Snap Spectacles get GPS support and other new features
Snap Spectacles is celebrating its six-month anniversary. To mark the occasion, the company is announcing new lenses, features, and more financial incentives for AR developers.
This article is a copy of the original blog post.
Spectacles are designed to work indoors and outdoors, making them ideal for location-based experiences. That’s why we’re excited to introduce a set of platform capabilities that unlock the ability to build Lenses using GPS, GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), compass heading, and custom locations.
- NavigatAR from Utopia Labs is a sample Lens that shows how GPS, Snap Map Tiles, and compass heading can be used to help you get from point A to point B.
- Similarly, Path Pioneer is another sample Lens that provides building blocks for creating indoor and outdoor AR walking courses that keep you active.
- Niantic expands the canvas of spatial experiences in their latest update to Peridot Beyond. With multiplayer, you can now see and interact with your Dot and your friends’ Dots in the same session. This update also connects Spectacles and the Peridot mobile game, allowing progression within the AR glasses experience to reward you on mobile.
- For your real pets, Doggo Quest from Wabisabi gamifies the dog walking experience, using SnapML to recognize your pup and overlay visual effects. It tracks metrics including routes and step counts, and rewards you with items like virtual bones along the way.
- Last but not least, Basketball Trainer brings practice to life in AR, featuring a holographic AR coach and shooting drills that automatically track your score using SnapML. With this Lens, you’ll master the perfect three-point shot in no time.
Additional Platform Features
- Leaderboards: Easily integrate a leaderboard into your Lenses to add a bit of friendly competition.
- AR Keyboard: Add text input using the new system AR keyboard, which features a full and numeric layout for streamlined typing.
- New Hand Tracking Capabilities: Three new hand tracking capabilities including phone detector to identify when a user has a phone in their hands, grab gesture, and refinements to targeting intent to reduce false positives while typing.
- Improved Lens Unlock: Open links to Lenses directly from messaging threads, like Snapchat, iMessage, or Google Messages.
Spectacles Community Challenges
On the heels of introducing Challenge Tags, we’re excited to announce a new way AR developers can be rewarded: Spectacles Community Challenges. Now, Spectacles developers can win cash prizes for submitting new or updating existing Lenses, which are judged on engagement, technical excellence, and Lens quality.
We’ve teamed up with the AR marketing platform Lenslist so that eligible Spectacles developers can participate. Each month, over $20,000 will be going to the developers of 10 different projects, including the top 5 new Lenses, top 5 updated Lenses, and top open-source Lens.
There is no limit to the number of Lenses a developer can submit; however, each Lens must pass the quality bar for being published to Lens Explorer and will not be considered if already actively funded by the Lens Fund. Developers can submit Lenses for the first challenge starting on April 1, which are eligible for May prizes. Winners will be announced on the 15th of each month, or the first business day following.
A Candid Conversation with Evan and Spectacles Developer, Aidan Wolf
To wrap this up, Evan and Spectacles developer, Aidan Wolf, sat down to chat all-things Spectacles and dive into Aidan’s work as a long-time Snap AR developer, where they both see the future headed, and more.
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