Today, augmented reality is changing how we talk with our friends. There are over one million Lenses on Snapchat, and more than 75% of our Daily Active Users interact with AR every day. But, we imagine a future where we’ll use AR to see the world in completely new ways.
Last year we introduced Landmarkers, which enabled the Snapchat Camera to understand individual buildings and allowed Lenses to interact with some of the world’s greatest landmarks. From Buckingham Palace to the Flatiron Building in New York to the Taj Mahal, these places came to life in entirely new ways from the perspectives of the world’s most creative people, closely weaving our physical and the digital world together.
Today we’re taking the next step with Local Lenses, which evolves this technology and makes it possible to augment larger areas, including city blocks. By taking in information from 360-degree images and Community Snaps, we’re able to build up a digital representation of the physical world and view an augmented experience from different viewpoints. Combining this with 3D reconstruction, machine learning and distributed cloud computing, we can now map whole city blocks.
This week, you can find our first Local Lens on Carnaby Street in London, called City Painter. Snapchatters can join a persistent, shared AR world built right on top of the physical one and collaborate to paint the space around them. Look for the icon on Snap Map to see when you’re getting close. Together, we know you’ll have fun making it a more colourful world!