A few days ago while in Ireland to receive an award on behalf of Apple, CEO Tim Cook stated that Augmented Reality was the ‘Next Great Thing.’ Yesterday NexTech AR Solutions, one of the industry leaders in Augmented Reality announced a major enhancement by expanding their platform to serve Apple’s .USDZ files along side the default format GLTF.
NexTech AR further noted in their announcement that “This will enhance the user’s experience on Apple iPhones by leveraging the built-in Quick look feature for engaging AR experiences launched from Apps and browsers.
Previously, its platform was built on the industry standard GLTF file created by the Khronos group. By offering Apple’s exclusive .USDZ file recognition and others, the company will now be able to work across the entire spectrum of 3D/AR file formats, which opens up substantial new opportunities to the company.
Commenting on this, Evan Gappelberg CEO of NexTech stated that “It has become clear to us that to work with Apple Business Chat and Quick Look which our partner LivePerson is integrated with, we needed our platform to convert files to the .USDZ file format. Doing this will allow our AR rendering technology to leverage the built-in Apple Quick Look features in iPhones.
Cappelberg added that “This enhancement also expands our ability to provide engaging AR experiences from SMS messaging, Facebook Messenger, and Apple Business Chat on iPhones.”
About Apple’s .USDZ
Patently Apple covered Apple announcing at the WWDC Conference in 2018 that it had developed a new file format working together with Pixar, called USDZ Universal. The acronym USDZ stands for Universal Scene Description Optimized.
This file will allow developers to create 3D models for augmented reality. Pixar and Apple developed this new file format with the .usdz extension.
Apple is beta testing its game-changing CaptureAR app which is expected to launch in Q1.
Apple is also testing its AR, 3D 360 advertising platform which it expects to launch in the next few weeks.
Here’a another article worth noting: “What is USDZ and why you should care - Apple’s AR kit explained.”
A Few NexTech Videos
