Facebook wants to strengthen the digital community experience with shared AR technology in video calls. These calls will continue to take place with the smartphone for the foreseeable future, because useful AR glasses for everyone are still a long way in the future.
Facebook’s AR development software SparkAR is the largest of its kind, according to Facebook: In the past two years, more than 600,000 creatives from 190 countries have created over two million AR effects for Facebook and Instagram. AR filters created with SparkAR can be applied to your own face or the environment on Instagram or Facebook Messenger, for example.
In the near future, it will be possible to share these effects in video calls using the new “Multipeer API” developer interface. The function is now available in Facebook Messenger and soon on Instagram and the portal.
Shared AR for filters and games
Shared AR effects can be placed synchronously on the video images of all people involved in the video call. Facebook demonstrates the new technology using the example of a birthday party in which everyone shown in the video image is wearing a digital party hat and pulling digital balloons through the video images (see cover image).
The new multipeer interface can be used for simple multiplayer AR games. In the example, the players have to run a digital donut that is stuck to their nose along a thread without touching it. | Image: Facebook
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For Facebook, the shared AR effects add to the feeling of sharing a digital space and experiencing “a feeling of familiarity”. The argument about investing in VR technology sounds similar – ultimately, Facebook is about high-quality telepresence and personal networking of people outside of the core functions of Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp.
Developers can sign up for the Multipeer API beta here. Just recently, Facebook presented a SparkAR update for better image segmentation and multimarker tracking for Instagram.
During the course of the year, Facebook wants complete AR full-body tracking via smartphone camera roll out.
With the new smartphone AR full-body tracking, dynamic AR effects can be applied to the whole body. | Image: Facebook
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SciFi-AR with tech glasses is still years away
SparkAR partner manager Chris Barbour describes the long-term vision for AR technology on Facebook as “a landscape full of virtual objects that help us to share, learn and play”. “Our vision is a seamlessly connected digital and physical world,” says Barbour.
Navigation and digital signs: this is how Facebook envisions the future with AR glasses. | Image: Facebook
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For example, you can teleport onto the sofa next to a friend with advanced AR glasses to watch a series together. Barbour also admits, however, that this future is still “years away”.
Facebook is working on the prototype of high-end AR glasses and wants to bring the first smart tech glasses onto the market this year, the range of functions of which is not yet known.
Those: Facebook 1, Facebook 2
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Facebook: AR glasses are still “years away” was last modified: Juni 3rd, 2021 by
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