Niantic’s Campfire app will finally let ‘Pokémon Go’ players chat together

Transfer over Discord, Niantic has its personal messaging resolution in thoughts for Pokémon Go gamers: a social AR app referred to as Campfire. It will allow you to arrange for occasions, uncover new places and share content material with different gamers. Consider it like a hyper-local social community constructed fully for AR—it is “the ‘homepage’ of the real-world Metaverse,” as Niantic says (as if that makes issues any clearer). Campfire is already reside in Ingress, the corporate’s first AR sport, and it will be headed to all of its titles beginning this summer season.

Pokémon Go gamers have sometimes relied on Discord and different platforms to speak with others. Given Nintendo and the Pokémon Firm’s squeamishness round social networking, it probably would have been tough for Niantic to construct social options straight into the sport. Finally, it makes extra sense to launch a separate app that may tie into all the firm’s experiences.

On prime of Campfire, Niantic additionally unveiled Lightship VPS (digital positioning system), a brand new platform that can let builders extra precisely study the place and orientation of customers. They’re going to additionally have the ability to anchor AR content material in place with “centimeter-level” precision, in accordance with Niantic. That’ll assist devs produce higher localization and persistence, that are crucial components in any AR expertise. To energy VPS, the corporate has produced 3D maps in over 30,000 places throughout six cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, London and Tokyo), primarily based on brief video contributions from gamers.