import_export create photo_camera color_lens search snippet keyboard_arrow_up
File Manager keyboard_arrow_up Select Model: None Validation Report: Poster: 512 WEBP Mobile View keyboard_arrow_up Default AR Mode to Scene Viewer Best Practices keyboard_arrow_up Use Custom: Progress Bar AR Button AR Prompt This editor does not send any imported content to servers except to deploy to your mobile device: Privacy
I don’t think this is major news in the AR field. It only means that Google has decided to include links to AR models in some of its search results.
It’s already been possible to do this in any website for months.
See, it’s easy:
For example, on the Apple website, all product pages include a link to view the product in AR. When you click on it, it launches a generic AR model viewer (which comes pre-installed on your phone’s operating system) which allows you to look at the model in AR. Both iOS and Android have their own built-in AR viewer.
So now, this kind of content will potentially be directly accessible from Google search’s results. It’s possible for example that in the future, when you search for “coffee machine” or “iPhone” in Google, you will be presented with a selection of 3D models which you can view in AR without leaving the results page. Or, to speak directly about our case, you could imagine that Olympus would publish a bunch of models of their devices in the hope that Google includes them on search results for urology words.
But I don’t think this is going to replace the need for custom apps like the one we’re building. For at least these two reasons:
- The built-in AR viewer is very limited in terms of interactivity. It doesn’t allow to include any specific interaction, like hotspots, custom content, UI, playing sounds, etc. It’s only useful for viewing a model. You need a custom app for pretty much anything else you can imagine. It wouldn’t be possible to create the Soltive AR experience with this feature.
- Organizations don’t decide whether Google features their models in search results. The only thing organizations can do right now is sign up on this page to “express interest” in this new feature. It’s unclear at this time if they will give us any control over what models are featured or not. I wouldn’t bet on it.
I hope this clears things up a little. Perhaps we can discuss this on the phone sometime if necessary.
