Developers couldn’t be more excited about ARKit, the toolkit Apple showed off last week at WWDC to allow “fast and stable motion tracking” for augmented reality apps.
While Apple showed off a basic implementation of ARKit onstage, developers already have started putting together some pretty impressive demos using the technology. Check a couple of them out below.
“The most impressive aspect of ARKit is that it tends to just work,” Cody Brown, founder of virtual reality production studio IRL and creator of the second demo, told Motherboard. “Other AR software often requires some sort of physical tracking mechanism (like a QR code), which inevitably becomes a major piece of friction if you are trying to get anyone to use this stuff.”
Brown added that he was impressed by how ARKit handles real-time lighting. “I can only imagine the math and magic underneath this tech to make it work,” he said.
High hopes for augmented reality
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been outspoken about Apple’s interest in augmented reality, which he predicts will be even more popular than VR.
In addition to its presence on iOS, Apple supposedly has hundreds of engineers developing AR-ready headsets. Cupertino also scooped up a number of augmented reality companies such as Metaio and hired big name researchers in the field.
Are you excited about Apple’s augmented reality aspirations? Have you seen any other intriguing implementations of ARKit? Leave your comments below.
