ARKit 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

October 28, 2018

The VR Job Hub: From ARKit To Artist

Here we are again everyone. Another Sunday and another selection of roles from here, there and most definitely everywhere that involve any and all aspects of the immersive technology spectrum. Whether it’s doing engineering with a firm that make augmented reality (AR) smart glasses, brand management at a videogame company that do virtual reality (VR) titles or demoing things for one of the big names in headset manufacture. There’s usually something for everyone.

Let’s see what the end of October 2018 brings. Check out this week’s listings below.

Location	Company	Role	Link
San Bruno, CA, US	YouTube	Software Engineer, Virtual Reality	Click Here to Apply
London, UK	Scape Technologies	Lead Developer Relations Engineer \| Augmented Reality	Click Here to Apply
Menlo Park, CA, US	Facebook	Product Marketing Manager, VR Gaming	Click Here to Apply
Munich, Germany	Dassault Systèmes	Virtual Reality Software Developer	Click Here to Apply
Orlando, FL, US	Cameron Resources Group	Software Engineer – Virtual Reality	Click Here to Apply
Allentown, PA, US	Clarity Consultants	Augmented Reality Developer (Telecommuting)	Click Here to Apply
London, UK	Pearson Frank	Web VR Developer	Click Here to Apply
Los Angeles, CA, US	Survios	UI Artist	Click Here to Apply
London, UK	Facebook	Product Manager – AR Camera Team	Click Here to Apply
Sunnyvale, CA, US	Niantic Labs	Software Engineer, Computer Vision	Click Here to Apply
Sunnyvale, CA, US	Niantic Labs	Researcher, Computer Vision	Click Here to Apply
Cupertino, CA, US	Apple	Software QA Engineer, ARKit	Click Here to Apply

That’s all for this week, but don’t forget if there’s nothing here for you this week you can always check out last week’s listings on The VR Job Hub.

If you are an employer looking for someone to fill a VR, AR, MR, XR or related technology role – regardless of the industry you’re a part of – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s edition. As always, please send details to both myself (keva@vrfocus.com) and also Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).

We’ll be back next week on VRFocus at the usual time for more jobs from around the world.

October 7, 2018

Explore Artemest’s Luxury Furniture And Home Decor Collection With New AR App

The luxury Italian furniture and handmade decor brand Artemest have launched their very own augmented reality (AR) app for iOS devices. The new app allows user to explore and shop through Artemest’s catalog of the finest handmade luxury furniture and home decor and leverage the power of AR to preview each of the unique objects right in their home.

Artemest App

By taking advantage of ARKit 2 and iOS 12, the Artemest app provides users will an immersive and interact way to explore the companies offerings. By placing items in the real world to visualize how they will look, using real life dimensions, a user can explore the result in full 360-degree freedom. The full Artemest assortment of unique pieces crafted by over 500 talented Italian artisans is available to be viewed and previewed with plenty of new options always being added every week.

Designed to be user-friendly and easy to navigate, the Artemest app is an accessible tool that takes advantage of an improved search feature to help customers find exactly the piece they have in mind. The explore tab is completely customizable as well allowing users to search by price range, materials, colours, artisans and bespoke options. The special sorting by shipping time is a useful feature for those looking to organize orders for a required deadline.

Artemest App

Thanks to these searching options and the AR features, users are able to explore and find their future purchases along with building an efficient archive of their favourite pieces with ease. Once more, sharing all of this is made easy as well again thanks to the apps careful designed user-interface to make it easy to show unique pieces to friends, family or coworkers.

On top of that, short videos are also available within the app to tell the stories of some of the artisans and the manufacturing process of the products. This can be found within the magazine section of the app and helps to bring the full experience of the Artemest world to life right within the users hand.

The Artemest app is now available to download for free on the Apple App Store for iOS devices. For more on the app in the future, keep reading VRFocus.

September 22, 2018

New Update For Lightstream Racer Brings Multiplayer AR To iOS 12

Developer Virtual Arts have announced a new update for their popular augmented reality (AR) mobile racing title Lightstream Racer that brings multiplayer to the title. Thanks to the power of iOS 12 and ARKit 2, players will now be able to enjoy multiplayer racers against other players in real-time while still enjoying the immersive power of AR.

Lightstream Racer Multiplayer

Released early this year, the mobile title uses a mobile device’s camera to scan the environment around the user and then place a unique rack track within virtual space. This futuristic racing track comes complete with all manner of stuns and tight turns that will see the vehicles needing to manage as they fly round at unbelievably fast speeds. Players will need to be paying close attention to the track and their vehicle if they want to ensure they stay in first place and take home the trophy at the end of it all.

Now, thanks to the new update, players will be able to go up against each-other in intense multiplayer races that will see them battling it out on that AR track. This means it is more important than ever before that players master their driving skills so to keep their vehicle on the track. Know when to speed up and slow down so not to drift off the edge and loss time against the other player. If you can beat the Seeker that is racing around the track then you will win the race and prove you’ll the better driver.

Lightstream Racer Multiplayer

Furthermore, because AR allows players to get fully immersed within the experience players will still be able to move as close as they want to the track and see the action up close and personal. Just make sure to not lose focus on the race because it’s the winner that matters.

Lightstream Racer is available now on the Apple App Store for free on compatible iOS devices with those running iOS 12 able to enjoy the new multiplayer features right away. There is still no word on when or if an Android version might be released but VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on the title and the work of Virtual Arts in the future as it becomes available. You can enjoy a short trailer for the new update below as well.

September 20, 2018

Try The PupLounge Before You Buy Thanks To Shopify AR And Treat A Dog

Treat A Dog, an innovative pet product company has revealed that is it one of the first e-commerce partners to implement Shopify AR for the pet company’s best-selling PupLounge memory foam pet bed. Thanks to the latest in augmented reality (AR) technology, those thinking of picking up a PupLounge now have the option to be able to see it in their own home and get an idea of how it will look next to the lucky pup owning it without evening downloading an application.

PupLounge Augmented Reality

“How a pet bed will look in your home is always a consideration. Now, thanks to these tech advancements from Shopify and Apple, our customers can try before they buy and see how our PupLounge looks, actual size, anywhere they want in their actual home,” stated David Gimes, founder and CEO of Treat A Dog. “We’re thrilled to be one of the first Shopify customers to implement this easy to use and ground breaking technology to provide a great experience for our customers,” Gimes continued.

The new AR feature in partnership with Shopify works by allowing visitors who access TreatADog.com via the Safari browser on an iOS 12 device to select a PupLounge in the size they desire and then instantly see a perfect 3D image of the product to scale in their home. Thanks to there being no need to download an application it means that the experience is easily accessible to anyone so long as they have an iOS 12 device.

PupLounge Augmented Reality

This news of Treat A Dog implement follows shortly as Shopify announced it was integrating Apple’s latest AR tech to enable the new AR Quick Look feature. This feature is part of the new ARKit 2 tool-set and was introduced at the recent Apple event alongside the new iPhone XS. The feature, and ARKit 2 are integrated into iOS 12 which is why it is required to use the new feature with Treat A Dog.

A video of the new AR feature for the PupLounge can be seen below and for those wondering, the memory foam orthopedic bed is available in four different sizes and prices start at $69 (USD). You can find more information on the PupLounge here and for all things AR in the future, keep reading VRFocus.

September 19, 2018

Apprentice.io Secures Multi-Million Dollar Series A Funding

New Jersey augmented reality (AR) firm Apprentice.io is the latest immersive technology company to announce the results of a funding round, this time Series A, led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital and which also saw investment from Silverton Partners and Hemi Ventures as well as another name common to these types of stories The Venture Reality Fund.

The funding round saw the firm, secure an additional $8 million (USD) in funding. Bringing the total raised by the company so far to over $10 million.

Apprentice.io has developed Apprentice – an AR and artificial intelligence (AI) platform for batch records, tech transfer and R&D workflows as well as training procedures, with particular use to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Apprentice offers support ARKit 2 on iPhone XS as well as ARCore for Android devices, plus already has support for HoloLens, Magic Leap and other AR focused smart glasses. Subsequent growth has seen the start-up triple in size.

“We like to say that we don’t just augment reality; we augment human ability,” said Angelo Stracquatanio, the co-founder and CEO of Apprentice.io in a statement on the investment. “AR and AI are changing the way workforces across all industries solve problems and share information, ushering in the next wave of human potential.”

Vice President of the Pritzker Group Venture Capital added on his firm’s financial involvement: “We are absolutely thrilled to be collaborating with the leader in AR and AI. Angelo and his team of experts have a clear vision for what will be the next generation of enterprise AR. It was among the many reasons we were eager to invest at this stage.”

VRFocus will have more news about investment in the AR industry very soon.

September 18, 2018

Shopify Is Integrating Apple’s New AR Tech

An increasing number of retailers, both online and in brick-and-mortar stores are turning to immersive technology such as augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) to better showcase their products. One company which has embraced AR and VR is online retail platform Shopify, who are now seeking to expand the capabilities of the platform with Apple’s newly enhances AR technology.

Shopify is a Canadian company that is using AR technology to allow customers to get a better look at the products they are interested in buying.

Shopify have announced that it has integrated the new AR Quick Look feature, one of the new features that form part of the new ARKit 2 toolset. AR Quick Look was introduced at an Apple event alongside the new iPhone XS, and ARKit 2 is integrated into iOS 1.

By utilising AR Quick Look, companies and brands will be able to upload 3D models of their products which users will be able to tap on and view from within the Safari web browser in order to see the objects projected into real world environments.

While this kind of AR had been available previously, it usually required a separate app download, whereas ARKit 2 allows it to be integrated into the browser, creating a more seamless experience for users.

Shopify are set to re-affirm its commitment to AR technology with the new feature, as Daniel Beauchamp, AR/VR lead at Shopify has said previously: “We strongly believe that virtual reality and augmented reality will fundamentally shift how we shop in the future.”

Apple Keynote September 2018 - ARKit 2 — ARKit 2 as powered by the A12 Bionic chip.

As iOS 12 rolls out to more users, it is expected that more companies and brands will be implementing the new AR features into their websites and portals to allow users to try out items such as furniture, clothing and make-up.

For future coverage on Shopify and ARKit, keep checking back with VRFocus.

September 13, 2018

AR Take On Galaga Will be Heading to iOS

Galaga is a beloved arcade classic dating back to the early days of videogames. It has become beloved by fans since it was first released for arcades by Namco back in 1981, since then the title has seen appearances as the loading screen for Ridge Racer, and even getting a cameo in The Avengers movie. Now the arcade classic is making a leap into augmented reality (AR) thanks to Directive Games.

The founder and CEO of Directive Games, Atli Mar appeared on stage at Apple’s Special Event in California to demonstrate the new technology which allowed the AR arcade to go multiplayer.

The AR Galaga was designed to show off the capabilities of the new A12 Bionic chip, which is the new GPU being installed in the new iPhones, as well as ARKit 2, the upgraded and enhanced version of Apple’s AR toolset.

Mar and others from the Directive Games team took to the stage to show off an AR arcade machine, which displayed a game of Galaga as the Directive Games team took each other one, battling to hit the high score. While it initially appeared that Galaga would be confined to the virtual arcade machine, as the demo continued Galaga expanded out from the arcade machine to open up the game to others on the stage.

The other players were then faced with alien spacecraft whizzing around in front of them, their iPhones acting in lieu of the spaceship that players usually control in classic Galaga. It was even possible to activate power-ups which triggered impressive visual effects, like the stun, which created a glittery web of energy, holding all the alien craft in place

The demonstration didn’t just demonstrate the visual capabilities and responsiveness of the new iPhone but also showed how persistent, multiplayer AR was possible using the ARKit 2 toolset.

For future coverage on ARKit and other Apple AR projects, keep checking back with VRFocus.

September 13, 2018

Apple Unveil New iPhones X Models – and the A12 Bionic Chip Set To Power Them And ARKit 2 Into The Future

Every time an Apple executive steps on to the stage for a company keynote new iOS powered devices are not that far behind, and the same was true for yesterday’s Apple Special Event, which broadcast from the Steve Jobs Theatre in Cupertino. The company unveiled new iterations of both the Apple watch and the iPhone X – the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max and the somewhat confusingly named (at least from the point of view of immersive technology) iPhone XR.

Apple A12 Bionic Powered Apps — A12 Bionic powered apps.

While the XR (pronounced “10 R”) is a budget model, and as mentioned, nothing expressly to do with XR, augmented reality (AR) and Apple’s ARKit 2 platform did come in to discussions for the power behind it and the two XS models, the chip that powers the device is the new A12 Bionic chip.

The A12 Bionic, which features 6.9 billion transistors, a combination of 4-core powered GPU, 6-core powered CPU and a Neural Engine comprised of 8 cores is the world’s first 7nm chip and according to Apple can do 5 trillion operations every second. The A12 Bionic allows the calibration of cameras for AR with accurate motion tracking with its gyro and accelerometer and low-light usage while delivering 60fps bringing with it machine learning.

Apple A12 Bionic

“It’s a huge breakthrough.” Said Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Philip W. Schiller as he introduced the chip. “This A12 Bionic is, without question, the smartest and most powerful chip ever in a smartphone. So much of the experience we have with iPhone is driven by this chip and it’s going to enable us to have so many great new experiences not possible before.”

The expanded screen for the new iPhone X models, has, according to Senior Director of iPhone Product Marketing Kaiann Drance. “turned into a wonderful window to these new AR experiences,” adding that “iPhone XS is the best platform for AR.”

The A12 Bionic looks set to power a new range of deeper and more enhanced AR apps created in ARKit 2, Apple demonstrating the AR Quicklook feature and even namedropping AR app Measure, which first appeared earlier this year at WWDC 18.

We can expect a new wave of these enhanced experiences to start dropping after release and VRFocus will let you know when we have news on any of them. For more AR news you can find a link to everything on the site under ‘More’ on the top shortcut bar. Alternatively click here to go directly.

July 18, 2018

Unreal Engine 4.20 Released With Robust AR Support

After its usual process of releasing several previews, Epic Games has today launched the next version of its popular videogame engine, Unreal Engine 4.20, making it easier and more seamless for developers to build realistic characters and immersive environments across videogames, film and TV, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) and enterprise applications.

Magic Leap One Reveal

Unreal Engine 4.20 features hundreds of optimisations, especially for iOS and Android, as well as Magic Leap One. Having previously announced Early Access support for Magic Leap One: Creator Edition during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2018 as part of a larger partnership between the two companies, Unreal Engine 4.20 fully supports development for the AR headset.

Continuing with the AR support, Unreal Engine 4.20 has added support for Apple’s ARKit 2.0 and Google ARCore 1.2. For ARKit 2.0 this includes better tracking quality, support for vertical plane detection, face tracking, 2D image detection, 3D object detection, persistent AR experiences and shared AR experiences. While for ARCore 1.2 the engine includes support for vertical plane detection, Augmented Images, and Cloud Anchors.

Unreal Engine

In the release notes for Unreal Engine 4.20 VRFocus found a plenty of other VR and AR related items which you can read through below:

New: Added a label to the VR spectator screen render call so it is distinguishable in profiling tools, such as RenderDoc.
New: Added the ability for Motion Controller components to track/display HMD devices by using “HMD” as the source name.
New: Added experimental support for lens calibration on MR projects using OpenCV.
New: Updated SteamVR SDK to version 1.0.11, this includes improved Vulkan support.
New: Improved SteamVR compositor timing and overall engine performance through more accurate CPU utilization data.
New: Added Render Bridge base class, FXRRenderBridge, to reduce code duplication when creating an XR Plugin with a Custom Present implementation.
New: Added initial support for omni-directional stereo captures.
New: Made Oculus code-scheduling functions available for use by other XR Plugins through the “Head Mounted Display” module.
New: Added virtual curves for head rotation from FaceAR’s face tracking LiveLink streaming.
New: Added support for instanced stereo translucent rendering.
New: Added support for enabling the ARKit 1.5 auto-focus setting.
New: Added checks for ARKit 1.0 availability when creating the AR session, preventing calls to invalid selectors on older iOS devices.
New: Added functions for checking ARKit version availability at runtime.
New: Refactored how ARKit supports #define, simplifying wrapping individual features by ARKit version.
New: Added a console command to change where Face AR is publishing LiveLink curve data. “LiveLinkFaceAR SendTo=192.168.1.1”.
New: Wrapped vertical plane detection in an “if iOS 11.3” check, since ARKit 1.5 is only available in 11.3 and later.
New: Added orientation to the “AR Candidate Image” object for passing to the detection system.
New: Added support for handling “AR Image Anchor” notifications from ARKit.
New: Added a friendly name to UARCandidateImage objects.
New: Added base types for detecting images in an AR session.
New: Added the name from the candidate image when creating the Apple side representation.
New: Added support for configuring which images to detect during an AR session.
New: Improved debug layer rendering on Oculus, circumventing a superfluous blit by rendering directly to the layer.
New: Added models to the Oculus plugin for HMD and Sensors.
New: Added “Use Camera Rotation” feature to “Stereo Panorama” Plugin. Now this plugin can take the current camera’s rotation. To enable this feature, use the console command “SP.UseCameraRotation 7”.
New: Updated Camera Component can now tell the “Late Update Manager” to store that we don’t want to do a late update this frame. Default XR Camera checks this flag before applying the late update to the camera.
New: Refactored PSVR Minor reprojection for Frame Counter comparison.
New: Added a new PSVR API function for getting a transform between “floor” and “eye” tracking spaces.
New: Added a new PSVR delegate that can detect when an app changes between “floor” and “eye” tracking space.
Removed: Unused Stereo Rendering function “Get Custom Present” method has been removed.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Epic Games and Unreal Engine, reporting back with the latest updates.

June 13, 2018

Scope AR CEO Talks About ARKit 2.0

ARKit was something of a game-changer for augmented reality (AR). The unveiling of Apple’s AR toolkit raised the profile of AR within the mainstream, and gave developers several new tools to develop interesting an immersive AR experiences. Scope AR has been using those tools, and its CEO has commented on what the arrival of ARKit 2.0 might mean.

The new version of ARKit was unveiled by Apple at the 2018 World Wide Developers Conference, also known as WWDC. The immersive technology took centre stage with the reveal of ARKit 2 by Senior Vice President of Software and Engineering Craig Federighi.

ARKit 2 / Lego

Apple’s ARKit allowed for apps to recognise flat planes such as tables, so digital objects could appear to sit perfectly on them, acting as though they were part of the real-world environment. The ARKit toolkit also allows for dynamic lighting which adds to the realism of the virtual objects.

ARKit 2 allows for multiple users to engage with a single AR experience within a common environment in real-time, such as a videogame. Apple also used incredible popular toy LEGO to demonstrate how ARKit 2 could recognise a LEGO model and build an AR environment to suit.

Scope AR have been using the ARKit technology to help create its Enterprise-focussed AR platform that helps employees access information such as step-by-step instructions and video conferencing, so advancements in ARKit technology could have significant impact on the effectiveness of the app.

“ARKit 2 shows a maturation of the platform and offers developers the tools needed to create a great user experience. Whether it’s a consumer playing a game with friends or an enterprise employee working on a complex piece of equipment, the addition of persistence and ‘shared experiences’ takes into account life’s everyday interruptions and lets users pick up right where they left off in their AR experience, which is a huge step forward in delivering on the full potential of AR.” said Scott Montgomerie, CEO and co-founder of Scope AR.

For future coverage of ARKit and other AR technology, keep checking back with VRFocus.