Google’s Motion Stills app to get new augmented-reality feature

Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it was releasing a new augmented reality (AR) feature for its app Motion Stills that would allow Android users to pin virtual 3D objects like chickens, robots or dinosaurs onto surfaces such as tables, floors or hands, letting them record and share those clips as GIFs and videos with other users.

A blog post explaining the new tech written by Jianing Wei and Tyler Mullen, software engineers at Google Research, said, “By assuming the tracked surface is parallel to the ground plane, and using the device’s accelerometer sensor to provide the initial orientation of the phone with respect to the ground plane, one can track the six degrees of freedom of the camera (three for translation and three for rotation). This allows us to accurately transform and render the virtual object within the scene.”

Google had earlier launched an AR project by the name of Tango in 2014, which it aims to shut down next month.

“We’re turning down support for Tango on 1 March 2018,” said Google in a tweet. “Thank you to our incredible community of developers who made such progress with Tango over the last three years. We look forward to continuing the journey with you on ARCore.”

ARCore was a new augmented-reality system the company had come up with in August last year for its Pixel and Pixel 2 smartphones, made available in the form of AR stickers.