As Apple prepares a massive update to its iPhone operating system designed to thrust augmented reality into the mainstream, Google is hatching its own plan to get augmented reality apps on millions of Android phones by next year. Unlike virtual reality, which completely blocks out the physical world, augmented reality overlays visuals and information onto a person's immediate surroundings — for example, when viewed through a smartphone or tablet screen. David Burke, the company's vice president of Android engineering, said in a blog post that his team wants to have 100 million devices capable of running augmented reality apps built with ARCore by the end of the preview. The announcement comes nearly three months after Apple announced its own augmented reality development platform for developers, called ARKit, in June. Google says apps built with ARCore will run on devices that have Google's 7.0 Nougat operating systems, starting with Samsung's Galaxy S8 and Google's own Pixel smartphone.

Source: CBC News August 29, 2017 21:00 UTC