Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is the new augmented reality
game from Niantic, the company that
made Pokemon Go such a global phenomenon a few years ago.
Our wizarding community is at risk of exposure.
Traces of magic are appearing all over the Muggle world.
Niantic has pioneered a new kind of video game, one
that combines the virtual world and the physical one.
Great!
I've rescued a small cat.
I've got one!
So it's a goblin.
You have to draw a squiggle on the screen
to cast a spell accurately.
So there is somewhat degree of skill involved.
Whereas Pokemon Go sent people scurrying around cities
in search of monsters, this time Harry Potter
is recruiting wizards to go in search of fragments
and magical artefacts, bringing some of Harry Potter's
best-loved characters from the JK Rowling universe
into the real world.
It's doing that with a combination of smartphones
and sensors, with maps and location tracking,
and with AR-powered cameras.
And then we go off hunting again.
Right.
Where's the next one?
Young Hogwarts students walking the streets.
Over the last couple of years, Apple and Google
have built AR technology into hundreds
of millions of smartphones.
And that's made it far easier for less technical companies,
like IKEA or Nike, to build AR apps that
let people try on a virtual sofa,
or a virtual pair of trainers.
Baby hippogriff.
Not many of those to the dozen?
Augmented reality has become a top priority
for Silicon Valley companies, including Apple, Snap,
Microsoft, and Facebook, who are all
hoping that one day smart glasses
and ubiquitous computing might supersede the smartphone.
But so far no AR app has achieved
the kind of worldwide impact that Pokemon Go did,
and that was three years ago.
Maybe that could change with Harry Potter sprinkling
a little bit of his magic to show the latest innovations
in augmented reality.
Apps like Wizards Unite and Microsoft's forthcoming AR
game Minecraft Earth provide a testbed for new technologies
such as computer vision and scene awareness.
So in the not too distant future,
we could see characters like a goblin interacting
with real objects around them by jumping on top of a lamp post,
or climbing a tree.
Despite the billions of dollars that Silicon Valley is
investing into augmented reality,
it still isn't clear if this is a bold leap
into a new dimension, or just a blind alley.