April 24, 2019 – Earlier this year, Google partnered with recording artist Childish Gambino to create an AR ‘Playmoji’ version of himself that dances and reacts to users in their photos and videos in Playground, a creative mode in the Pixel camera. In a blog post, Google has now announced the launch of Childish Gambino’s new multiplayer AR app called PHAROS AR, wherein users can journey through his universe to the tune of his latest music.
The experience begins with the user opening an AR portal and walking through it to explore an augmented cave where they can find and interact with hidden glyphs while still being able to see out into the real world. After finding all the hidden glyphs, the user’s journey continues to more worlds throughout Childish Gambino’s universe. Users can experience the AR adventure alone, or share with friends as they view and interact with visual elements simultaneously.
The app is built with ARCore, Google’s developer platform for building AR experiences, and Unity, a real-time 3D development platform. With ARCore, developers can build apps that blend the digital and physical worlds—creating experiences such as PHAROS AR that bring what a user sees on a phone screen into their actual surroundings. PHAROS AR uses ARCore’s Cloud Anchors API for the multiplayer experience, meaning the experience is not confined to only Android devices, but is available across Apple iOS devices as well.
PHAROS AR is available on Android now, and coming soon to iOS.
Image credit: Google
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Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.