Yesterday I watched the Google Pixel 2 event. To be honest, the things that I was most interested in was the AR capabilities of the two new Google Pixel 2 phones. In the event Google showcased a cool features called AR Stickers. AR Stickers are coming soon and are exclusive to Pixel.
AR Stickers are an integral part of the Pixel camera app. Users can just drop the stickers into the scene and see them live on the screen. You can also change their size and position as well.
For some reason it reminded me Apple’s Animojis for iPhone X, but these are of course completely different technologies. To be honest, I don’t really know why Apple did do the same, like coming up with its own augmented reality ‘Stickers’-like feature.
The thing is that there are already many ARKit apps that allows you to do just that, but it’s not integrated and part of the bundled apps, you need to download those apps separately. There is an advantage when a feature like this is bundled with the phone, because first, it will be used by all the people who bought the phone and second, it can be extended and be integrated in many Google social apps.
People really love sharing funny moments. I’ve seen lots of cool gifs and short vids of people sharing their fun moments using augmented reality pet simulator apps like Follow Me Dragon or AR Dragon.
For some reason the AR Stickers features is not mentioned on Google store for the Pixel 2 smartphones, I have no idea why. AR Stickers can be incorporated into any photo or video, which is pretty cool. Another really cool feature is that when you spawn more than one AR character, these characters can interact with each other as well.
Google also introduced sticker collection inspired by “Star Wards: The Last Jedi” and Netflix’s Stranger Things series. Google will also partner with other content creators to bring more cool stickers for you to play with.
Just having this option allow users to create more engaging and funny photos and videos. Being able to integrate the virtual into the physical world we live in can really make sharing photos and videos more unexpected, funny and more interesting to watch. Just think about all the creative possibilities here. Each one and one of us will turn into an amateur direction. When this feature become popular and more complete, I already see people making short movies with it, seriously.
The AR Sticker feature is built using ARCore, Google’s answer to Apple’s ARKit. Both technologies seems to work more or less the same way. I can’t way to get my hands on the Google Pixel 2 XL and try out these new Augmented Reality features.