AR is a fragrant soup on the market. I don't know how well Apple is prepared. According to Weifeng, so far, many smart phone users have experienced more or less augmented reality (AR) technology on their mobile phones. The experience may come from Pokémon Go, or it may come from using Snapchat. Or is it another channel. But for people who build apps, AR is not that simple, especially when they are building applications that involve 3D or "stereo" objects - objects that you can walk through and interact with on the phone screen. This is why Apple should begin to make this process easier. In particular, if Apple plans to release AR glasses in the future, it will be even more necessary to use a "killer application" or a set of applications to prove their existence. Other companies, such as Facebook, have now taken steps to allow developers to build AR experiences into cameras within their applications. You may not generally consider Facebook and Apple as direct competitors, but by doing so, Facebook has laid the groundwork for the stage of war on the AR platform. Google already has its own AR platform, Tango. At the WWDC conference next week, Apple needs to pay proper attention to the AR. Augmented reality refers to any computer-generated image that appears in the real world. Let us focus on the AR on smartphones. There is a 2D AR application in the app store: it only takes a flat surface on the object you see through the camera lens, and a non-dynamic digital image is enough. Developers say this is the easiest way to build AR mobile applications. Of course, there are also 3D AR applications that typically require more advanced software development and image processing. For example, a Snapchat filter that can hover over your head in real time while you're on the move, or virtual furniture that you can view and move around in your home at Houzz. These may seem like lightweight applications, but Snapchat's lens requires a lot of engineering, and Houzz's 3D AR features take months to build. Another home improvement platform, Modsy, which provides 3D imaging, takes most of the image processing after you take a picture of your smartphone and may take from five minutes to several hours. After that, it sends back the rendered 3D image to you. There is another way to experience “real 3D†AR applications on smartphones. It is a combination of hardware and software solutions. Google’s augmented reality computing platform Tango runs on smartphones with specific cameras, infrared and depth of field sensors. But now there is only one Tango model on the market. Some Tango applications are slow and have very low resolution. It will be some time before the next generation iPhone is released that existing iPhones do not have a new camera or depth of field sensor capable of realizing 3D AR, which means that Apple's recent progress in AR can only come from the software level. There is speculation that Apple may launch "ARKit," a framework that integrates existing cameras with new software to a degree that allows developers to gather more information from the camera. Given that Apple CEO Tim Cook has expressed strong interest in AR in recent months, he said AR's market is very broad, just like a smartphone. Therefore, the "ARKit" framework will become meaningful. Currently, Apple does not provide a specific API for virtual reality or augmented reality. There is something called "SceneKit", a 3D rendering engine for games, but there is no API for real-time object tracking. In addition, if Apple really intends to launch AR glasses sometime in the future, then it also needs a healthy application developer ecosystem, and these developers know how to make augmented reality applications. Publishing a set of tools for AR developers on mobile phones may make it easier for these applications to move to future AR hardware products that may come. Can Apple allow major application developers to develop AR applications for eyewear products? of course. However, breakthrough applications or surprise applications for AR glasses may come from less mature developers. If the technology is as complex as it is today, then they may not have the real resources to invest in real 3D AR. This is very likely. . Apple has always been a "later" of the market, and they will not preemptively enter a new market because Apple hopes to wait until a good solution before entering this market and promoting the development of this market. However, as a sweet potato on the market, should Apple take the AR market seriously?
