Google Ending Support For Project Tango on March 1, 2018

A tweet from the official Project Tango Twitter handle, on Friday, announced that support for Project Tango will be ‘turned down’ starting March 1, 2018. The project was Google’s initial effort to bring augmented reality to smartphones before it unveiled ARCore.

According to the tweet, the Mountain View-based internet firm will continue the augmented reality journey with its ARCore technology. This development comes almost three years after Project Tango was first introduced back in 2014.

We’re turning down support for Tango on March 1, 2018. Thank you to our incredible community of developers who made such progress with Tango over the last three years. We look forward to continuing the journey with you on ARCore. https://t.co/aYiSUkgyie

— Tango (@projecttango) December 15, 2017

Project Tango utilized a combination of hardware and software to create AR-compatible environments with depth perception and area learning. The use cases for Project Tango were not varied, apart from a few games that took advantage of it. According to Pocket-Lint Tango also had capabilities that could be used to map indoor locations, which could have helped map indoor buildings on Google Maps.

Launched last year, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro was the world’s first Tango smartphone. The Asus ZenFone AR was one of the only few smartphones to be compatible with Tango.

Unveiled in August this year, Google’s ARCore will replace the efforts of Project Tango which will employ tools to make augmented reality apps for mobiles using the Android operating system.

ARCore was initially available on Google’s Pixel smartphones as well as the Samsung Galaxy S8. Google had announced that ARCore will soon be available for most Android 7.0 Nougat phones.

ARCore utilizes a combination of three factors :-

1. Motion Tracking: Using the phone’s camera, ARCore supposedly determines both the position and orientation (pose) of the phone as it moves.
2. Environmental understanding: Google claims ARCore can detect horizontal surfaces using the same feature points it uses for motion tracking.
3. Light estimation: ARCore claims to observe the ambient light in the environment, making it possible for developers to light virtual objects in ways that match their surroundings.[related-posts]

source: NDTV news and Google Posts