, which uses the Depth API to collect depth and geometry information, which allows the user to create a complex domino game in AR.
Google hopes that the Lines of Play app will expand and broaden how users see as well as use AR. At present, the mobile AR ecosystem is defined by face filters on social media and games such as Pokemon GO. However, Lines of Play draws users into the real world, letting them place domino lines throughout their immediate environment to see just how versatile AR truly is.
By providing users with fully immersive experiences that aren’t possible in the real world, no matter how novel the subject matter, allows the use and technology to expand and thrive. The advanced geometric placement lets users seamlessly add new lines of virtual dominos, which aren’t limited to their standard small sizes, meaning they can be set up to even human size and crash into parked cars. What makes this technology even more incredible is not only do the AR dominos collide with each other, but they also collide with the world around them. The user is also able to place dominoes behind real world objects and will retain the dominoes structure. Lines of Play also features spatial audio so that what users hear reflects in the real world position of the virtual dominoes. Now this may seem obvious and novel, however given the computing demands, it is deceptively technical.
Lines of Play is an open-source project, which means that developers are able to update the game in line with a particular need or integrate the feature into a separate app. The new feature also introduces developers to Depth API and the ARCore, fast-tracking their skills, knowledge and capabilities.
Lines of Play is an innovative, new and creative AR tool. The app is free to [nofollow]download on Google Play. Why not try it out yourself?
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