A New Augmented Reality Platform to be Created by Facebook

Author: Dima Titov

During the latest Facebook Developer Conference: F8, Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed the camera the most important AR tool while announcing a new AR development platform for “Camera Effects Platform”.

Zuckerberg’s opinion: AR glasses are far from being market ready but everyone has a phone camera. “Primitive versions” of AR products, like Pokémon Go and face filters, proved to be successful, so let’s develop a camera-first future. The prime examples of use include adding digital objects to the physical world and displaying additional information onto real-world objects like directions on buildings and image processing filters.

Read more about the future of AR startups in our blog post Augmented Reality Start-up Ideas.

So far, Facebook is preparing two main development instruments: Frame Studio (for face filters) and AR Studio (for cool AR effects). Frame Studio is available for everyone. AR Studio is in a closed beta, available for developers upon application.

With the introduction of this new platform, Facebook expects to take on Snapchat, which presented similar features earlier this year, and stay relevant for their users who already love AR technology.

Facebook is going to integrate Camera Effects Platform for all major social apps—Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram—and open it for other developers worldwide enabling them to create wider diversity of interactive experiences for Facebook users.