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

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

Pokémon Go players have usually relied on Discord and different platforms to speak with others. Given Nintendo and the Pokémon Company’s squeamishness round social networking, it probably would have been troublesome for Niantic to construct social options straight into the sport. Ultimately, it makes extra sense to launch a separate app that may tie into the entire firm’s experiences.

On high of Campfire, Niantic additionally unveiled Lightship VPS (digital positioning system), a brand new platform that will let builders extra precisely study the place and orientation of customers. They’ll additionally be capable 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 an important 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), based mostly on brief video contributions from players.