Snap Inc., the company behind the Snapchat social app and Spectacles AR glasses, has partnered with Niantic Spatial to bring accurate geospatial capabilities to their platforms. This collaboration aims to enhance Snap’s platforms with city-scale positioning capabilities and provide Niantic with user-generated data to improve its Visual Positioning System.
Current AR devices can localize themselves within an environment, but for multiple devices to interact in a shared space, they need to localize themselves with regards to each other. Niantic’s Visual Positioning System allows AR devices to tap into a shared spatial map for synchronized content in multiplayer experiences.
The partnership between Niantic and Snap Inc. will integrate VPS into Snapchat and Spectacles, enabling developers to anchor AR experiences to real-world locations with centimeter-level precision. This will allow for immersive AR moments that multiple users can experience simultaneously in the same location.
The strategic partnership includes a capital investment by Snap into Niantic, benefiting both companies. Snap gains access to a comprehensive city-scale positioning system, while Niantic receives valuable user-generated data to enhance its VPS system.
Niantic’s focus on user-generated scans for spatial understanding has been evident in games like Ingress and Pokemon Go. With the integration of VPS into Snapchat and Spectacles, users may contribute scans to unlock certain AR experiences, enriching Niantic’s dataset and improving the accuracy of its mapping.
With 900 million Snapchat users, Snap and Niantic have a significant opportunity to build the most extensive geospatial AR dataset in the industry, leveraging user-generated data for innovative spatial experiences.
