“Advertising agency employees who work on augmented reality and virtual reality are worried that Apple is about to upend web-based AR and VR,” Tim Peterson reports for Digiday.
“Apple appears poised to make it more difficult for sites to track iPhones’ and iPads’ motions and orientations in order to power web-based AR and VR experiences,” Peterson reports. “According to a document published to Apple’s developer site, the next update to Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 12.2, will add a setting that will enable people using its mobile Safari browser to prevent sites from being able to access a device’s accelerometer and gyroscope in order to track the device’s motion and orientation.”
Peterson reports, “Tweets from two people whose Twitter bios list them as Apple employees who work on Safari indicate that sites accessed through the mobile version of Safari will need people’s permission before they can track an iOS device’s motion and orientation… It’s unclear whether Apple will introduce a way for sites to prompt people to enable motion and orientation tracking without people having to exit the browser… Asking people to exit the browser to toggle on motion and orientation detection would not only make it less likely that people will do so to try out a web-based AR or VR experience, but it may make it less likely that brands invest in producing AR and VR experiences…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Make perfect sense:
Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with your data. — Steve Jobs
AR & VR are gimmicks doomed to mostly failure or at least broad apathy from most consumers. Initial interest will quickly fade as it always does.
3D TV was a gimmick, and is no longer supported by major TV brands.
VR and AR are niche. But they are not gimmicks, no matter how much vitriol is sent their way by people who haven’t actually experienced it properly, i.e. a proper headset with 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF), not the limited 3DoF offered by Cardboard and other insert-phone-into-slot masks.
Actually, people who diss on VR remind me of PC users dissing on Macs without ever trying it. Or, they try an inferior watered-down version (Windows / 3DoF VR) and think that the real thing (Mac / 6DoF VR) is no better.
I am a VFX Supervisor and have friends who are likewise in the field who WERE hot and heavy on it and now all is quiet on that front. It is a gimmick like 3D (I have also shot a true 3D stereoscopic movie) though as you say the audiences for it are becoming more niche and like VR and AR and 3D video games can make some people sick.
I myself am waiting for a Brainstorm helmet device that plays back full senses reality. Might have to wait a while.
Perhaps it’s the specific VR field your friends are in? VR movies are indeed gimmicky in that there are few in number, but that doesn’t define the entire field of VR.
In gaming, 2018 started looking a bit grim mid-year, with no major news from the major VR makers and even a report that Oculus was canning a future project, and yes some publishers and developers backed away from VR.
In late 2018 though, Sony publicly reaffirmed support in a big way for their Playstation VR platform, which makes up about 50% of VR gaming systems sold (Oculus, HTC and Microsoft make up the rest).
There are few AAA publishers in the mix because they’re risk-adverse and in all honesty why develop and release a title with an absolute maximum of 8 million customers at the moment (4M PSVR + 4M others), when you can target the flat gaming market, with PS4 alone having sold 92 million units. That’s where the smaller independents come in.
Microsoft backed away from VR for the current XBox generation, but they had no choice; their original XBox One was too weak to support it, and their refreshed XBox One X doesn’t have the sales numbers to justify a VR add-on like Sony’s Playstation 4 did.
I miss Steve.
Holodecks!