SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Niantic today announced the launch of Lightship VPS for Web, making the Web an even more powerful place for augmented reality by bringing its Visual Positioning System (VPS) at the platform of the 8th wall. This browser-based technology, the first of its kind, connects the real world to the digital world by anchoring WebAR content to places and allowing virtual objects to interact with the space in which they are located. This makes the augmented reality experience more personal, more meaningful and more real, and gives users new reasons to explore the world around them.

Lightship VPS for Web transforms everyday places into experiential destinations. Technology gives new meaning to places by unlocking its digital twin that can be augmented to create an endless amount of extraordinary experiences. This drives traffic to a specific location, like a statue in a park or a storefront in a city, to delight and engage users in whole new ways that translate into real global value. Using the 8th Wall platform, developers, agencies, and brands can create WebAR experiences that can only be engaged in one place, reinforcing the need to be in a certain place, or AR experiences that can be used at any number of activated VPS. locations on Niantic’s AR map, increasing the reach of this content. They can also create multi-site experiences such as AR scavenger hunts and geo AR games by combining a number of VPS-enabled experiences into a single project.

“At Niantic, we believe the real-world metaverse should inspire people to explore and connect with the world around them,” said John Hanke, CEO of Niantic. “The introduction of Lightship VPS to the web is a critical step forward for augmented reality, allowing developers to realistically merge digital content with the real world with precision and persistence. Early demos from partners around the world are exciting to see. see and we know this is just the beginning. We can’t wait to see what location-based AR experiences our developer community will create with this new service.”

Developers today want to create immersive AR experiences anchored in real places. To do this, they must first understand exactly where their users are and what they are looking at. Lightship VPS uses Niantic’s AR world map to anchor AR content with centimeter-level precision around the world. By bringing this powerful system to the 8th Wall platform, developers can now build VPS-enabled AR experiences with unprecedented accuracy and precision that work directly in the mobile browser, requiring no app downloads.

In addition to enabling next-level location-based AR experiences, Lightship VPS for Web also gives WebAR developers, for the first time, access to the 3D mesh of a location for use in an AR scene. This revolutionary capability allows developers to create WebAR experiences that use occlusion and physics and adds a greater level of interactivity between virtual objects and the physical world. The result is an immersive and realistic AR experience we’ve never seen before in the browser, accessible on any iOS or Android smartphone, including non-LiDAR-enabled devices.

“Today marks a major milestone for web and augmented reality,” said Tom Emrich, director of product management, 8th Wall at Niantic. “Lightship VPS unlocks extraordinary value for developers by giving them a new tool to create WebAR experiences that not only recognize where their users are in the world, but also gives them access to relevant information to better integrate virtual content into where it’s experienced.. It’s another first for the browser, unlocked by Niantic’s 8th Wall platform, and makes WebAR more real, more personal, and even more connected to the real world than ever before.

Developers can add VPS-enabled locations to Niantic’s AR map, or immediately use the over 100,000 VPS-enabled locations available at launch, to create their own location-based WebAR experiences. VPS-enabled locations are not just streetscapes or public landmarks, but rather a collection of publicly accessible locations that include parks, trails, local businesses, and more. Built together as a community, Niantic’s AR map is powered by real-world location analytics from developers, surveyors, and gamers. The community has contributed millions of locations, photos, and scans, essential data that enables location serving with Lightship VPS. This level of detail ensures that users can confidently locate themselves at a VPS-enabled location at different times of day and in different seasons of the year. Developers can find, create, and develop with VPS-enabled locations, including building and simulating their AR experience remotely, in the 8th Wall platform’s geospatial browser.

Lightship VPS for Web is now available to all 8th Wall developers. Developers can start building with Lightship VPS for Web by logging into their 8th Wall workspace or signing up for a 14-day free trial at http://www.8thwall.com. Check out some of the first Lightship VPS experiences for the web created by 8th Wall developers for VPS-enabled locations in Tokyo, Paris, London, Vienna, Sydney, New York, Los Angeles and more at http://www.8thwall.com /discover.

About Niantic
Niantic is developing augmented reality technology that powers the real-world metaverse. Our Lightship platform is the world’s first scale AR platform, enabling developers around the world to create sophisticated AR experiences for phones and eventually AR glasses. Lightship is also the basis for Niantic’s hit games, including Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom, and Ingress. For more information, visit nianticlabs.com and @nianticlabs.

8th Wall is Niantic Inc.’s award-winning WebAR development platform and computer vision technology stack that enables the creation of web-based interactive augmented reality (WebAR) that can be experienced on any smartphone, no app required. 8th Wall WebAR experiences are accessible and usable by more than 5 billion smartphones on iOS and Android, as well as computers and AR/VR headsets. To date, the 8th Wall platform has powered over 2,000 commerce experiences for top brands across all industry verticals and is used by thousands of developers to create branded and innovative web AR content. first part. The 8th Wall platform has been used by agencies and production studios to create AR activations for well-known brands from companies across all verticals including Pepsi, Microsoft, Nike, Porsche, Netflix, Heineken, LEGO , General Mills, Dior, Universal Pictures, Westfield, Verizon and more. Learn more about the 8th wall at http://www.8thwall.com.

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A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/30e99b1e-4fb2-46c2-816f-4ea4b99a6133