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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> Back then, people were already talking about augmented reality, but nobody knew when this technology would be accessible.

I still don't get why people talk about Pokémon Go and AR. As if one had anything to do with the other.

Pokémon Go has zero actual AR; it's just overlaying a 3D animation on top of a camera feed, with no relation to reality other than readings from a shitty smartphone gyroscope. When playing, I would actually disable that feature anyway, because it made catching Pokémon harder (performance issues + no "AR" means no gyroscope input, which makes the game no longer care about you maintaining constant orientation).

The AR we've been promised for decades now was about overlaying computer data that's related to what you're looking at in the real world. At this point, even those "point camera at the printed tag, see a 3D model on your phone" have more AR in them than Pokémon Go.

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The "real" AR might be the shared experience of location-based spawning of Pokemon, Pokecenters, arenas, etc. especially based on real landmarks.

This thread reminded me of:

"Recently I went with my nephew to hunt Pokémon. We were walking down the street and a bunch of kids approached us. They were also hunting Pokemon. My nephew and these children got into a bit of a fight because they were trying to capture the same invisible creatures. It seemed strange to me. But these Pokémon were very real to the children.

And then it hit me: This is just like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! You have two sides fighting over something that I cannot see. I look at the stones of buildings in Jerusalem and I just see stones. But Christians, Jews, and Muslims who look at the same stones see a holy city. It’s their imagination, but they are willing to kill for it. That’s virtual reality, too."

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/the-pos...

Doubly interesting given that, unless they were fighting for the ownership of a gym, there were no "same" invisible creatures - each player has their own Pokémon spawning, and that state is not shared between players.

Given that the author isn't that familiar with Pokemon Go, it seems plausible that he could have gotten some mechanics confused.

What a weak comparison. The Israelis and the Palestinians are fighting over a homeland. Humans have been fighting over land since the beginning of time.

Sure, but then that's not anything new. Any persistent-world multiplayer game would qualify, and if you want to focus on real-world locations, then there's at least Ingress.

Also, last time I checked, Pokémon spawning wasn't synchronized. There's close to zero shared world state between the player (only the static - spawn zones, Pokéstop locations, Gym location and status - and lure).

Anyway, to be clear: I'm not complaining about the game itself - just about abusing the term "AR" to describe it.

I might be mistaken about what you mean by "spawning wasn't synchronized" but if I see a Pokemon pop up, I know that whoever I'm playing with will see the same one in the same place. That's a huge part of the fun of the game.

I'm not sure if that is true now; it definitely wasn't true a few months ago when I played it. Spawn locations are shared - i.e. everyone sees the same probability distribution of finding a particular Pokémon in a given spot. But if you saw one spawn, your friend won't see the same one because this was not synchronized. It was entirely local to a player. So you couldn't e.g. steal a Pokémon from someone else trying to get it too.

I think ever since it came out Pokemon spawned in the same exact place for everyone (hense cheating tools came about like maps that showed where all the pokemon are), but yeah you couldn't "steal" pokemon, everyone can catch the same pokemon which makes for videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-XnTDcQZjY

Yeah, that's what I meant.

> Pokémon Go has zero actual AR; it's just overlaying a 3D animation on top of a camera feed, with no relation to reality other than readings from a shitty smartphone gyroscope.

Isn't it also positioning the Pokémon based on the camera feed ? I was under the impression that it was detecting objects in the picture and was trying to position the Pokémon in a way that made sense, but I was never sure.

Not in my experience. I believe the placement is random (in particular, that the distance from you to the Pokémon was simply randomized). It does "feel" like they're placed "in a way that makes sense", because the image is an overlay on top of camera feed - which guarantees it is on top of everything in the camera feed, and the brain will play tricks to make sense of the picture. It works especially well if you don't have the feel for how big the Pokémon should be compared to the environment (most of us don't). See also, "perspective optical illusions" as a search keyphrase.

Also, again from what I remember when playing ~6 months ago, the Pokémon placement in AR mode locks orientation and distance. So walking forward is literally the same as standing still - only the background camera feed changes, but Pokémon and its animation isn't affected in any way. This again supports the theory that placement is random and totally unrelated to "real world".

AR is a bit easier on the tongue than computer-mediated reality. I wouldn't be too upset over it, they're on the right track.

Marketing.

Well, that's why I hate it. It destroys any meaning words have.

The map is real, the Pokemon and gyms that appear on it are not. Does that not count?

Not in a meaningful sense, no. Otherwise, Google Maps themselves would be AR (the locations are real - map markers are not).

Yeah but on Google Maps the markers represent a real place and in this game they represent a gym or Pokemon that is not.

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