Introduction to Augmented Reality
We can all agree that leaving the home is a wonderful thing. But what in case your city stroll was enhanced by encounters with historical figures who walked those streets after they were cobblestoned? Or if it featured sightings of extinct and even imaginary species? John Hanke not only desires to see things like that occur, he has made it occur by sending tens of millions of individuals on outdoor quests to capture imaginary cartoon characters.
The Visionary Behind Pokémon Go
As the CEO and founding father of Niantic Labs, Hanke launched Pokémon Go in 2016, and he stays obsessive about a vision of a physical world enhanced by digital objects, the concept now called augmented reality. He has been pursuing this vision since at the least 2010, when he founded Niantic as an internal startup at Google, then spun it out and launched Go. The game, through which players wander the streets with phones held to their faces attempting to capture Weedles, Squirtles, and Nidorinas, was each a cultural phenomenon and a financial success, reaping over a billion dollars in revenue.
The Metaverse: A Different Vision
But now individuals are babbling and swooning about this thing called a metaverse. Companies like Facebook—well, mainly Facebook—are pitching a more immersive vision where people don hardware rigs that block out their senses and replace the input with digital artifacts, essentially discarding reality for alternate worlds created by the lords of Silicon Valley. Hanke hates this concept. He’s read all of the science fiction books and seen all of the movies that first imagined the metaverse—all great fun, and all fallacious.
Hanke’s Disagreement with the Metaverse
He believes that his vision, unlike virtual reality, will make the actual world higher without encouraging people to totally try of it. This past summer, he felt compelled to elucidate why in a self-described manifesto whose title says all of it: “The Metaverse Is a Dystopian Nightmare. Let’s Build a Better Reality.” Hanke’s vision is to boost the actual world, not replace it. He thinks that the metaverse, as envisioned by Facebook, takes us away from what fundamentally makes us completely happy as human beings.
Niantic’s Latest Developments
Niantic is tough at work too. It has developed Lightship, a software platform for augmented reality apps like Pokémon Go, for each internal projects and the creations of others. Early developers include Historic Royal Palaces, Coachella, and Led Zeppelin. The next goal is to map the complete physical world to higher integrate it with digital objects. Players of Pokémon Go and other Niantic apps can scan real-world “wayspots” with their phones during gameplay, making a more immersive experience.
The Future of Augmented Reality
All of this may eventually occur just centimeters out of your retina. This fall, Niantic also announced the finalization of its open source blueprint, co-created with the chip giant Qualcomm, for augmented reality glasses that’ll let people mingle what they see naturally with a kaleidoscope of make-believe things. This puts it in competition with Facebook, Snap, Apple, Microsoft, and other firms striving to place their realities on eyeglass frames.
Conclusion
For higher or for verse—whether it’s Hanke’s vision or Zuckerberg’s—what we see in the longer term goes to be greater than meets the attention. Hanke’s vision of augmented reality has the potential to make the actual world higher, without encouraging people to totally try of it. As he said, "We’re biologically evolved to be present in our bodies and to be out on this planet." The way forward for augmented reality is exciting, and it’s going to be interesting to see the way it develops in the approaching years.
