Dragons are popular. Many human cultures have stories of giant flying reptiles, and the notion of having a dragon of your very own has been the fantasy basis of a vast variety of movies, books and TV shows, from Game of Thrones to Dragonriders of Pern to How To Train Your Dragon. Now iPhone users can experience this fantasy for themselves.
Developer PlaySide created a simulation title for iOS called AR Dragon, which uses Apple’s ARKit toolset to bring dragons to life using augmented reality (AR) technology. AR Dragon allows users to find, feed, customise and play games with virtual dragons, in the similar way to many other virtual pet titles, only involving large fantasy creatures.
A new update for the title introduces the concept of ageing to the title, so allowing users to watch their dragon grow right from hatching, and train it into a full adult. If users properly take care of their dragons during their babyhood, after six days, they will transform into an adult, and after 14 days, they will become a fully-fledged adult.
Each dragon is unique, but players can find items such as hats and skins to allow users to customise them further. Players can also partake in games with their pet dragon, such as playing catch, or find rare toys or food to collect.
AR Dragon is not the only dragon-based AR app to be released on iOS using ARKit technology, with another called Follow Me Dragon also being launched on the platform, developed by The Virtual Reality Company.
On the charts of ARKit-only mobile game charts, AR Dragon has made up just over a fifth of downloads from the top-ten free ARKit-only titles. The release of ARKit has fuelled a huge increase in the development in AR for iOS, and raised awareness of AR technology as a whole.
VRFocus will bring you further news on ARKit and AR Dragon as it becomes available.