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Apple’s AR is closer to reality than Google’s
- raghavkhanna 9y agoThe article seems to point out Apple's advantages, however, using a dedicated global shutter fisheye camera, in the case of tango makes it much more suitable for large scale AR apps, imo, which would make it much more suitable for games etc. Also, ASUS already released phones with tango hardware [1]. [1] https://www.asus.com/Phone/ZenFone-AR-ZS571KL/ https://www.asus.com/Phone/ZenFone-AR-ZS571KL/
- scarface74 9y agoWhich do you think will get more developer support - Apple's solution that runs on every phone shipped since 2013 or a solution that only runs on a relatively few Android phones?
- raghavkhanna 9y agoApple's offering is currently further reaching, but I won't be surprised, if in the coming years, most high end smartphones start shipping with tango-like hardware, especially if AR's appeals broadens. ARKit should certainly be a contributor to that.
- astrodust 9y agoAndroid's at a huge disadvantage here. If it requires special hardware and a special version of the OS it's going to take half a decade to ripple through that ecosystem and take hold. Meanwhile Apple's preparing to ship it as standard in iOS 11.
- bitmapbrother 9y agoWhat exactly is the iPhone doing that any Android flagship phone can't do? Android flagships have already had the better camera's for a couple of years and I don't see that crown reverting back to the iPhone anytime soon.
- function_seven 9y ago1) They're getting their devices updated. 2) Only a small portion of Android phones are "flagship". The rest aren't. The crazy fragmentation of the Android ecosystem makes the real marketshare for something like this small and a long way away. Android phones are still at the mercy of carriers and OEMs. Google doesn't have the ability to push out the latest OS like Apple does.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago>They're getting their devices updated. I was looking for a technical answer instead of the same old rhetoric. Adding this additional functionality to Google Play Services and to the Support Library would make it available to all devices using GMS. >Only a small portion of Android phones are "flagship" This is a ridiculous statement. Do you have any numbers to back up your claim that only a small portion of Android phones are flagships? Any phone with an SnapDragon 8 series SoC, Exynos 8 series SoC, Kirin 9 series SoC would easily be able to handle this.
- function_seven 9y agoFair enough. As far as I know, Android handsets should be able to do this as well. I’m mostly a layperson, so I don’t know what technical specifics separate the chipsets on each device. My interpretation of “flagship” is the Pixel or (formerly) the Nexus lines. What Google considers the flagships. I could also be interpreting that incorrectly. I’m just used to Samsung, LG, and Moto having some level of control and obstruction on when their phones get OS-level updates. Not sure if the Play store apps have enough system-level permissions to implement whatever core services would be needed to support an SDK for other apps to use. “Same old rhetoric” seems a bit unfair. It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
- scarface74 9y agoIf you are a developer, still which one is more appealing? iOS ARKit requirements - any phone that runs iOS 11. Android Tango requirements - a) the latest Android OS -- judging by history a year out it will only get around 10% penetration (https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html) b) a high end Android device - with the average selling price of an Android phone hovering around $220 (http://fortune.com/2016/02/15/apple-android-asps/ http://fortune.com/2016/02/15/apple-android-asps/), there aren't that many high end Android phones being sold.
- sjwright 9y agoTo be fair, requirement (b) implies (a)... Except when it doesn't. Yay, Android ecosystem.
- Tanegashima 9y agoAndroid will never have this. Quid dreaming.
- vacri 9y agoDoes it really run on every phone since 2013, or merely 'run' (= not usefully) on every phone since 2013? The folks in my office complain that newer iOS makes older iphones slow to the point of near unusability.
- scarface74 9y agoiOS 11 only runs on 64 bit devices. The 5S should be able to run it pretty well.
- MBCook 9y agoFrom what I've been watching on Twitter it loses some accuracy on the older devices (I think it's 3 degrees of freedom tracking instead of six) but it's still there. It will be interesting to see the reviews/tests on older hardware.
- HammadB 9y agoThe 6DOF tracking only works on the 6S and up. On older devices you get 3DOF
- bhouston 9y agoYou are correct that Google has to shift its AR strategy to run on all Andriod devices. It shouldn't be an impossible shift.
- scarface74 9y agoWhat strategy could they have to force carriers and vendors to update the OS or force users to buy high end phones?
- bhouston 9y agoIf Android adopted software only at rather than relying on tango he, then they could have a use base of more than 25% of phones that are high end, more than apple. Google has to move on the software only AR side and now.
- mendeza 9y agoIt would be favorable for google to have AR capabilities on their Pixel phone. They would sell their own phones more and release novel tech.
- coralreef 9y agoBut you need developers putting apps in the app store, that's the real power behind platforms in terms of generating utility for users.
- pjmlp 9y agoLegal enforcement. No updates in place, no access to the Play Store. They already have to sign a contract with a set of requirements, providing updates is just yet another clause.
- QML 9y agoI think the bigger issue here is with battery capacity. You probably can't use AR for more than an hour before draining half your battery—this was the case when Pokémon Go came out (although that may or may not be an optimization issue with the app itself).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- roymurdock 9y agoApple's ARKit is the result of work going back to 2003 by Metaio, a leading AR SDK vendor that spun out of Volkswagen. Apple acquired Metaio in 2015 and shuttered operations, including Metaio's popular AR conference [1]. Google Tango emerged out of Google Advanced Technology and Project Group (ATAP) in 2015 after a 2 year incubation period [2]. Both do a great job of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) - the foundational tech needed for AR applications. ARKit is tied to development for iOS applications and form factors - all handheld at the moment. Tango is tied to development for Android applications and Asus/Lenovo phablets - all handheld at the moment. This tech isn't new, but Apple and Google and bringing it to the masses, whereas it had mainly been confined to niche advertising uses previously. The author glossed over many of the smaller vendors that have been doing AR SDKs and cloud services for years. Also skipped over Microsoft's play in this market, which currently revolves around PTC Vuforia and Unity development of Windows 10 AR apps for Hololens. Here's an overview of where the players in the AR development solutions market have plays: http://www.vdcresearch.com/News-events/iot-blog/images/ARKit.png http://www.vdcresearch.com/News-events/iot-blog/images/ARKit... [1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple-metaio/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple-metaio/ [2] https://plus.google.com/+GoogleATAP/posts/c3nZ3a12NKa https://plus.google.com/+GoogleATAP/posts/c3nZ3a12NKa
- raghavkhanna 9y agoGood points, just wanted to point out that, according to their documentation[1], Apple ARKit doesn't do SLAM, but Visual Inertial Odometry, which is one of the (important) components of a SLAM system, whereas Tango does the full SLAM pipeline with loop closure and relocalisation, and should therefore enable more, larger scale applications and allow for persistence between device/app reboots etc. [1] https://developer.apple.com/arkit https://developer.apple.com/arkit
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoApple ARKit doesn't do SLAM, but Visual Inertial Odometry, which is one of the (important) components of a SLAM system, whereas Tango does the full SLAM pipeline with loop closure and relocalisation This is actually not as cut and dry as it sounds. Generally speaking the difference between VO and SLAM is how it handles accumulated errors to do LC/relocalization. Almost by default a robust VO system using some kind of sensor fusion does a form of relocalization but rarely loop closure. I say this because I feel like it undercuts Apple's effort by stating it's a purely VO approach and I don't want people to get the impression that you can't do round trip SLAM without active depth (IR etc...).
- aub3bhat 9y agoThe article is typical clickbait, with little content let alone nuanced analysis. For those looking for a quick technical overview of SLAM take a look at blog post (by now head of vision at Magic Leap) http://www.computervisionblog.com/2016/01/why-slam-matters-future-of-real-time.html?m=1 http://www.computervisionblog.com/2016/01/why-slam-matters-f... ARkit looks like a prelude to AR glasses. Where given the ability to control hardware specs, the advantage is not transferable.
- mortenjorck 9y agoI was somewhat amused by the contrast between Google's partnership with Lowe's for Tango and Apple's partnership with IKEA for ARKit (https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/19/ikea-plans-furniture-app-arkit/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/19/ikea-plans-furniture-ap...). Judging by Tango demo videos, they've only authored 3D models of a tiny subset of the appliances and furniture Lowe's carries, which, unless you were really leaning toward that one model of LG oven, makes it more of a proof-of-concept than a practical tool. Meanwhile, Apple went and partnered with the one vertically-integrated big-box store that happens to have 3D models of every single thing they carry.
- kevin_b_er 9y agoThat's surprising that IKEA partnered with Apple. IKEA's concept is, to quote them, "providing a range of home furnishing products that are affordable to the many people, not just the few." while Apple is about premium end. I fail to see how Apple's walled garden lock-in approach melds with the IKEA Concept.
- lowtolerance 9y agoApple has sold iPhones to how many people? IKEA would be foolish to turn down such a potentially huge audience.
- santaclaus 9y ago> Apple is about premium end Apple certainly has premium priced products, but they have been directly targeting mass market consumers since at least the original crazy colored iMac G3s.
- acdha 9y agoIt's an inherently loose comparison but they're both about solid value for the money – good design without luxury glitz. People like to parrot the trope about Apple being super high-end and overpriced but that's about reaffirming tribal loyalty rather than the product of rigorous analysis, just as some people like to joke about IKEA furniture being hard to assemble or crappy but they have millions of satisfied customers and their main challenge is keeping things in stock.
- ice109 9y agoi submitted an ask hn and got no substantive responses so i'm asking here: if i want to build a cross-platform ar app which sdk should i use? vuforia?
- pavlakoos 9y agoSeriously, can anyone longer-than-5 list AR use cases that make sense? Today I learned about that restaurant menu app, which shows food on top of the empty plate. Luckily, you can even rotate it! Making the world a better place...
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoThink industrial, not consumer. The latter will be games and art for a while. The former needs to visualise interior design changes, factory layouts or even just overlay navigational information for leisure boat and/or plane piloting. I would love an underwater AR that tells me what fish I'm looking at, or a cosmology one that lets me pinch-and-zoom the night sky. I agree that the middle-income consumer won't see anything grand for a few years. But that's not the point.
- pavlakoos 9y agoand porn
- KirinDave 9y agoData visualization Better ergonomics for workstations Conferencing (of which there are numbers sub-functions that AR can render better) Better, safer driving ui's (HUDs have been shown better for years) Remote controlled device management Gaming, of a lot of types There. 6. But this is kind of a silly demand.
- mendeza 9y agoI like ergonomics, I would love to see code and my tabs not all stuck in my “flat window”. A mac extension for AR, would love that!
- Tanegashima 9y agoI think the most obvious application would be on CAM applications.
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- jayd16 9y agoI really don't understand the hype for ARKit. What is so unique about it that you can't do with Qualcomm's Vuforia? What makes it a game changer?
- nstj 9y agoOne thing which sucks a bit is that ARKit doesn't appear to have vertical plane detection yet[0]. This makes stuff like hanging virtual paintings on walls rather difficult. [0]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44422118/how-to-detect-vertical-planes-in-arkit https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44422118/how-to-detect-v...
- mendeza 9y agoARKit enables you to get 3D points or features correct? I was thinking maybe doing some geometric processing to detect planes can handle vertical plane detection
- yalogin 9y agoWhy does the article say Google’s Tango is about the future where as ARKit is now. It feels like they are implying that somehow ARKit is inferior to Tango. Is it true? Is Tango considered to be better somehow?
- cptn_brittish 9y agoSome of the higher comments go into this and it appears that ARKit only implements some of a full AR Stack (Visual Inertial Odometry) while Tango supports it all (SLAM) so it can also have persistence between device reboots and be useful in bigger applications. I will note I am just repeating the comment and you can see it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14640682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14640682
- bjd2385 9y agoWhy not just use a simple LiDAR sensor? In the near future small solid state sensors could become far more affordable.
- simonh 9y agoAll the LIDAR sensors I've seen are bigger than a phone and cost about as much.
- bjd2385 9y agoAh yes, I'm aware that today's sensors are pretty large and extremely costly. But in the near future I wouldn't be surprised if a small, far more affordable sensor became available, even if at the cost of some range and precision/accuracy.