Schneller als erwartet verkündet Google das offizielle Aus für die Augmented-Reality-Technik Tango. Schon ab dem 1. März 2018 wird der Hersteller keinen Support mehr für Tango anbieten. Betroffen sind davon Anwender mit Lenovo Phab 2 Pro und dem noch recht jungen und teuren Asus Zenfone AR. Es sind die einzigen Geräte, die mit der AR-Technik auf dem Markt gekommen sind. Ab jetzt will sich Google auf die Software-Lösung ARCore konzentrieren.
Google verkündet das Aus von Tango
Erst im Juni ist das Asus Zenfone AR auf den Markt gekommen, das neben Daydream auch Googles Tango unterstützt. Mit knapp 900 Euro ist das Android-Smartphone wahrlich kein Schnäppchen, für die teure Tango-Technik wird es allerdings ab dem 1. März 2018 keinen Support mehr geben. Google entwickelte ein System mit zusätzlicher Hardware für die Raumerfassung. Nach der Vorstellung von Appels ARKit im September entwickelte Google schnell eine eigene Alternative zum Konkurrenten: ARCore. Beide Systeme benötigen keine spezielle Hardware, um eine ausreichend gute Augmented-Reality-Erfahrung zu bieten.
Noch im Mai hatte Google ein Tango-Projekt vorgestellt. Der Visual Positioning Service trackt Innenräume und kann beispielsweise im Super- oder Baumarkt Kunden zum gewünschten Produkt führen. Ob das Team das VPS auf Geräten ohne Tango-Hardware realisieren kann, bleibt abzuwarten. Googles ARCore befindet sich noch in der Betaphase, eine zweite Entwickler-Preview ist erst letzte Woche erschienen. In einem Blog-Post verrät das Unternemen, dass es die Veröffentlichung von ARCore für die Allgemeinheit in den kommenden Monaten plant. Man erreiche dann mit der AR-Technologie über 100 Millionen Geräte.
Apple has lagged behind in the virtual and augmented reality race so far.
Their phones can be used for some low-end VR, via the Cardboard platform from Google, but they haven’t had anything of their own to match the higher-end Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream View headsets.
The phones have back camera sensors that can estimate lighting, object size and location, and scaling, much better than previously possible. The iPhone X also has facial tracking sensors on the front camera.
“The release of ARKit validates the belief that augmented reality will be a technology that we all use and engage with in one form or another,” David Nedohin, president of the AR startup Scope AR, told Hypergrid Business. “Industry and consumers alike will be able to easily interact with digital content aligned to the real-world for purposes including training, gaming, health and many more.”
Apple software and services could gain $9 billion in revenue by 2020 as a result of operations related to augmented reality because there will be about 3.6 billion Android phones with augmented reality capability according to a report by augmented and virtual reality research firm ARtillry.
And according to IDC, augmented reality market will account for 10 percent of the 81.2 million units sold by 2019.
There are already several augmented reality applications to try if you own devices that support ARKit.
For instance, Ikea Place is an application by IKEA that uses ARKit. With it, you use augmented reality to virtually arrange and rearrange home furniture models onto your space, quickly and with much better precision positioning, before buying the furniture.
IKEA Place uses ARKit and allows you to place with better precision (Image courtesy IKEA.)
The user snaps a photo of a real space, such as their living room, then inserts any item from IKEA marketplace onto the photo and rearranges as desired to see if it is the best fit.
A user can place the objects with much better precision than is possible with augmented reality applications on previous platforms because the ARKit iPhones can better detect the location of the floor, walls and objects in the room.
Home remodeling and design platform Houzz has also released an ARKit app, the company announced earlier this fall. The company already has 500,000 objects in its database that you can view, move and install to redesign your inner spaces.
Scope AR also has its own AR application, Remote AR, which also supports ARKit. With Remote AR, users can seek and get remote assistance from mechanics on their machines and companies can remotely connect customers with mechanics and professional engineers to fix machines. Mechanics and professionals can also collaborate to fix machines. This is done by taking augmented reality images and adding annotations and 3D content.
Users can also combine augmented reality with live video streaming, voice, 3D animation, screen sharing, white boarding and world-locked annotations. It works on Android, iOS, Windows and Tango.
Remote AR features screen sharing, white boarding and world-locked annotations. (Image courtesy Scope AR.)
Applications developed with ARKit such as Scope AR are easy to use and users do not need any training and much time to understand how it works, which could increase adoption.
“There are improvements that need to be added of course,” said Nedohin. “It only provides plane finding for horizontal surfaces — which is a little buggy. But overall, ARKit is an amazing leap forward in AR technology.”
Apple itself featured four AR applications in its annoucement. They include the upcoming competitive multiplayer game The Machines that lets users to duke with friends in augmented reality, Warhammer 40k: Free Blade that lets you take characters out of the game scene into your physical world and play it where you are standing, Major League Baseball – At Batthat lets you overlay real-time player info and stats on the game screen when watching a game in real time, and Sky Guide that lets you automatically find constellations in the sky just by pointing it to the sky.
Other applications using ARKit include Food Network In The Kitchen that lets you place and decorate virtual desserts like cupcakes on surfaces and GIPHY World that allows you to place gifts in 3D space and to share 3D scenes and videos with friends in augmented reality. There is also Arise which is a character game where players meet obstacles they have to overcome to progress, The Very Hungry Caterpillar AR and The Walking Dead: Our World.
My Country, is also an iPhones and iPad city builder game that supports ARKit while Paint Space lets you paint and share your creations with friends. 8i’s Holo lets you place 3D holograms of renowned people and celebrities on your virtual spaces, move them around and interact with them, as well as create videos and photos to share with friends. It currently features characters like astronaut Buzz Aldrin, actor Jon Hamm, Spider-Man, Jerome Boateng, Harry Shum Jr. It supports iPhone 6S or later models.
Blocker is an application that lets film creators augment film scenes by recording the world around them and place placing virtual objects to the scene. Creators can also simulate the sun by shooting its realistic shadows and color and adding the shot into the scene, and use 400 camera presets to adjust focal length and frame accurately when blocking out undesired scenes.
Other applications include Stack AR, game app where the player taps on several blocks that drift to and from in order to stack them into a tower.
Since the ARKit developer platform was announced on June, numerous developers are already working on interesting things that will leverage the tool on iOS 11 devices.
The developer kit works on Unity, Unreal, and Scenekit engines.
ARKit provides a straightforward and powerful API that is easy to use. It comes with basic tools needed for augmented reality toolkit such as access to a point cloud, the camera and additional reference anchors such as planes.
“We were able to adapt our live support video calling application, Remote AR, to use it in just a few days,” Nedohin said. “It was easy for us, as we have an abstraction layer to plug in various augmented reality tool kits, but ARKit made it particularly easy.”
It lets developers to easily build augmented reality experiences and applications for a wide variety of Android devices, without need for additional cameras and sensors.
At launch, it had support for Google Pixel phones running Oreo and Samsung’s Galaxy S8 running at least 7.0 Nougat.
Apples Vorstellung von ARCit auf der WWDC im Juni muss für Google ein Schock gewesen sein: Schließlich hat der Suchmaschinenriese und Android-Entwickler mit Tango schon lange im Augmented-Reality-Bereich Fuß fassen wollen. Im Gegensatz zu ARKit benötigt Tango aber spezielle Hardware, die erst in zwei Smartphones zu finden ist. Einen Tag vor Apples Pressekonferenz, auf der der Konzern seine neuen iPhone-Modell präsentieren wird, veröffentlich Google einige Experimente zu seiner jüngst vorgestellten Augmented-Reality-Lösung ARCore.
ARCore: Von Streetview bis zur Espressomaschine
Zu den jetzt von Google im Blog vorgestellten Experimenten gehört auch ein im Prinzip alter Bekannter. Nämlich um das Training, eine bisher unbekannte Espressomaschine zu bedienen. Das VR-Experiment zeigte Erfolg, die Probanden lernten in der virtuellen Realität wesentlich besser als durch YouTube-Video-Anleitungen. Während die Menschen, die in der virtuellen Realität gelernt hatten, nur zwei Durchgänge für einen guten Espresso brauchten, benötigten YouTube-Lernende im Schnitt drei Durchgänge. Nun hat Google die Anleitung in die Augmented Reality mit ARCore gebracht. Mit besseren Ergebnissen als in VR? Laut Google-Blog haben es Anwender gleich beim ersten Versuch geschafft, einen Espresso mit perfekter Crema an der ihnen neuen Maschine herzustellen.
Ein anderes Experiment mit ARCore nutzt Streetview und lässt einen in das Britische Museum hereinzoomen. Ein weiteres Projekt richtet sich an Architekten, die Entwürfe direkt über die echte Umgebung projizieren können. Damit lassen sich dann Bauvorhaben direkt vor Ort quasi in der „Realität“ begutachten. Diese und viele weitere ausgewählte Experimente wie beispielsweise Morph Face stellt Google auf seinem Blog und auf der Seite thisisarcore.com vor. Googles ARCore setzt zwingend Nougat alias Android 7 voraus. Morgen ab 19 Uhr hat dann Apple sicherlich seine Antwort parat und wird einige ausgewählte ARKit-Projekte vorstellen. Mit iOS 11 werden alle aktuellen iPhones und iPads ARKit nutzen können. Wir werden zeitnah berichten, was sich Neues in dem Sektor tut.
Ausnahmsweise mal kein AppleARKit oder GoogleTango, sondern eine Eigenentwicklung: Die App Vortex Ball ist ab sofort kostenlos für Android und iOS erhältlich. In dem Augmented-Reality-Showcase setzt man in der realen Welt Vortex-Portale und kann andere Spieler herausfordern, die eigene Arena zu erobern und von Roboter-Spinnen zu säubern. Fast noch interessanter als der Titel an sich ist allerdings die Technik hinter der App. Der Entwickler Sturfee behauptet, eine bessere AR-Lösung als Google und Apple entwickelt zu haben.
Vortex Ball: Eigene AR-Engine gegen Tango und ARKit
Mit Vortex Ball steht ein Augmented-Reality-Titel für Android und iOS bereit, der nicht auf Googles Tango oder ApplesARKit zurückgreift. Das Start-up Sturfee aus Santa Clara hat hingegen eine eigene Augmented-Reality-Engine entwickelt. Sie soll leistungsfähiger sein als das ARKit von Apple, das die Umgebung nicht tatsächlich erkennt. Im Gegensatz dazu könne die eigene Entwicklung Straßen, Gebäude und Kanten in Echtzeit erkennen, erklärt Matthew Lee von Sturfee. Die Spinnen in Vortex Ball könnten also klettern und sich an den realen Objekten in der Szene ausrichten. Der CEO Anil Cheriyadat erklärt dazu: „Die 3D-Geometrie der Umgebung akkurat zu erkennen ist der Schlüssel zu lokal basierten AR-Erfahrungen.“ So könne man digitale Informationen nicht nur an einem spezifischen Punkt einblenden, sondern auch digitale Objekte mit der realen Umgebung interagieren lassen.
Der CEO erläutert auch die Unterschiede zwischen ARKit und Tango und der eigenen Lösung: Googles und Apples AR-Engines erkennen demnach lediglich stückweise die Umgebung, wenn der Anwender sich bewegt. Außerdem sei die Tiefenerkennung der Konkurrenz limitiert. Cheriyadat : „Stell dir vor, du hältst dein Samrtphone hoch und siehst sofort Spinnen die Wände hochklettern, Aliens, die Gebäude in die Luft jagen, oder Charaktere, die versuchen, sich hinter Bäumen zu verstecken.“
Eine Kleinigkeit stört allerdings dann doch das Vergnügen: Die Mixed-Reality-Funktion ist derzeit auf San Francisco und San Jose beschränkt.
Googles Tango und vor allem Apples ARKit dürften Augmented Reality auf dem Smartphone die nächste Zeit vorantreiben. Allerdings sind die grafischen Möglichkeiten auf der mobilen Hardware beschränkt. Hier sollen Entwicklungen von Octosense sichtbare Verbesserungen bringen. Die Firma verspricht, durch ihr entwickeltes Echtzeit-Shading AR-Inhalte in einer Qualität darstellen zu können, wie man sie in der aktuellen Konsolen-Generation findet.
Octosense verspricht superbe AR-Grafikqualität auf Smartphones
Deve Ouazanan, der CEO von Octosense, spricht von einem erstaunlichen Fortschritt, den sein Team im AR-Bereich gemacht habe. Man sei auf dem Weg, den ersten realistischen digitalen persönlichen Assistenten zu entwickeln und er spricht von der nächsten Generation der Mixed Reality, die man derzeit in der Mache habe.
Einen wichtigen Schritt zum realistischeren AR-System auf mobiler Hardware hat laut VRFocus das Unternehmen mit seinem Echtzeit-Shading-Produkt unternommen. Das jetzt erhältliche System soll es erlauben, auf bestehender Smartphone-Hardware realistisch aussehende AR- und MR-Inhalte in Echtzeit darzustellen. Der Detailreichtum soll sogar an Grafiken von Desktop-PCs und aktuellen Konsolen heranreichen. Dabei soll die Lösung von Octosense bei 3D-Augmented-Reality-Inhalten weniger Rechenleistung als heute typische 3D-Grafik auf Smartphones benötigen.
Tracking-Lösung mit nur einer Kamera
Eine zweite Technologie von Octosense ist ein Tracking-System, das ohne Marker auskommt. Zudem benötigt die Lösung nicht unbedingt eine zweite Kamera für die Tiefeninformationen, sondern soll auch mit einer einzelnen üblichen Smartphone-Kamera gute Ergebnisse liefern. Das Tracking kann die Bewegung des Smartphones sowie passende Bereiche erkennen. Somit lassen sich Objekte festpinnen und die Software kann die Illusion erwecken, dass AR-Inhalte dynamisch auf die Umwelt reagieren. Neu ist das allerdings nicht, Apples ARKit beherrscht den gleichen Trick. Ob die Lösung von Octosense noch eine Schippe auf ARKit drauflegen kann, muss derzeit offen bleiben.
Das System ist kompatibel mit Windows, Android und iOS, außerdem unterstützt Octosense die Entwicklerplattformen Unity und die Unreal Engine. Einen Preis für die Lösung nennt das Unternehmen auf seiner Webseite nicht.
Augmented Reality has played a huge role at the developer conferences for Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Google, which is a great sign that the industry is moving towards spatially-aware computing. Microsoft is the only company to start with head-mounted AR with the HoloLens while the other three companies are starting with phone-based AR. They are using machine learning with the phone camera to do six degree-of-freedom tracking, but Google’s Project Tango is the only phone solution that’s starting with a depth-sensor camera. This allows the Tango to do more sophisticated depth-sensor compositing and area learning where virtual objects can be placed within a spatial memory context that is persistent across sessions. They also have a sophisticated virtual positional system (VPS) that will help customers locate products within a store, which is going through early testing with Lowes.
I had a chance to talk with Tango Engineering Director Johnny Lee at Google I/O about the unique capabilities of the Tango phones including tracking, depth-sensing, and area learning. We cover the underlying technology in the phone, world locking & latency comparisons to HoloLens, virtual positioning system, privacy, future features of occlusions, object segmentation, & mapping drift tolerance, and the future of spatially-aware computing. I also compare and contrast the recent AR announcements from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook in my wrap-up.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
The Asus ZenPhone AR coming out in July will also be one of the first Tango & Daydream-enabled phones.
Funomena’s Woorld won the ‘Best AR Experience’ category at the recent 2017 Google Play awards. In the game you scan your room with a Google Tango-enabled phone, and then you’re encouraged to decorate your space with extremely cute art and characters designed by Katamari’sKeita Takahashi. Part of the gameplay in Woorld is to figure out how to combine different objects together in order to unlock new objects and portions of the story in your space.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Funomena had to innovate on a lot of augmented reality user interaction paradigms and spatial gameplay in designing this game. I had a chance to catch up with Funomena co-founder and CEO Robin Hunicke at Google I/O to talk about her game design process, as well as her deeper intention of bringing sacredness, mindfulness, calmness, worship, spirituality, love, empathy, and kindness into your environment through augmented reality technology. She takes a lot of inspiration from Jodorowsky’s The Technopriests as well as the sci-fi novel Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder.
Hunicke also sees that there’s a split that’s emerging between the commercial VR and the indie VR scene with the character of content that’s being funded, and she talks the importance of supporting indie game creators.
How will real augmented reality hit the mass market? Which system will take the lead? … and I am not talking about Microsoft Windows here, I used a lowercase “W”. It´s rather about the devices than the brand or operating system today. Will we all wear tiny AR glasses soon or will we stay with a hand-held or fixed-position augmented windows metaphor for a longer while, let`s say, 10 more years?
The Augmented Window
My first AR experiences I compiled myself was the magic book and the snowman ARToolkit demo on a hiro marker. I had to use a webcam on a long cable to walk around the marker and then twist my head to watch the result on a near-by screen. Movement was limited and obviously usefulness of this setup is equal to zero. But it was good fun and laid the base for all my carreer. I was excited and wanted my AR glasses on the spot!
But then reality hit me and made me (and us all) realize that it`s still a bit sci-fi as of today (back then). Other concepts filled the gap: the augmented mirror was seen a lot: people stand in front of a big screen, pretending to be a mirror (showing the flipped camera image). Many successful demos hit the stores to try on sunglasses, check the content of a LEGO box or have some other virtual clothing and try-ons besides all that marketing effect demos.
The mirror carried the Wow-effect nicely, but did only let us observe reality through pixel copies. Video-see-through is kind of annoying. Unlike in Futurama, television will never have better resolution than the real world. Optical concepts showed up more and “holographic” mirror demos could be seen on every fair, just placing a screen face-down on a pyramid of glass and mirrors or bringing TuPac back to stage. Optical overlays that don`t need digital devices worn by the user can be very helpful and are obviously easy to use. Back in Disneyworld I experienced it as a child already – using the very same mirror trick to place ghosts in my cart or dancing in the hall.
Fun, but probably not useful for real life “productive environments”? The company Realfiction just presented their “DeepFrame” lens concept in this video. The results can be seen a bit better in the linked video below:
You can look through a window frame and see augmented content place in the landscape or in your room. Perspective changes seem to work nicely. The frame itself seems to have a fixed position – no tracking/movement of the frame itself is shown. But as it seems it works well that multiple users can stand in front of the frame and have the matching perspective each. No tracking needed or limitations. Too good to be true? How about focus and convergence issues and stereo depth cues? Well, that`s not the point today. The idea is clear: use AR window frames could add extended data access to our life and also create new fun experiences – without the need to block our vision or pretty faces with dorky glasses.
Glassholes 2.0?
Talking about glassees. Google Glass (not being AR, but pretending to be back then) failed. Not only because of the missing use cases, the small screen or the missing tracking to achieve real AR – but for social reasons. Microsoft Research just showed a smaller pair of glasses, but Snap glasses are already kind-of a thing of the past again.
Today, glasses are too big (or even remind us of Dark Helmet), have too little battery life, to slim field of view, tracking is not yet world-scale without suffering under a too big spatial map triangle mass, etc. The existing glasses are a lot of fun for us developers, but are still not ready for mass market. Meta is kind of “soon” starting to ship their dev kits, we still don`t know how well gesture interaction will really work like without tactile feedback and all legal questions are not yet answered. How about work safety with a frozen blue screen of death on your MR glasses blocking your vision?
We just don`t have enough data to tell if smaller AR glasses would be accepted within the next years. I feel uncomfortable if a phone is pointed at me, what if the glasses camera is constantly observing? Will the next snap generation not care?
But even then, let`s say, this concept is widely accepted and noone cares anymore about privacy… how would the social experience be? If I see my virtual rabbit next to me, but my (real world) friend can`t see it? The idea of “glasses don`t take us out of reality” seems to be a fraud to me. We are even more distracted all the time! We create our own reality within our reality for us alone! … unless we share it. But how could we share our virtual assets if everyone is so keen on creating gated digital communities? Apple versus Meta versus Microsoft versus Snap versus Facebook versus some-small-open-source-crew… If we don`t create a common parallel digital space to share the whole AR glasses idea will die as an EPIC FAIL.
Never change a winning team?
Allright, got a bit carried away here. Getting back to technology issues to solve first. If glasses are still too far off for consumers? What to do? Well, again the smartphone will fill in the gap as the augmented window. Stationary solutions like DeepFrame work at the office, the train window or the theme parks, etc. They are a good medium to share digital information easily with others. It`s a good social experience that is also kind of reduced in presentation and invisible technology. I´m quite positive that we will see more of this style soon – after all we get the fully connected home already, where even fridges have touchscreens. But on-the-go we still need something portable.
With the likes of Pokemon, object recognition, Google`s AR translator and all the snap and facebook-styled augmented mirror apps we can see AR getting slowly but surely integrated into all consumer`s hands – without them even knowing the term AR. When Tango (or similar concepts) kick in on mobile devices we can see even more integration of the real world and virtual objects seamlessly.
The smartphone AR will be socially accepted, since everybody accepts people with smartphones in their hand all the time (not commenting on if this is good or bad). You can also easily share your digital data by showing the phone to your friend. – The smartphone as an augmented window to the mixed reality world. – The AR glasses in contrast would always be secret information that would scare people away (like in this odd marketing video). This could have bigger impact on the acceptance of AR glasses than previously thought, I`d say. Let me put it a bit more catchy, hehe:
“The concept of secret information in AR glasses will scare people away until we find a social solution to share digital data seamlessly with others. We must start working on open standards today.”
– Tobias Kammann, augmented.org
Change the winning team… step by step
So, what will happen next? When will we see AR glasses on the streets big time? The tech needs to shrink, the operating systems need to get ready, etc. But as said, the social component is the biggest hurdle or challenge. Probably we will keep using our AR-enabled phones during the next 10 years, adding some stationary AR screens in our environment. But when will we finally switch to AR glasses? It sure took around 10 years until everyone had a mobile phone and the distraction or the parallel texting to remote friends was accepted – when in social local situations. The same will probably happen to glasses. Technology updates could be way quicker, but social changes would take their time. If we make it right and offer a social experience that allows to share digital AR information – not blocking out people with other (or no) devices, it could be sped up.
… but then again: if AI develops faster and faster and takes care of all details of our lives… maybe we don`t need puny peasant-like HUDs anymore while running through the streets. Maybe it all runs in the background by then and we can be more social without digital helpers or interruptions. :-)
Wo finde ich in diesem riesigen Supermarkt bitteschön die Tapenade? Manchmal weiß sogar die freundliche Verkäuferin keine Antwort und man irrt gemeinsam verzweifelt durch die Gänge, bis man die Olivenpaste endlich findet. Google hat auf seiner Entwicklerkonferenz I/O 2017 einen Lösungansatz für dieses und ähnliche Probleme vorgestellt: VPS (Visual Positioning Service) beginnt dort, wo GPS aufhört, und leitet einen in Innenräumen zum angestrebten Ziel. Dabei stellt VPS eine GPS-artige turn-by-turn-Navigation zur Verfügung, nutzt aber zusätzlich die Möglichkeiten von Augmented Reality.
VPS: Tanze Tango mit mir
Mit Tango entwickelte Google eine AR-Plattform, die Tiefeninformationen im Raum aufnehmen, sowie Bewegungen tracken und auswerten kann. VPS nutzt das Inside-out-Tracking-System von Tango und kombiniert es mit Google Maps, um die Navigation in Innenräumen zu ermöglichen. Dabei verspricht Google, dass das System zentimetergenau arbeitet und beispielsweise Kunden im Baumarkt exakt zum gesuchten Schraubenzieher führen kann. In ausgewählten Geschäften einer amerikanischen Baumarktkette soll das schon heute funktionieren, verspricht Google, außerdem in einigen Museen. Bisher benutzt VPS lediglich das Display, um über die Darstellung des Raumes seine Informationen zu legen, allerdings stellt der Google-VR-Entwickler Clay Bavor auch ein Audiosystem für Sehbehinderte in Aussicht.
Einen Haken gibt es allerdings bei der Sache, bevor man einen Tango aufs Parkett legen kann: Um VPS nutzen zu können, benötigt man zwingend ein Smartphone mit Tango. Vorreiter mit einem ersten marktfähigen Produkt war Lenovo. Der Hersteller veröffentlichte vor knapp einem Jahr mit dem PHAB2 Pro ein Tango-fähiges Smartphone.
Google setzt auf Innenraum-Navigationssysteme
Auf den Marktstart wartet noch das wesentlich interessantere und zeitgemäßere Zenfone AR von Asus, das neben Tango auch Daydream unterstützt und damit zu den spannendsten Neuerscheinungen im Hardware-Markt gehört. Das Smartphone mit 5,7-Zoll-WQHD-Bildschirm kann sich zeigen lassen: Den Snapdragon 821 unterstützen je nach Konfiguration 6 oder 8 GB Arbeitsspeicher, für die Tiefeninformationen für Tango sorgt das TriCam-System, das wie der Name schon vermuten lässt aus gleich drei Kamerasysteme auf der Rückseite besteht: Die 23-Megapixel-Hauptkamera, eine Kamera für das Motion-Tracking und die dritte für die Erfassung von Tiefeninformationen. Dann lässt sich beispielsweise auch das Tango-Spiel Phantogeist zocken. Im Gegensatz zu anderen AR-Spielen, können sich virtuelle Gegner beispielsweise hinter realen Gegenständen verstecken.
At today’s annual Google I/O developer conference, Clay Bavor, VP of Virtual Reality at Google, announced a new augmented reality service called Visual Positioning Service, the latest development for the Tango platform that promises to not only precisely map the world around you in concert with Google Maps, but also give you a ‘GPS-like’ turn-by-turn navigational experience when you’re indoors. In addition, he announced an AR mode for an upcoming educational tool called Google Expeditions.
Following some major VR announcements including Daydream-compatible standalone VR headsets in the works from HTC and Lenovo, Bavor moved on to Google’s AR operations, confirming that the Asus Zenfone AR, the second Tango-enabled consumer smartphone, is still on track for a summer 2017 launch.
Google Tango is a smartphone-based AR platform that has the ability to map the world around you in real-time using a number of on-board sensors and the phone’s camera.
image courtesy Google
The Visual Positioning Service (VPS) revealed on stage, which combines Tango’s inside-out tracking system with Google Maps, provides “very precise location information indoors,” claims Bavor. As an example, Bavor described looking for a specific screwdriver at a Lowe’s home improvement store. Holding up a VPS-enabled phone inside the store will allow the system to know exactly where you are “within a few centimetres”, and will be able to direct you (based on previous collected data) to the exact tool you were searching for, sort of like an in-door GPS complete with turn-by-turn directions.
Google says VPS works today in partner museums and select Lowe’s stores.
image courtesy Google
In other words, “GPS can get you to the door, VPS can get you the exact item”. In the future, VPS combined with an audio interface could transform the way visually-impaired people move around the world. It will also be “one of the core capabilities of Google Lens”—a new image recognition initiative also announced today.
Finally, Bavor announced AR is being added to Google Expeditions, the popular ‘virtual field trip’ tool for education. Introduced two years ago for the inexpensive Cardboard VR headset, Expeditions has since been used by 2 million students. The new AR mode, demonstrated on video in a classroom with students holding several Zenfone ARs on selfie sticks, was described as “the ultimate show and tell.” The Expeditions AR mode will be added later this year.
Augmented Reality has played a huge role at the developer conferences for Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Google, which is a great sign that the industry is moving towards spatially-aware computing. Microsoft is the only company to start with head-mounted AR with the HoloLens while the other three companies are starting with phone-based AR. They are using machine learning with the phone camera to do six degree-of-freedom tracking, but 
Funomena’s 
