Snapchat today expanded its set of available Lenses, introducing new ways to use the feature. Starting this morning, Snapchat users can access World Lenses, which are 3D objects that can be rotated and manipulated when taking a photo.
Objects like a rainbow, a multi-colored "hello" sign, or flowers can be positioned anywhere within a photo before it's taken, with gestures available for resizing and changing its location to the ideal spot in an image.
We launched Lenses over a year ago as a whole new way to express ourselves on Snapchat. Since then, we've become puppies, puked rainbows, face-swapped with our best friends -- and begun to explore how Lenses can change the world around us.
Today, we're adding new ways to use Lenses.
While Snapping with the rear-facing camera, simply tap the camera screen to find new Lenses that can paint the world around you with new 3D experiences!
Snapchat has supported augmented reality live filters that alter a person's face since last year, but the new lenses mark the first time that Snapchat's made efforts to take advantage of the rear camera for augmented reality purposes.
Snapchat can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
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Absolutely. I have nothing against VR and hope Apple has plans for that too, but given how many people use Snapchat filters on a daily basis and how popular Pokèmon Go was, I just see more people using AR more than VR and preferring it. With VR, you need to wear a headset which currently are bulky and is why most don't want to use them. I'm sure in the future VR will advance enough to the point where the general consumer will want to use it.
AR is going to become ubiquitous in daily life at some point. Go far enough into the future and we'll all have contact lens or implants that directly manipulate signals to the optic nerve and there will be full time augmented data displayed for us. It will be pretty utilitarian: notifications, navigation, context aware information, ads (or replacing advertisement with something more pleasant). There will be more intermittent use of more highly focused AR too (things like viewing new furniture in your living room before buying it online) but the more general uses will be ever present. Purely virtual hardware will advance significantly as well, in the near term those headsets will get much less bulky and considerably more comfortable and eventually the same lens or neural interfaces will be able to accomplish both tasks, AR/VR are on the same continuum after all and just vary the amount of virtual being injected from some to all. VR will be the more creative space. Games and movies are the obvious ones but it will also be used to conceptualize that which doesn't yet exist (architecture, new products/experiences) and for social experiences (gathering with geographically separated friends/relatives or via avatars rather than representations of your actual form). I have all the major devices for AR and VR currently on the market and right now I'm more of a fan of VR; that's due to AR hardware not being as mature at this time (Microsoft's Hololens for example has a VERY limited field of view). I'm eagerly awaiting a day in which I can have all day unobtrusive but highly effective AR though.