The Four Pillars of Augmented Reality

Snapchat this week provided a reminder that glasses aren't the only driver of AR. But what do you think?

Snapchat took me by surprise.

I should have seen it coming: I keep using Snapchat Lenses as an example when I’m making presentations about AR. (Everyone has seen those photos with the puppy dog nose and ears).

But I wasn’t anticipating how much they’d open up their ecosystem. Through Snap Kit, they’re going to let other developers use their code. And I wasn’t anticipating how clearly they would define themselves as an AR company:

I’ve written a longer post about how Snapchat is now the leader in AR (at least until next week!).

The Four Pillars of AR

But forgetting Snapchat, one of the things I propose is that there are four pillars to AR:

• The devices (mostly glasses)

• Developer tools

• The AR Cloud

• Machine learning

Am I missing anything? Don’t hesitate to drop me a line at doug@shodu.net or hit me up on Twitter.

Links and Reading

First, this is a really good summary of the Snapchat AR cloud. Read the whole thread:

SeanGorman @SeanGorman

The impressive Local Lens demos by @Snapchat got us @pixel8earth thinking about the state of outdoor AR specifically from the perspective of VPS and the 3D mapping powering it. Starting with the new work powering Local Lens and its ability to map entire city blocks.

Provocative discussion:

David Liu @thedak

This generation of teens growing up are going to be the most visually/spatially/ludically literate human beings given the spate of media they're consuming and creating. I think about how video editing used to be a niche skill and now of course everyone on TikTok is an editor.

VR Scout did a really good summary of Snapchat’s announcements.

Protocol keeps the amazing articles coming. This time helping us understand why Snapchat Camera Kit is so important.

On a different topic, a presentation on WebXR (and a transcript to match).

And hey. One final note. What did you think of the Fortnite event? :)