Have Pikachu and Pals Brought AR to the Public?

David McDonald, CEO/founding partner, Rattle

At Rattle, we’ve certainly been beating the drum for AR - which is sometimes seen as a poor relation to VR. Whilst VR delivers a completely immersive experience, AR enables millions of users today to instantly connect the digital and physical world in a more personal way, linking familiar and real world surroundings with creative digital experiences.

Pokémon Go is a great illustration of how AR can be used to capture the user’s imagination. It’s super-fast adoption by millions of people is evidence that AR is delivering immersive and relevant experiences in a very crowded games space.

Sol Rogers, founder and CEO of REWIND:VR

Both AR and VR are yet to gain true mainstream acceptance yet Pokémon Go has been such a phenomenon that more people than ever before are beginning to gain access to this technology. The nature of bleeding edge platforms means that there will initially be a disconnect between the tech and the public, but now that AR is available to people on their smartphones, I hope we’ll start to see more of an investment in these emerging technologies.

We always say that bad content in any medium is still ultimately bad content, and using the latest technology to try to make something more exciting or accessible doesn’t always work. But Pokémon Go definitely shows that the public are willing to use this sort of technology... Would they be as interested if the AR element was an advert for cereal instead of a way to catch a magical monster? Perhaps not.

AR is already beginning to evolve into what we know as ‘MR’ or ‘Mixed Reality’ through projects like HoloLens and Magic Leap. These will be head mounted display systems which overlay 3D graphics onto your real world, much like current AR is doing through smartphone platforms. Both companies and their respective headsets have a huge amount of investment behind them, which will hopefully allow for a fully refined AR experience that people can use on a day-to-day basis to enhance their living experiences.

Luke Ritchie, executive producer interactive arts, Nexus London

In the hysteria of everything VR, did AR just go mainstream? 

Mid 2015, interactive arts started getting into AR again. I hadn't actually made an AR project for close on five years but with the new focus on VR, and then the announcement of Microsoft’s Hololens, the marketing buzz and investment of the Magic Leap, and Google's Tango enabled phone, AR was having a revival. 

Just this year, interactive arts made a touring AR installation for Qualcomm (Invisible Museum), and augmented the front cover of the New Yorker magazine with the very talented Christoph Neiman. 

This of course makes absolute sense. All the technology we need (fast mobile devices, game rendering engines and app stores) has improved immensely since the last time AR was in the news. Also AR headsets aren't commercially available yet and they also come with chunky hardware, like VR devices. To be honest, now is the perfect time for mobile-based AR with such a low barrier for entry - just through downloading an app (for free, no less!). 

Now the proof in the pudding. Pokémon Go is the highest grossing app of all time (in the space of just a few weeks) and it's AR. 

To say it has a huge following is a gigantic understatement - it's fundamentally changed Nintendo's share price overnight. It's hard to think of another game which is as social, competitive and local that has swallowed up everyone's social news feeds for weeks on end. If you were already fans of the game Ingress, then it's no surprise that it's from the same company. No-one else has been collecting a better wealth of location data from another game. 

There is another big AR player though... SnapChat. A really interesting post by Josh Miller refers to Snapchat's AR integration as the dark horse of the AR race. And it's true. Snapchat has a huge audience that's been making AR content for a while now, but no-one has really thought of them as an AR competitor.

As brands explore VR and AR, it always seems to take one killer experience to push these new technologies or platforms into the mainstream. While all the focus has mainly been on VR in the past year, the killer app is actually an AR app. I suspect that for the next few months or until we have a killer VR app, the tables have turned and it's going to be all about Pokémon Go and AR. 

Expect big implications on the AR mobile market and digital content makers all round. SnapChat and Pokémon Go prove that's there's a market for smart experiences that augment the world around you... That alone is a huge step forward for technology and the brands wishing to explore new creative possibilities.