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Google's Project Tango is shutting down because ARCore is already here
Google said today that it'll be shutting down Project Tango next year, on March 1st. Project Tango was an early effort from Google to bring augmented reality to phones, but it never really panned out. The system was introduced in 2014 and made it into developer kits and even a couple consumer devices as recently as last year.
But those devices required special sensors. And in the meantime, Google (and competitors, like Apple) figured out ways to bring AR features to phones with just the hardware that's already on board. Google introduced a new augmented reality system, known as ARCore, in late August. It just brought that system to the Pixel and Pixel 2 in the form of some augmented reality stickers — immediately opening AR features to more people than Tango is likely to have reached in its lifetime.
Also at Ars Technica, TechCrunch.
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(Score: 2) by rob_on_earth on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:21AM
Saw the demos on the BBC couple of years ago and was really excited. The hardware would be expensive but unlock the 3D-ness of any environment you were in and really looked like the future.
As it was adopted the cost, size and availability would all adapt to the market and we would end up with a commodity component that makes anything from a phone to a Raspberry Pi or VR head set fully aware of the 3D layout of the area you were in.
I got a Pixel phone earlier in the year and after hearing all the VR talk around its capabilities I expected it to have Tango built in. But no, same old accelerometer rubbish that makes me very sick.
Maybe if they open-sourced it. We need the cost of the hardware and processing to come way down before it would be truly viable.