Apple is set to unveil iOS 12 at WWDC on Monday, which will include an update to ARKit. ARKit 2.0, an upgrade to the existing ARKit 1.5 SDK, will give developers even more tools to build awesome AR experiences.
According to a new report from Reuters, ARKit 2.0 will allow multiple iOS devices to share the same virtual environment. This means that developers would be able to build multi-player AR experiences for their users while limiting the amount of private data that is sent to the cloud.
Currently, ARKit only allows developers to build single-player experiences. An expansion to bring peer-to-peer communication to the toolset would be a great improvement that would catch Apple up to Google’s ARCore technology. The key feature in this anticipated toolkit from Apple is that the privacy of user data would be taken more seriously.
“Apple designed its two-player system to work phone-to-phone in part because of those privacy concerns, one of the people familiar with the matter said. The approach, which has not been previously reported, differs from Google’s, which requires scans of a player’s environment to be sent to, and stored in, the cloud.”
Full details on the new technology stack are still unknown, but we can expect to hear a lot more about it from WWDC on Monday. Augmented Reality is expected to be a big area of focus for Apple going forward, with CRO Tim Cook calling AR “big and profound.”
