As we all know, Pokémon Go came out a few months ago. It became a really huge hit, it grossed > $440 million from around a month ago, it has iirc around 500 million downloads.
Niantic has had a lot of work to do to get the game out worldwide and now they are having to improve the content.
Where are they going to go from here though? They can release new Pokemon generations to get people to catch more Pokémon. What else?
One thing that is on my mind which is relevant to it and AR is HD Mapping. Ingress seemed revolutionary at the time with having a game where you play by travelling to locations using GPS. Pokémon Go has borrowed that idea but the gameplay has potential to improve.
What we know of the gameplay in Pokémon Go is that it's very 2D. The map gives you a location of where you are and where Pokémon appear. When you find a Pokémon it appears relative to where your camera was facing, you never have to look at the sky to catch a flying Pokémon or at water to catch a water Pokémon.
So what does this have to do with HD Mapping?
Here are some links to help explain.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/hd-mapping-system.html
http://automotive.tomtom.com/en/highly-automated-driving/highly-detailed-map
Not long ago there was a keynote at GTC Europe given by Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang linked here:
https://youtu.be/npzRyTimcZo
(The only relevant part about HD Mapping I can remember starts at 1 hour 28 minutes)
It's a long video and I can't check right now where he talks about HD Mapping and self-driving cars showing video demonstrations of it. (The keynote also talks about Deep Learning and AI)
The point of these links is to show where mapping is going to due self-driving cars. They are becoming more detailed and showing environments in 3D, with Deep Learning we'll now have AI continuously updating the data sent to servers since no one environment stays the same over time.
So, just like how GPS appeared in cars and then ended up in phones. We could have HD Mapping on our smartphones in the near future.
What does HD Mapping mean for Pokémon Go or AR gaming in general?
It means our playing environments change from 2D to 3D. Where you only had to go to a general location to catch a Pokémon, you may have to look at specific part of the ground to catch a rattata or at tree height to catch a zubat. This could be improved upon further by making Pokémon appear at unique locations like at the top of a famous landmark.
Anyway, this was just one idea related to Pokémon Go and AR gaming seeing as the tech for HD Mapping is already in use by TomTom so the quicker the adoption of HD Mapping occurs due to tech for Autonomous Cars, the quicker we'll have HD Maps on our phones for our local walking environments to play AR games with. (And finding locations more easily.)
Edit: Just thought of something, to deal with mapping off-road areas they could use Autonomous Drones.
Niantic has had a lot of work to do to get the game out worldwide and now they are having to improve the content.
Where are they going to go from here though? They can release new Pokemon generations to get people to catch more Pokémon. What else?
One thing that is on my mind which is relevant to it and AR is HD Mapping. Ingress seemed revolutionary at the time with having a game where you play by travelling to locations using GPS. Pokémon Go has borrowed that idea but the gameplay has potential to improve.
What we know of the gameplay in Pokémon Go is that it's very 2D. The map gives you a location of where you are and where Pokémon appear. When you find a Pokémon it appears relative to where your camera was facing, you never have to look at the sky to catch a flying Pokémon or at water to catch a water Pokémon.
So what does this have to do with HD Mapping?
Here are some links to help explain.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/hd-mapping-system.html
http://automotive.tomtom.com/en/highly-automated-driving/highly-detailed-map
Not long ago there was a keynote at GTC Europe given by Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang linked here:
https://youtu.be/npzRyTimcZo
(The only relevant part about HD Mapping I can remember starts at 1 hour 28 minutes)
It's a long video and I can't check right now where he talks about HD Mapping and self-driving cars showing video demonstrations of it. (The keynote also talks about Deep Learning and AI)
The point of these links is to show where mapping is going to due self-driving cars. They are becoming more detailed and showing environments in 3D, with Deep Learning we'll now have AI continuously updating the data sent to servers since no one environment stays the same over time.
So, just like how GPS appeared in cars and then ended up in phones. We could have HD Mapping on our smartphones in the near future.
What does HD Mapping mean for Pokémon Go or AR gaming in general?
It means our playing environments change from 2D to 3D. Where you only had to go to a general location to catch a Pokémon, you may have to look at specific part of the ground to catch a rattata or at tree height to catch a zubat. This could be improved upon further by making Pokémon appear at unique locations like at the top of a famous landmark.
Anyway, this was just one idea related to Pokémon Go and AR gaming seeing as the tech for HD Mapping is already in use by TomTom so the quicker the adoption of HD Mapping occurs due to tech for Autonomous Cars, the quicker we'll have HD Maps on our phones for our local walking environments to play AR games with. (And finding locations more easily.)
Edit: Just thought of something, to deal with mapping off-road areas they could use Autonomous Drones.
