Niantic, the company behind some of the most popular location-based AR experiences currently available (Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom), today announced that it has officially purchased the WebAR development platform 8th Wall in what could easily be one of the most important acquisitions this year.

8th Wall allows developers to craft complex interactive AR experiences accessible on a variety of up-to-date mobile devices. Unlike standard AR experiences that required a dedicated app, 8th Wall’s WebAR technology allows you to access high-end AR content directly from a compatible WebAR browser, such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

Similar to other AR platforms, 8th Wall features a variety of tools that allow developers to craft various types of interactive AR content. This includes everything from world effects and face filters to image targets; pretty much everything a developer could want out of an all-in-one AR engine.

Over the past four years, over 50,000 AR experiences were developed using 8th Wall’s WebAR platform, such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse interactive face filter to fully-playable Pac-Man game developed for Pizz Hut. Other notable partnerships include LEGO, Porsche, Nike, Honda, and Broadway just to name a few.

Last year it was revealed that Niantic was in the development of its own AR metaverse by making its Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Developer Kit available to developers around the world. Needless to say, Niantic incorporating WebAR technology into its future apps could be a veritable game-changer for the AR industry.

“We started 8th Wall to build powerful computer vision technology that would enable developers to create AR applications that could run everywhere seamlessly. We did this with a complete set of tools to create WebAR,” said Erik Murphy-Chutorian, CEO and Founder of 8th Wall in an official release.

“There is so much potential for web-based augmented reality and we will continue to unlock this through the lens of Niantic’s real-world AR universe. We are looking forward to working with Niantic to create the best planet-scale platform technologies to foster even more magical shared experiences.“

For more information on 8th Wall’s WebAR technology visit here. You can learn more about Niantic and its numerous projects here.

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