2022 Major events in the Augmented Reality Space and what to expect for 2023
It’s hard to believe that we’ve already arrived at the beginning of 2023 and before diving fully in it, let’s reflect on what a year 2022 has been for the XR industry! From the launch of new virtual reality headsets to the continued growth of augmented reality applications, this year has seen some major developments in the world of immersive technology.
In this review, we’ll take a look back at the major events that shaped the XR industry in 2022 with an insider, neutral, critical eye.
We identified 4 angles representing best what progress has been done in the AR Industry:
- Brands going big using AR
- Business news from Tech companies in the space
- Most meaningful tech updates
- Zoom on the historical leaders: Meta and Snap
So, without further ado, let’s dive in and explore the highlights of 2022 in the AR industry.
Part 1. Brands going big using AR in 2022
Major brands have increasingly invested in the AR/VR game since the beginning of the 2020 decade. But as a bunch of tech enthusiasts, it’s been a underwhelming to see the investment going mostly into AR filters because of their virality and in “Metaverses” (3D environment useable in games, on VR headsets and/or websites).
I mean, AR/VR tech has the potential to change society’s life in a comparable fashion to the introduction of computers or the mainstream use of internet.
The problem with emerging technology is that it costs quite a bit to do something meaningful when the engagement from the audience is less understood, so the risk is higher than investing in traditional experiences.
Until someone really goes for it and gets crazy engagement and excitment. Fifa, Disney and H&M just did that.
FIFA made fans dreams come true by proposing AR Live statistics on FIFA + app during 2022 World Cup
You might have heard soccer fans debating if it’s better to watch a soccer game from a Stadium’s atmosphere or on TV in order to enjoy various fresh statistics and analyzes of the game.
Well that debates has ended thanks to FIFA + App allowing stadiums attendees to visualize all kind of game analyzes live in AR.
Disney + dives into the future of storytelling with AR-enabled short film ‘Remembering,’ starring Brie Larson
While the concept of interactive storytelling has already been explored in “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”, it is the first time that the Augmented Reality Medium has been used for it.
Disney has has carefully classified “Remembering” as an an experiment for Disney + Day, but we can find more enthusiasm behind the film maker’s statement :
We feel like this is part of the future of how humanity will interact with entertainment”
Elijah Allan-Blitzthe
The AR experience only lasts a minute or less, and you can’t interact with the digital elements. But still, it’s obvious when starting this experience that if not the future of movies is here, AR is on its way is to share the storytelling stage with Books and Movies.
H&M launches a first AR Fashion collection on its app
Ok ok, AR Fashion was still pretty much out there in filters and it’s been explored mostly to allow people to try a digital version of an existing piece of clothing but also just to wear completely abstract outfits.
The AR abstract outfits made their place under the spotlight because it’s more original, it actually help content creators to standout with their content while also being a more sustainable approach then investing in fast fashion.
As a very active company on the AR Fashion scene, we can tell, people just use these much more than “regular filters” so it’s natural to see major retail players taking a stab at it.
And H&M has done just that with this extraordinary “A Metaverse design story” phygital collection -Co-Created with IoDF.
Part 2. Business news from Tech companies in the space
Niantic acquires 8thWall, unifying native and Web AR tech
The former Google subsidiary has arguably done the biggest move in the space in 2022 by acquiring 8thWall, the leading Web AR technology, to associate it with it’s AR Developer Kit called “Lightship ARDK”.
It is huge since Lightship ARDK is a very reliable native tech easing the development of mobile apps with advanced Augmented Reality capabilities such as their trademark Visual Positioning System* or multiplayer experiences.
We can now expect to have these special features made available for 8thWall and probably the other way around as well. Giving themselves the chance to provide the creatives and brands Holy Grail: Interoperability.
Making it possible in the future to develop an experience only once to deploy it both on mobile phones and on the Web.
Big infrastructure adaptations like that might take a while but they gave themselves the chance to make it a reality and from ou neutral POV, it’s awesome.
And it already started since 8thWall announced in September the arrival of the VPS capability -The feature they started developing with Pokemon Go
Founded in 2010 by no other than the creator Google Maps -Johnn Hanke- detached from Google in 2015 to then partner with Nintendo and develop the infamous Pokemon Go company continues its way to the top.
Only thing to keep an eye on now is to see how hardware manufacturers deal with it from the moment they’ll go bigger on AR, and rumors says 22032 will mark the arrival of Apple so we might know sooner than later.
*See more about the Visual Positioning System under “Google, Snap and Niantic are strong on the Augmented Real World” section
Tiktok releases Effect House, an AR authoring software to create filters for TikTok
Good. Old. Filters. For some people they are the reason AR is not taken seriously as a technology, for us they are the use case that made AR mainstream.
What not to like in a filter for a brand? I mean most people have Instagram and TikTok right? People don’t have to download an app to use it, have fun using it, gives a great brand feeling, increases memorization etc etc.
For long TikTok was developing its own filters and the process to create an effect was to work with TikTok creative team or one of the very few whitelisted agencies and the brand would have to commit a 6-figures media budget.
This all changed in 2022 with the public launch of Effect House, an AR authoring software similar to Spark AR (Meta) or Lens Studio (Snap).
With Effect House, any creative can create TikTok filters and distribute it for free now. The software is obviously younger than Meta and Snap competition but it comes with a few original features and their AR teams are not led by ex-Meta employees oppositely to Snap and Niantic, which you can feel in the composition of their creator pool and another culture, more aligned with TikTok general vibe.
Filters for brands is still not public but a couple of collabs emerged so it shouldn’t be so far away.
Qualcomm introduces Snapdragon AR2 -A set of chips for next gen AR glasses
Problems are numerous in the design of Mixed Reality glasses, from the display challenges, combined to having to be able to compute quite a load of things as computer vision and 3D in such a confined area.
Well Qualcomm made a huge progress in the field with a set of tiny chips distributing the computing load with a built in tensor processor and a development platform.
When the thing is very technical, I guess you understand how big of a step forward it is when seeing the number of hardware and software brands who committed to the chip.
Part 3. Most meaningful tech updates of 2022
So. Many. Tech. Updates. As always in Tech space.
And 2022 has been particularly rich in novelties. When the beginning of the decade was totally dominated by Social network companies and Metaverses such as Sandbox etc. Last year has marked the one where most of the big techs stepped up their XR game.
And major updated came from the AR industry former duet of leaders Meta and Snap. But e decided to focus on this part of the article on the step up of major tech companies teased in previous paragraph and possibly the main trend of the years to come: the Augmented Real World.
WebXR support appears in Safari version logs
One code base for your experience to be live on any device you ask? That’s interoperability.
During the mobile app revolution, most people discovered the problem of seeing company prevent interoperability in the form of the Apple vs Android problem. I mean, who want to code two times the same app to make sure its app is accessible to everyone right?
Well, until now, a lot -including us- were afraid that Apple would be willing to repeat this nonsense by not supporting WebXR on Safari.
But 2022 has seen fear transition to hop as WebXR support appear in Safari version logs.
Google, Snap and Niantic are strong on the Augmented Real World
Niantic Lightship Visual Positioning System, ARcore (Google) Geospatial API, Snap AR City-Scale AR.
As unintuitive this might be to help people understanding, different names, same potion.
Bottomline, these systems enables you to place an AR experience at an exact location, which comes in handy when you want to create a Drive to store activation, make children go outside to interact and learn from the world, propose exclusive AR itineraries… Only to give you a couple of examples, as you might imagine the possibilities around the concept of augmenting our world are endless.
Google made a splash recently with Gorillaz releasing a song using Geospatial API feature on Time Square but the very first splash of the year using htis feature has come from Coachella and its Coachellaverse, co-developed with multiple technologies, including Meta Spark.
Part 4. Zoom on the historical leaders: Snap and Meta keep on leading the charge despite the layoffs
Meta
Meta introduced the very hype Quest Pro, a VR headset optimized for Mixed Reality usage (Basically AR not on a phone) and finally launched AR Ads on Instagram, which we can expect to lead to more and more AR Ads on Instagram in 2023.
It will also be interesting to keep an eye on Instagram creators subscription services and NFTs related services.
This being said, questions have been raised towards the vision of their leadership team. Indeed, not much people have understood the deprecation of Geolocated AR feature after a promising start for the feature and the splash it made with through the Coachellaverse. Which also is quite discussable since the Augmented Real World’s growing up, which makes sense, for once in the Metaverse craze.
-We think the trend makes obvious sense because after 2 years of pandemic, not much people are into staying inside.
Snap
The gap between Snap AR and its competition never looked bigger.
Their Camera Kit SDK made a first splash through H&M AR Fashion collection, amongst other fashion and luxury brands, they also notably partnered with but also with Amazon on their shopping lenses or with Live Nation for a partnership that tends to look like we’re gonna get more and more augmented shows in the years to come.
On the technical side of things, Lens Studio continues having no match in terms of the quality of rendering and advanced features.
And Snap introduced Snap + -a subscription service for different kind of premium content, including AR filters. But they haven’t stopped there as they started to transition to the Web and proposed one new hardware piece with the introduction of Pixy, a pocket size autonomous drone which will probably see AR Filters dedicated to people moving come in the upcoming year.
They also kept on building around the welfare of its AR creators with the outstanding announcement of premium AR Lenses and Camera Kit packs.
There’s vision in this company and the transition to become a camera company on top of a social media, with a strong and respected community of creators seems to be in a good place.
All of that despite the massive layoff they had to face, pretty impressive.
Conclusion
2022 has seen consumer brands and major technologies going bigger with AR. The business side of things of the industry keeps developing despite the staff layoffs crisis -linked to historically overvalued shares in the tech sphere.
Bottomline, it feels like AR is on its way to be the revolution announced and the market makes it feels like we’re still in the early stages.
The game is still dominated by Social Media companies, it feels like the industry is evolving and we’re finally seeing Augmented Reality getting to the place it deserves to be: A technology, a tool helping people in their daily life rather than just an entertaining toy.
Eventually, it’s quite easy to play the expectation game here as the trends are quite clear. You can definitely expect to see more and more major brands going full pace with AR, while seeing more and more meaningful use cases using AR in 2023.
And we expect to see a small shift in the type of AR experiences out there with a little less entertaining social media filters to shift to more useful tools. While it’s also likely to see more and more AR directly integrated in websites and apps.
Stay tuned.
