Nianitc Labs have been rather busy lately. What with the new friend features coming to Pokémon GO, Global Challenges, and Alolan Pokémon hatching for eggs. Outside of the popular augmented reality (AR) title the company recently acquired Matrix Mill to advance their AR platform which lead to the reveal of Codename: Neon and their Niantic Real World Platform. Now, continuing with all the excitement, they have shown off Codename: Tonehenge via the Niantic Engineering Twitter account.
Codename: Neon was a eight player multiplayer prototype that showcased cross-platform, low-latency AR networking. With Codename: Tonehenge, the company is continuing to demonstrate their multiplayer cross-platform AR capabilities with an AR puzzle that requires players to work together and interact with digital objects in physical ways.
This includes players needing to drag heavy statues to a specific point in a shared AR session before then turning the statues to unlock energy orbs. Feedback is provided to players via visuals within the AR scene and haptic feedback on the smart device that the player is using. Simultaneously interaction is also required in the puzzle to unlock the final stage which, one completed, sees the players finishing the demo and claim victory.
The Niantic Real World Platform has only just been revealed and showcased in these prototypes but is already looking to be a powerful tool for content creation. With Codename: Neon and Codename: Tonehenge showing that the cross-platform multiplayer with low-latency with support for up to eight players in a shared AR session. Niantic Labs are really raising the bar on what AR is capabilities of and opening to the door to new experience in the future.
Niantic Labs are planning to open up the Niantic Real World Platform to other developers to help them build innovative experiences that connect the physical and the digital world in ways that have not been imagined yet. Third party developers who are interested in working with the platform can sign up to receive more information here and have the chance to be selected for initial testing later this year.
You can see the demonstration of Codename: Tonehenge below and if you have no done so already you can learn more about Codename: Neon here. For more on these and the Niantic Real World Platform in the future, keep reading VRFocus.
