Three years after releasing Project Tango, which gave selected devices augmented reality (AR) capabilities, Google is rolling out a developer preview of ARCore. This is a software platform that will enable a larger number of Android smartphones to have AR.
At the moment, ARCore is available for the Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S8 with Android 7.0 Nougat or 8.0 Oreo. However, after its release sometime in the winter, ARCore will work on 100 million current and future devices.
An introduction video was released alongside the announcement, showcasing the capabilities of ARCore. The video showed the software's different features, like its surface and light detection technologies, featuring life-sized characters from the "Wizard of Oz" that were digitally added into the real world.
With ARCore, Google is making Tango take a backseat, as its hardware-intensive AR technology is not yet fit for wider consumption as the moment. "Our goal with Tango was really to prove out the core technology and show the world that it's possible," said Google's AR/VR Head Clay Bavor to TechCrunch "Obviously others have started to invest in smartphone AR, our goal with Tango has always been to drive that capability into as many devices as possible."
There has been a couple of Tango-enabled phones released, like the recently launched Asus ZenFone AR, but the technology has had little mainstream impact because of its specific hardware requirements. So now, Google is taking key pieces from the Tango experiment and adapting them to fit the hardware included in today's smartphones.
While Tango focused on depth sensors using multiple cameras, ARCore focuses on surface detection technologies, motion tracking, and light estimation as its three basic components.
Even with Google's fast-paced growth in AR technology, it still faces stiff competition from Apple, who has already released its developer preview of its own ARKit and will be rolling it out to millions of iOS devices in a few weeks.
