Hello Dot is a Quest 3 exclusive mixed reality experience made by Niantic
UPDATE- Added hands-on impressions
The Pokémon Go studio Niantic released a mixed reality app for Meta Quest 3 called "Hello, Dot".
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of Niantic's mobile AR game Peridot, Niantic is releasing a spin-off of the brand exclusively for Meta Quest 3. It is Niantic's first native Meta Quest app, which the company describes as follows:
"Hello, Dot, takes the best parts of caring for your adorable Dot companions and brings them to life through the magic of mixed reality. In this immersive experience, you’ll be able to admire just how visually stunning your Dots are up close, and develop a special bond with them as you play together.
Imagine being able to hook your hands under your Dot’s arms and pick them up – and then toss them up and let them float back down into your embrace. Or perhaps your favorite song is playing in the background and you want to have a little dance party with your Dot. Or maybe you want to just relax on the couch snuggled up against your Dot."
You can download Hello, Dot for free on the App Lab. My impressions will follow tomorrow.
Niantic expands onto headsets
Peridot is an AR pet simulation for mobile devices that explores the capabilities of Niantic's Lightship AR platform, including features such as real-time mapping occlusion, and semantic segmentation.
With Hello, Dot, the team is exploring a new platform beyond smartphones and tablets. "Our launch of Hello, Dot is the first step in the evolution of the Peridot franchise, and only a glimpse of what we hope to bring to the various spatial computing devices of the future," Niantic writes.
Niantic's ultimate goal is to create games and experiences for AR glasses. Because the technology is still in its infancy and smartphones, while ubiquitous, are not the ideal form factor for such experiences, Niantic is now experimenting with mixed reality headsets.
The company teased a pair of slim AR glasses in the spring of 2021 and unveiled the reference design of an outdoor AR headset with Qualcomm in late 2022. None of these projects have turned into products yet.
I have just tried Hello, Dot. Here are my impressions.
The mixed reality experience offers a number of interactions with the pet, hereafter referred to as "Dot".
- You can dip Dot into a bucket of paint and she will change color.
- You can command Dot to go anywhere in the room with a wave of your finger (and she obeys!).
- You can pick Dot up with your hands (which doesn't work very well).
- You can pet Dot and she will make sounds.
- You can feed Dot by conjuring up food with a gesture and dropping it on the floor, whereupon the pet will pounce on it.
More interesting than the interactions between the users and Dot are the interactions between the pet and the physical environment. Two features that I have rarely seen in other mixed reality apps are shadow casting (Dot casts shadows on the environment) and object occlusion (Dot is occluded by physical objects like a real sofa or wall). However, both effects are not very convincing.
Niantic emphasizes that this is a showcase app, and I agree. Hello, Dot explores some of the more advanced but technically still limited mixed reality capabilities of Quest 3 and is primarily of interest to enthusiasts who are into this type of technology. But I don't think it's mature enough to be more than a gimmick, at least as far as pet simulations are concerned.
Hello, Dot requires the Quest 3's space setup feature and therefore only runs on the new headset.
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