Apple Wants In On Virtual and Augmented Reality
On Monday at WWDC, Apple announced some major changes to their Software & Hardware lineups that go all in on VR/AR and high performance rendering. After serious criticism on their last Macbook release, they needed to address the concerns about their machines performance if they wanted to take back the interest from creators they lost over the last couple years - And it looks like we finally have the answers we wanted.
There are some pretty major updates to iMac Pro Series & OSX Sierra, now dubbed “High Sierra”, that support developers focusing on VR & AR. The Pro can handle processors up to 22 teraflops, ECC memory up to 128GBs, and up to 4 terabytes of SSD storage. They also upgraded the thermal cooling system with two fans that will help for high performance rendering in both Animation & Videography.
But beyond just the spec upgrades, they also announced they’ve been in talks with Valve to implement the SteamVR SDK , as well as working with Unity & Unreal to bring more game development engines to the iMac. This is all despite notoriously hard times gaining footing with the gaming community, but it’s a step in the right direction.
John Knoll, the Chief Creative Officer at Industrial Light & Magic (the official VFX studio for LucasFilms) also took the stage at WWDC to explain how this would improve developer workflows, and showed off just how well the new upgrades work. Working together with Lauren Ridge from Epic Games, they live demoed in Mixed Reality, all powered by the iMac Pro.
Demonstrating the machines capabilities inside a virtual scene from Star Wars using the Vive & Touch Controllers seemed pretty smooth at a persistent 90fps, even as they handled some GPU-heavy Object Scaling & Character Imports with Unreal. All of the new bells and whistles serve to “ enable the next generation of storytellers” — as Knoll put it. It’s great they’re taking covering their bases for designers, since positioning themselves as Creators-First is essential if Apple is going to pull developers from their PC’s.
But the more exciting news came with their updates for iOS 11. Among the new features and controls for their mobile UI, they showed off a new Augmented Reality Developer Kit, aptly named “ARKit”. The new app gives you some basic controls for AR using the native iPhone camera, giving you the power to place objects onto surfaces and interact with them.
Of course, they had to show off their new tech with some simple Pokemon Go, if only just to prime the audience before demoing a full scale space war in front of 5,000 developers. But they also managed to showcase some more subtle tools for the kit as well — In this case it was a virtual cup of coffee in front of Craig Federigh, Apples Senior VP of Software Engineering, complete with a virtual lamp to provide dynamic lighting & shadows as you move the objects around.
While the official updates are pretty cool, none of it is actually new. It was actually pretty expected when you consider how much CEO Tim Cook has been advocating for AR & VR platform support in the past. In standard Apple fashion, they’ve taken the most popular components of various 3rd party apps & hardware teams to develop their own systems. Accurate Spatial tracking was done on Tango long before iOS 11 was even on the radar, and Facebook demoed a very similar Coffee Cup AR experiment earlier this year at their annual developer conference, F8. But what is interesting about these releases, is the infrastructure that Apple can now deploy these tools to almost immediately.
Facebook might have had the first major AR platform when they announced AR Studio back in April, but Apple is playing to it’s strengths when they say they’re looking to have the largest AR platform in the world. Mass Adoption is their game, and throwing AR & VR support in the hands of 78 million people is nothing to scoff at. Couple this with rumors of a shiny new 3d sensor coming in September of this year (courtesy of Himax), and you now have some serious firing power for Apple to make moves with into immersive entertainment.
But what’s the long term plan here? If they’re just playing catch up, why even play the game at all? The thing is, everyone is still onboard the hype for VR. Google Daydream, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive already own the market. Apple debuting a VR headset viewer would be underwhelming to say the least. Instead of jumping on the hype train, they’re playing this one close to the chest — Focusing on Mobile software vs physical hardware. While everyone else scrambles to convince you to strap a headset to your face, Apple wants you to just pick up your phone and start pointing it at things. The device is already in your pocket, and its usable right now. It seems like a no-brainer.
Using a combination of Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and a deep network of hardware providers to power the entire thing, Apple is poising themselves near the front of the pack for creatives to take full advantage of new immersive tools. Whether or not this means companies like Facebook or Samsung have anything to worry about, remains to be seen.
Basic AR & VR support is by no means a rally cry for die-hard users to declare victory, but its a start in the right direction. And we still have a long way to go before we see anything like full AR glasses made by Apple. But with the worlds largest tech company in history jumping into the fray, it makes the rest of the world move that much quicker, Which means good things for consumers in the end.
I on the other hand, am still holding out for AR contact lenses. Call me when they’re ready for pickup, Tim.
