Pokemon Go Developer Niantic Plans to Build AR Maps With Users’ Help
Pokemon Go, plans to develop map the world in 3D with its players’ help, its chief executive told Reuters establishing the startup as a frontrunner in a new facet of digital mapping.
What the company describes as an “AR map” is viewed as crucial to advanced augmented reality apps. But how to efficiently collect and process data for it has been a vexing problem that Alphabet’s Google, Apple and dozens of startups also have been trying to solve.
Niantic’s previously unreported effort relies on its users’ smartphone cameras.
“We want players to build out the game board they want to play on,” CEO John Hanke, a mapping veteran who worked on Google Earth and Google Street View, told Reuters last week.
