Google Play Services for AR

Google Play Services for AR is the development kit for Android that the search engine company has designed to bring augmented reality closer to mobiles.

The SDK that provides support for augmented reality

Augmented reality has become a common element on almost all smartphones thanks to various applications focused on our free time or our professional tasks. Google has been working in the field for a while and this has resulted in ARCore, an SDK developed to offer us augmented reality support for Android.

Augmented reality for everyone

Google Play Services for AR Development Kit gives us the advantage over others that it will be compatible with over 100 million devices from all over the world without the need for any special hardware. In addition, we expect this list to expand quickly.

How it works is based on the fact that our camera takes care of setting anchor points in a space to determine our position and orientation of our smartphone at every moment. So we can place virtual objects with a lot of precision, e.g. on horizontal surfaces and adjust their dimensions according to the height of the object or the ceiling. The room light sensor, in turn, helps the virtual objects adapt to the lighting conditions of the scenario.

Regarding compatibility issues, it is currently supported by Samsung, Pixel or Noki models while we wait for the list of compatible phones to grow in the near future.

Requirements and further information:

• ARCore is currently not compatible with too many mobile devices.

• Minimum operating system requirements: Android 7.0.