June 1 (Portaltic/EP) –
niantic has presented Wol, his first mixed reality experiencewhich uses the function Metaversal Deployment to adapt Augmented Reality (AR) to different platforms, including the meta quest pro viewerand that uses the character of a owl with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to explain information about the nature of forests.
In this sense, from the American software development company they have expressed the importance that the AR experiences connect users to the real world and encourage them to explore it in an immersive way.
To do this, Niantic has presented its first mixed reality experience that materializes in a character named Wola burrowing owl or round-headed owl that guides the user through a redwood forest and teaches users facts about nature and the environment.
Specifically, wol he is a driven character by AI that is capable of having natural conversations with usersin which it gives information about plants on the forest floor, the life cycle of a tree or even the fauna that inhabits the area, as Niantic explains in a statement on its website.
In fact, Wol is capable of carrying out other actions such as tell jokes, stories from your life or sing some of your favorite songs. Likewise, during the experience the user will be able to observe how the forest grows around them.
The mixed reality experience has been powered by the Niantic-owned platform, 8th Wall, that allows developers create an AR web project and deploy it on different platformsincluding ‘smartphones’ tablets and mixed reality viewers, thanks to the function Metaversal Deployment.
This feature was initially developed for a “new responsive web” where immersive websites could adapt to an ecosystem of devices, including both flat screens and viewers. This way, developers can get a “broader” reach for the content they create.
In this framework, Niantic has indicated that the Wol experience is available in limited web version forks compatible with iOS and Android smartphonesbut, in addition, it has been optimized for use in mixed reality devices Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2combining the user’s physical environment with the virtual one and with a “full color” mixed reality step.
On Quest devices, the Wol experience uses your room setup functionwhich understands where the walls and surfaces are in the room where the user is and uses them to adapt the redwood forest space. Also, use the function hand tracking and spatial audio to get a “more realistic” experience.
“We believe that the mixed reality that the web project uses has the potential to revolutionize the way immersive experiences are built and sharedand we’re excited to see what the 8th Wall developer community creates in the future”commented the product manager of the Meta Developer Platform, Nilesh Patel.
On the other hand, Niantic has also pointed out that Wol was developed in association with Liquid Citya platform that is based on the specialized design in mixed reality and AIwith the goal of “shaping a positive future for technology in society.”
Similarly, another of the characteristics used has been 8th Wall Cloud Editor. It’s about your Cloud-based IDE (Integrated Development Environment), that offers all the necessary tools so that the teams “create, collaborate and publish immersive experiences” on all devices.
For the owl creationNiantic used the AI character development platform, Inworld AI, that consists of various machine learning and character AI models using technology capable of imitate human gestures, speech, emotions, and memory.
Niantic has remarked that this project is the result of combining “the latest technology” of the 8th Wall platforms of Niantic, Inworld and Meta, making it the first web experience of its kind for the browser.
