Out with the old, in with the new. That's what Google is doing with Project Tango and ARCore.
At first, it was called Project Tango, and after a while, it became known as just Tango, and on March 1, it'll be no more.
Google Scraps Project Tango
Google took the wraps off Project Tango back in 2014 with the purpose of bringing augmented reality to smartphones. Notably, the technology was the headlining feature of select devices such as the Asus ZenFone AR and Lenovo Phab 2 Pro. There was even talk that the Moto Z lineup could get a Tango-powered Moto Mod.
However, all that is about to come to an end soon.
We’re turning down support for Tango on March 1, 2018. 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. https://t.co/aYiSUkgyie
— Tango (@projecttango) December 15, 2017
Aside from the announcement on Twitter, Google has also taken down the Project Tango website, and it made the reason it's taking this move perfectly clear in a blog post.
"As we focus on bringing augmented reality to the entire Android ecosystem with ARCore, we're turning down support of Tango," Nikhil Chandhok, Director of Product of Google AR, writes.
It wasn't all futile, though. Google says it's leveraging what it learned from Project Tango to ARCore. In other words, the soon-to-shut-down AR technology played an important role in the development of the next new thing.
Now the problem with Project Tango is hardware. To deliver what it's set out to do, it requires a special camera that's compatible with it. Compared to that, ARCore "is a fast, performant, Android-scale SDK that enables high-quality augmented reality across millions of qualified mobile devices," as Google describes it.
ARCore Showcased
ARCore is not new. Google unveiled the AR technology back in August, and recently, it showed off its capabilities on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL with AR Stickers themed after Star Wars and Stranger Things.
The app is simple enough: On their photos and videos, users got to add cartoon versions of stormtroopers, R2-D2, or even BB-8 with "The Last Jedi AR Stickers" and Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will, Eleven, and even the Demogorgon with the Stranger Things set.
To sum things up, Project Tango's clock is ticking, and ARCore will succeed the old AR technology.
