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First look at Google AR Stickers: Making daily life a lot more fun

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Augmented reality comes to the Google Pixel smartphones with AR Stickers
Augmented Reality has been the flavour of the season, with every player, big or small, putting significant weight behind this new feature. We’ve seen all kinds of implementations, everything from just software to dedicated sensor modules being glued to smartphones, but Google is taking an extremely elegant approach to this latest fad. ARCore is Google’s implementation of Augmented Reality for Android and we’re getting the first taste of it via the AR Stickers update to the Google Pixel 2 XL. AR stickers are now a part of Google’s stock camera app and available only for users of the Google Pixel 2/2 XL and the Google Pixel/XL smartphones. Currently, there are only a handful of AR Sticker packs, most notable being the Star Wars themed pack which allows you to place a number of recognizable characters and vehicles from the iconic movie franchise. There’s also a set of characters from Netflix’s Stranger Things, along with some text effects, food items and general effects, all which are perfectly capable of interacting with the real world.
As an avid Star Wars fan, I’ve had a lot of fun placing TIE fighters and X-Wings around the office, hovering over or behind people. Placing the objects is as simple as dragging them from the top menu, and placing them wherever you like. Initially, it was a little difficult getting the placement and size right as the app relies on multi-touch and seemed slightly buggy on my Pixel 2 XL. Often when I wanted to raise the height of the TIE Fighter, it ended up becoming smaller, and when I wanted to place BB8 closer to my laptop, it ended up bigger This is not as much a glitch, as it is a factor of getting used to the way AR will work. I found rotating objects (like the X-Wing) a little harder, but with a little patience, you could literally create a mini Star Wars epic fight scene for yourself. If you’re not a Star Wars buff, there’s also a set of AR stickers for food (which is absolutely adorable) and of course Stranger Things. If you have a lot of free time, you could literally label the items on your desk using the AR letters and send those photos to friends and family. Overall, the AR Stickers made the workplace a lot of fun today and could help people express their creativity in some novel ways.
As much fun as it was experiencing the AR Stickers through the camera of my Google Pixel 2 XL, it had a few shortfalls. For starters, in order to get the optimum performance, the focus of the camera is locked and cannot be changed. Somewhat of a bummer when you want to place a sleeping cup of coffee next to your laptop and take a photo given that the real word appears out of focus, but the coffee cup would be tack sharp. The other limitation of the current AR implementation is that the app needs a textured surface to operate properly. When trying to place a happy cheeseburger on my work desk, it kept floating all over the place because the desk lacks texture and the app could therefore not lock it into position.
Overall, Google’s AR Stickers are very impressive, not only by virtue of what they are but mostly because they show off what Google can achieve. As time goes by, we hope that Google will release more stickers, and maybe even add more features to its AR arsenal. There’s tremendous potential here and I can only hope that both Google and third party developers will tap into AR as new means of creating a bridge between the digital and real world.

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