Pokemon Go creator Niantic has announced that it is building a state-of-the-art planet-scale augmented reality (AR) platform for current and future generations of AR hardware.
The software development company says that it is planning to launch the Lightship Visual Positioning System (VPS) at its developer summit later this month. The company’s Lightship Platform, which includes the Lightship Augmented Reality Developer Kit, is the foundation for the company’s products and the VPS is seen as the next step on its Lightship roadmap.
The system, says the company, is designed to form an underlying 3D map of the world so that all devices can share the same frame of reference even on massive scales.
“Since the beginning of Niantic,” says the company, “we have wanted to build a 3D map of the world. Building this map is one of the grand challenges of augmented reality, and it’s key to making the real world come alive with information and interactivity.”
The VPS will enable people to place virtual objects in a specific location so those objects can persist to be discovered by other people using the same application. Using live production code, says the company, it has already mapped thousands of locations, and the plan is to open VPS access to a select group of developers ahead of a full launch in select cities.
The company’s developer event, Lightship Summit, is scheduled for May 24th & 25th in San Francisco.