Google has announced an upcoming AR game, Space Invaders: World Defense, which is built as a showcase of the company’s latest AR tool.
Over the last few years Google has been steadily working on its AR developer toolset, ARCore. This week at Google IO 2023, the company added a brand new tool to its kit called Geospatial Creator.
Geospatial Creator gives developers the ability to create world-anchored digital content that will appear in the same location for all users. Built on a foundation of both ARCore and 3D data from Google Maps, it’s competes with Niantic’s Lightship AR platform, and is getting integrations for both Unity and Adobe Aero.
To showcase the latest capabilities of ARCore, Google has teamed up with Taito Corporation, the original developer of arcade hit Space Invaders (1978), to build a brand new city-scale AR game called Space Invaders: World Defense.
Planned to launch later this Summer—fittingly aligned with the 45 year anniversary of the original game—Space Invaders: World Defense will purportedly have players “defend the earth from Space Invaders in their neighborhood,” and will “combine AR and 3D gameplay to deliver a fully contextual and highly engaging immersive experience that connects multi-generations of players.”
Sadly we’ve yet to see a glimpse of any real gameplay, so it isn’t clear just how the game will work, but with any luck we’ll eventually find more information from the game’s official website.
During its I/O 2023 event yesterday, Google announced it had officially removed the waitlist for its AI-powered chatbot Bard and made the service available in 180 countries and territories.
Sadly for most Europeans keen on testing the tech giant’s contribution to the generative AI race, the countries of the European Union are not included in the list.
The company has not made any comments on why the EU has been left out. However, it would not be too far-fetched to assume it has something to do with how members of the bloc have reacted to the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
In all likelihood, Google is also waiting for the finalisation of the EU’s much-anticipated AI Act, before unleashing Bard across the continent. The leading European Parliament committees gave their approval for the act earlier today, with a tentative plenary adoption date scheduled for 14 June.
While not offering any specific plans for increased geographical access, Google says it will “gradually expand to more countries and territories in a way that is consistent with local regulations and our AI principles.”
Trained on Google’s new model
Along with the release of Bard to much of the world (and sharp VPN wielders), Google also introduced a range of new features to the chatbot. First of all, it is now powered by Google’s newest large language model: PaLM2, an upgraded version of PaLM, released in April. Meanwhile, Bard was still introduced as a “conversational AI experiment.”
According to Sissie Hsiao, Google VP and General Manager for Google Assistant and Bard, the chatbot has now been trained in 20 programming languages. This means that users can ask it to produce, debug and improve code in, for instance, C++, Python, and JavaScript.
In addition, users can now switch to the apparently much-requested dark mode. But what’s more, they can also create images through Bard, using Adobe’s AI art generator Firefly via an extension feature that allows it to integrate with third party apps and platforms.
Soon you can ask Bard/Firefly to generate unicorns and cakes for you. Credit: Google
Thus far, Bard is available in English, Japanese, and Korean, but Google says it is on track to support 40 languages.
Will it be up to snuff?
In a move generally considered to have been premature, Bard was released two months ago for select users in the US and the UK. Consensus has been that in effort to keep up with competitors, Google rushed the introduction of the chatbot before it was ready.
As a result, the company faced the ridicule of not only tech savvy commentators, but also its own employees. As reported by Bloomberg, phrases such as “pathological liar” and “cringe-worthy” were thrown about on internal messaging boards. But what is one of the big five to do when its very core business is under threat?
To say that Google is enamoured by artificial intelligence at the moment would be something of an understatement. For I/O 2023, it came armed with a ton of new AI announcements, beyond Bard. In fact, Sundar Pichai opened the event by once more stating that Google has “reimagined” all its core products.
And speaking of core businesses, Google Search is getting something the company calls “AI-powered snapshots.” When users opt in for the brand new Search Generative Experience, the search engine will produce AI-powered answers at the top of the results.
Other products that are getting an AI makeover are Gmail and Docs, where you can prompt AI to “help me write” things such as potentially tricky emails or job applications. Sheets now has a function called “help me create” to help you set up tables with anything you may need when it comes to, say, running a business (dog walking was the example offered by Google during the presentation probably because, well, dogs).
Maps is getting something called Immersive View, which will allow you to visually walk, cycle, or drive a specific route complete with predicted weather conditions, before you actually get out the door. It will be rolled out across 15 cities, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Dublin, Florence, London, Paris, and Venice by the end of the year.
Whether or not much of Europe will get to test the mettle of the ‘new and improved’ Bard by then is another matter.
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Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, the company’s work-focused version of its iconic but once maligned smartglasses, is being discontinued.
Google says in a device support FAQ that, starting March 15th, it will no longer sell Glass Enterprise 2, adding that it will only support the device until September 15th, 2023.
While the company says it’s not pushing out any more software for Glass Enterprise Edition after that date, however its most recent system images will remain publicly available until at least April 1st, 2024.
Launched in 2017, Google Glass for enterprise was a revival of sorts, as the company had ceased production of the storied device in 2015.
Google Glass Explorer Edition | Image courtesy Alphabet
Starting in 2012, the company was hoping to seed the device among prosumers with its Glass Explorer Editions, although public backlash spawned the term “glasshole,” putting a severe dent in Google’s ambitions to launch a more consumer-focused version of the device.
Google hasn’t explained why it’s killing off Glass for enterprise. In response to PC Mag, a Google spokesperson left this comment:
“For years, we’ve been building AR into many Google products and we’ll continue to look at ways to bring new, innovative AR experiences across our product portfolio.”
To be fair, Google probably has bigger fish to fry, and the aging smartglasses platform may well be replaced sooner rather than later. Google said last summer it would be conducting real world tests of its early AR prototypes, emphasizing things like real-time translation and AR turn-by-turn navigation.
There’s also the issue of emerging competition. Apple’s upcoming mixed reality (MR) headset is rumored to arrive sometime in mid-2023, while Meta is prepping multiple generations of its MR Quest headsets.
Granted, these MR headsets probably won’t be the model workhorses, although many companies see MR headsets as a steppingstone in preparation for the sort of all-day AR glasses industry is hoping to commercialize in the near future.
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To be clear, Google Glass is a style of smartglass(es) and not an AR device as such; Glass provides a single heads-up display (HUD) that doesn’t place digital imagery naturally in the user’s perceived environment, like with HoloLens 2 or Magic Leap 2, but rather flatly projects the sort of useful information you might also see on a smartwatch. You can learn more about the differences between AR headsets and smartglasses here.
Samsung’s 2023 Unpacked event was all about the company’s Galaxy S23 hardware, although at the end of its hour-long presentation the South Korean tech giant announced it was working with Qualcomm and Google to develop an XR device.
TM Roh, Samsung’s president and head of mobile experiences, didn’t reveal any more than what was said on stage, namely the existence of the partnership itself, however speaking to The Washington Post he announced the companies are “getting there,” and that the XR device was “not too far away.”
It’s not clear what sort of device it will be, since ‘XR’ essentially covers the entire gamut of immersive headsets, including augmented reality (e.g. HoloLens), virtual reality (e.g. Meta Quest 2), and mixed reality (e.g. Meta Quest Pro). Our best bet though is on a standalone MR headset, which uses passthrough cameras to layer computer-generated visuals on top of the user’s physical space, essentially replicating the experience you might have on a see-through AR display, albeit on a VR device.
As you’d imagine, Qualcomm is tasked with building the XR device’s chipset, while Samsung will manufacture the headset’s hardware. Software will be provided by Google; WaPo reports it will be running on “the unannounced version of the Android operating system meant specifically to power devices such as wearable displays.”
With the exception of Qualcomm, which not only produces XR-specific chipsets but also regularly shows of its own XR headset references, both Samsung and Google’s commitment to the project are kind of a long-awaited homecoming.
Samsung was one of the first truly massive tech companies to develop VR hardware. Starting in 2014, the company partnered with Meta (then Oculus) on the Samsung Gear VR platform, which paired the Galaxy Note 4 phone with a headset shell sporting an optimized intertidal Measurment unit (IMU). Samsung Gear VR was essentially the first high-quality 3DOF mobile VR experience offered to consumers, marking a stark departure from the sort VR experiences you could find on Google’s more open, but decidedly lower-quality Cardboard platform.
Notably, Samsung hasn’t released a VR product since the launch of the PC VR headset Odyssey+. Like seemingly all big tech firms these days, it appears to be working on AR glasses.
Smasung Odyssey+ | Image courtesy Samsung
Google, although reportedly also working on AR device, similarly shelved its VR ambitions when it discontinued its standalone Daydream platform in 2019, something which at the time was essentially the nail in the company’s Android VR coffin. Google previously worked with Lenovo in 2018 to produce its first and only standalone Daydream VR headset, the Lenovo Mirage Solo, which offered 6DOF room-scale tracking while providing only a single 3DOF clicker-style controller.
Since then, Google has only really been vocal about its experimental system for immersive video chatting, Project Starline, which lets people engage in face-to-face video chats without needing an AR or VR headset.
Typically, we’d say Mobile World Congress 2023 would be the next logical place to share more info about the XR hardware partnership. Samsung, Qualcomm and Google will all be present, so we may just learn more there when the week-long event kicks off in Barcelona, Spain on February 27th.
