Democratization of AR platforms
🚀 Discovering AR use cases for a better social future
Apple’s Vision Pro has returned the limelight to Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) for folks not actively following Metaverse and AR/VR products. In this post, however, we will unpack how AR impacts our lives and the bull case for AR.
Before we jump in, I want to summarize the difference between AR and VR. In the simplest terms, to use AR, you don’t need to wear anything fancy like a headset (Oculus, VisionPro, etc.). Using your phone, you can access AR avatars, use face filters, and see AR objects placed in the real world.
The most widespread use of AR has been in social apps, specifically creating face filters and having bugs crawl on your face. What brought AR more to the forefront has to be Pokémon Go, a mobile game released in 2016. Pokémon Go revolutionized how people interacted with AR by bringing the beloved Pokémon into the real world.
We’re seeing a proliferation of Augmented Reality (AR) art and apps, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that it’s now easy to use AR platforms and tools to create AR objects. These AR tools are fast, cheap, and easy to use, allowing a non-coder like myself to create sample AR objects, and even apps, that can be up and running in 5 minutes.
AR - from a niche concept to global adoption?
Here is a fun example of using AR to promote your brand. My friend Sana, a UX Designer and CEO of SOOD Clothing, used Snap’s AR Lens Studio and Autodesk Maya to create her brand’s logo models. The following Instagram post shows real-life people showcasing virtual scarfs, hoodies, and earrings. Also, notice the SOOD logo in the Snapchat camera shot. AR has been top of mind for brands to get ahead of the curve when promoting their products.
Another significant milestone in AR was the launch of Niantic’s Lightship SDK, enabling developers and designers to create their version of custom applications. They have launched a lot of cool stuff since their first launch in 2021, for example, a visual positioning service that allows developers to create AR experiences in real-life locations. According to Niantic’s website, Lightship VPS is created based on millions of real-world location scans, and the AR map is then made available to developers who can place the real-world AR map in games, brand advertising, etc. Once Niantic gets a significant mass of people on its VPS, it will build a velocity for startups to develop AR games and other experiences that combine the virtual and real world.
I had some time this past weekend, so I looked into creating a sample AR application and came across 8th Wall. 8th Wall’s sample project library makes creating basic AR applications for the Web easy to run on any browser. With just a few clicks, you can get nicely written HTML and JavaScript code that you can run in 8th Wall’s code editor. I did not change any line of code and just built the same app provided in the project. It took me a few minutes to launch the project and publish an app on the Web that scans objects from my phone’s camera. If you are starting in AR, definitely give 8th Wall a try.
Besides AR features on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, many excellent standalone products have neatly integrated AR into their core use case. For example, Wanna Kicks allows you to try on sneakers, whereas Ikea uses AR, which lets you envision a piece of furniture in your home.
Stronger AR communities and easy-to-use AR development platforms should accelerate AR adoption more widely, but we are not there yet. How can we see a wider adoption of AR in day-to-day life? How can AR serve a large enough market?
AR’s future beyond games - Aftermath of Niantic’s super buzzy game, Peridot
AR made its first significant strides in the gaming industry, launching games such as Pokémon GO and Jurassic World and fitness AR games such as Zombies, Run! However, Niantic’s Peridot is an example that in addition to AR-enabled objects, you also need engaging content and the inclusion of real-world scenarios to make any AR-enabled games successful. By inclusion of the real world, I mean making it more relatable to the users by fusing the virtual and real world. For those who don’t know, Peridot is an AR game where TikTok users can play with their AR pets. If we look at the numbers objectively, we can see that Peridot is struggling to gain traction. According to Sensor Tower, within the first week of its launch, Peridot generated only 675,000 downloads. A third-party researcher, Similar Web, gives Peridot a Usage Rank of 3500, which puts the app in the poor performers’ bucket. Similar Web’s Usage Rank for Pokemon Go stands at 92. We can see the stark difference in the popularity of these two apps, which the same parent company has developed. According to Similar Web’s definition of the Usage Rank: “Ranking is based on a Similarweb algorithm that factors in Current Installs and Daily Active Users. The Usage Rank weighs more towards engagement (Daily Active users) than to reach (Current Installs).”
Using AR to build stronger social connections
Like any emerging technology, AR will take some time to get a liftoff as more and more users start relying on AR to solve their pain points or enhance existing experiences. Intertwining AR with shared social experiences will catalyze AR’s faster adoption. Below, I discuss a few such ideas:
Creating AR memories using your camera roll
Pictures and videos play critical parts in our lives. For example, when a person returns from a vacation, they would look at their Snaps and camera roll to relive their vacation moments. Generally, a user is looking at the memories individually, staring into the phone, or in some cases, they share their phone screen on the TV so that more than one person can enjoy the pictures together. What if there is a better way to share your memories with your family and friends?
Could you create a custom map of the city based on the places you and your family/friends visited? AR can create a custom map using the pictures on your camera roll. For example, everyone from your family who went on the trip can be part of the AR map, again exploring the places they visited together — a real social experience allowing you to relive the moments that are forever gone! To make the experience more delightful, a custom story narration using your voice can accompany the AR experience. You can even make a custom game using the city map you explored with your family members’ avatars.
Immersive Travel Insights
Tourism, mainly sightseeing, and local experiences, will be enhanced using AR. I would not be surprised if more prominent players like AirBnB or startups like Viator start integrating AR to capture more customer demand for their local experiences business.
Like Snapchat’s interface, a camera-first AR app can provide a more engaging and immersive sightseeing experience. Replacing age-old audio tours with AR-based interactive sightseeing has the chance to advance the tourism industry materially. For example, AR sightseeing products can allow multiple users, your friends and your family, to log in to a group session and get a shared view of the location. For example, you are at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and one of your family members points the AR app at the Arc; the AR assistant will narrate the story of each part of the Arc. Further, you can interact with the AR app to get information on a specific part of the building without listening to the entire audiobook or skipping through elements that are not engaging.
Parting Observations
While AR has made notable strides in recent years, with applications such as gaming, entertainment, and healthcare enhancements, its full potential across industries is still being realized. It will take a few years before we see its AI-like adoption. As per the chart below, by 2024, there will be 1.73 billion AR-enabled devices. However, I expect AR devices to surpass this anticipated growth in the next five years. I say this because we don’t know what hardware enhancements might launch in the next few years. For example, what if there is an explosion of AR-enabled smartwatches? What about smart glasses? What if your intelligent health-tracking ring started supporting AR? The current assumption of AR-enabled devices relies heavily on the fact that only headsets or phones will dominate the market. To drive this point home, in 2001, did we know we would take work meeting video calls from our phones? Similarly, I expect we will see hardware enhancements that unlock AR on devices we have not considered yet.
Overall, people love being connected to the world via their phones or in real life. AR’s ability to enhance social experiences by placing virtual objects in the real world can accelerate AR adoption and solve real-world problems.
Technological advancements are not done in silos. Lots of different things have to work together to advance any technology. Likewise, broader adoption of AR will depend on a complete tech stack working together: 5G will accelerate last-mile rendering of AR objects, more powerful microprocessor chips will increase the development speed, better Machine Learning capabilities to efficiently detect objects, etc. The good news is that thanks to the sheer pace of innovation and competition, big tech, as well as startups, are working on improving the entire tech stack, which will further accelerate growth in AR development if companies are ready to dive into making AR part of their long-term growth strategy.
Super interesting read! Love the idea of using AR to expose the historical significance of spaces you are traveling in. Such a nice way to merge the future with the past.