Google on Tuesday announced the rollout of several gaming, shopping and home, and creativity apps based on the tech giant's ARCore 1.0 augmented reality SDK (Software Development Kit). Having gone out of preview at MWC 2018, ARCore 1.0 apps and games can be tried out on over 100 million Android devices. 13 handsets were previously reported to have support for the SDK. These include Google's entire Pixel smartphone range; Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S7, and Galaxy S7 Edge; LG's V30 and V30+; OnePlus 5; and Asus ZenFone AR.
In terms of gaming, ARCore 1.0 gets the likes of My Tamagotchi Forever from Bandai Namco, Walking Dead Our World (pre-registration), and TendAR from Tender Claws (available starting July 2018). In the Shopping and Home category, apps like Pottery Barn 360 Room View let you personalise furniture design and placement, eBay helps sellers determine shipping box size, Streem connects customers with professionals to sort household maintenance requests, and Sotheby's International Realty is focused on staging furniture for the real estate market.
Lastly, Google has launched an in-house AR app called Just a Line. Started as an "AR experiment", the app is currently available on the Play Store. It lets users draw white lines in augmented reality, and share the result in the form of short videos. The app will also be available for all ARCore-compatible smartphones. "We're open sourcing the core code of the app so developers can use it as a starting point for their own ARCore projects, and we're excited to see what people create with Just a Line," said Nathan Martz, Product Manager, Google AR and VR in a blog post.
The abovementioned games and app can be installed on ARCore-enabled handsets in select countries.
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