As 2017 draws to a close, how is ARkit, on which Apple has made a huge bet, doing?

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What has always puzzled me is why foreign technology companies have such a great interest in AR compared to Chinese technology companies?

Google has launched AR glasses, ARCore platform and Project Tango for mobile phones, and Facebook has also launched AR development platform and tools. As for Apple, AR is the top priority of its development. In the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X, the rear camera is calibrated for AR, and the front camera also adds a depth sensor that can bring better AR effects.

Now that 2017 is coming to an end, let’s take a look at the AR applications on ARkit to see how Apple’s AR business is progressing.

Is ARkit a disruptive tool or a cheap special effect?

At this year's WWDC, Apple announced the launch of the ARkit development platform. The new products released a few months ago have also upgraded their cameras, depth cameras, gyroscopes and other configurations. It is a combination of software and hardware, welcoming developers with open arms.

As of today, there are more than 1,000 AR applications in ARkit, and an AR art exhibition will be held in Miami at the end of the year. Tim Cook once said that he thought the situation was somewhat similar to when the AppStore was first launched in 2008. It seems that Cook has high expectations for ARkit, considering that the AppStore has experienced exponential and explosive growth in the past few years.

But if you look at the current development of ARkit, it may be hard to imagine how ARkit can catch up with the AppStore.

Currently, AR applications in ARkit can be divided into the following three categories: tools, games, and visual rendering.

Visual rendering is the most common type. We can see that the beauty software such as FaceU and Meitu Xiuxiu, including the most popular Facemoji on iPhoneX, all belong to this category. Technically speaking, visual rendering AR is the easiest to implement. Simple face fixed-point recognition, face tracking and edge fusion can basically meet most needs. Although the iPhoneX is currently equipped with a depth sensor that can make the face fixed-point effect better, except for Facemoji, it is rare to see any AR products using this technology.

In fact, the depth sensor only makes the visual rendering effects more realistic and three-dimensional. There is no real change. However, visual rendering is very suitable as a form of IP cooperation. For example, the fashion magazine "Vogue" has launched several filters on ARkit.

EA's previous game "Mass Effect: Perseus" also used AR as a promotional method. Although the implementation technology is not complicated, judging from the market reaction, foreign users are still very receptive to this gameplay.

As for games, the representative example is Gears of War, which was shown at Apple's new product launch conference. It combines virtualized game characters, values, special effects, etc. with real scenes. The mobile phone also becomes a dynamic sensing handle, allowing players to transplant the physical sensation in reality to the mobile phone.

For example, there is a zombie fighting game in ARkit called "Battle Zombies!". On the phone screen, AR zombies will appear on the ground in front of you. At the same time, the game will remind you to turn left or right, and the zombies will appear on the screen at the right time.

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Making zombies appear accurately on the ground instead of floating in the sky is a big test for the phone's gyroscope, which includes calculating the visual inertial mileage so that the phone can use the camera and gyroscope to understand how far it has "walked" and how high it is from the ground, so that the stickers appear in the correct position.

In our opinion, the most valuable application in ARkit is the tool category. There are many types of tool applications. One is to use the camera as a measurement tool to measure the real three-dimensional space through the mobile phone screen.

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For example, IKEA’s latest app can use this function to see whether the size of the furniture is suitable for your room.

Another way is to use more accurate maps to achieve the integration of real world and virtual information. It is not difficult to do this, and it can be achieved with a more accurate LBS system.

In ARcity launched by Apple, the camera can not only more accurately identify the walking route, but also mark the name, introduction, navigation route, etc. of the building on the screen.

Another very famous AR fitness tool, ARFitness, also uses maps to search for geospatial data and use the Mapbox Unity SDK to render the user's route into a 3D map, which is connected to ARKit to display the model.

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In addition to being able to post more stylish moments on your Moments, you can also calculate the slope of exercise and provide a more detailed exercise data analysis.

ARkit may be the seed for AR glasses

In short, it seems that the number of ARkit applications in the visual rendering category is obviously greater than that of tools and games. However, most visual rendering AR products are almost rushed, with relatively rough creativity and texture effects. They are not irreplaceable.

However, the tools and games that can really achieve the effects rely on hardware - depth cameras, gyroscopes, binocular cameras, etc. This means that products that perform well on iOS may not be able to be seamlessly transferred to Android products. Especially for China, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers represented by Huawei seem to be more inclined to increase research on chips and optimize software effects with faster computing speeds, rather than relying on a certain hardware. Under the entanglement of the two ecosystems, can Apple still have the strong voice it had in the AppStore era?

More importantly, AR products focus on immersion. In the screenshots above, the effect of AR products seems to be very good, but if the picture is limited to a five- or six-inch mobile phone screen, the immersion and sense of reality are somewhat limited. The essence of AR is to build virtual elements on the real world, but if the real world is confined to a small screen, it will not look realistic enough. Perhaps, we really have to wait until the day when AR glasses appear to solve this problem.

Although there has not been a phenomenal AR product in ARkit so far, judging from the importance Cook attaches to it, ARkit will not be forgotten in the short term.

Think about it from another angle. The integration of virtual effects and the real world is definitely the future trend. Maybe ARkit is the seed that Apple has planted for future AR glasses or even AR contact lenses? Anyway, someone will always solve the hardware problem. It will not go wrong to gather creativity and developers first.