Google said today that it’ll be shutting down Project Tango next year, on March 1st. Project Tango was an early effort from Google to bring augmented reality to phones, but it never really panned out. The system was introduced in 2014 and made it into developer kits and even a couple consumer devices as recently as last year.
But those devices required special sensors. And in the meantime, Google (and competitors, like Apple) figured out ways to bring AR features to phones with just the hardware that’s already on board. Google introduced a new augmented reality system, known as ARCore, in late August. It just brought that system to the Pixel and Pixel 2 in the form of some augmented reality stickers - immediately opening AR features to more people than Tango is likely to have reached in its lifetime.
Since the system’s announcement, it’s been more or less expected that Tango would go away in favor of ARCore. And today, Google made that official. It pulled down the Project Tango website, and on Tango’s Twitter account, it wrote that Tango “will be deprecated” and “will not be supported by Google” after March 1st, 2018. It specifically called out ARCore as the reason for its demise. “Google is continuing AR development with ARCore,” the Twitter account now reads.
But those devices required special sensors. And in the meantime, Google (and competitors, like Apple) figured out ways to bring AR features to phones with just the hardware that’s already on board. Google introduced a new augmented reality system, known as ARCore, in late August. It just brought that system to the Pixel and Pixel 2 in the form of some augmented reality stickers - immediately opening AR features to more people than Tango is likely to have reached in its lifetime.
Since the system’s announcement, it’s been more or less expected that Tango would go away in favor of ARCore. And today, Google made that official. It pulled down the Project Tango website, and on Tango’s Twitter account, it wrote that Tango “will be deprecated” and “will not be supported by Google” after March 1st, 2018. It specifically called out ARCore as the reason for its demise. “Google is continuing AR development with ARCore,” the Twitter account now reads.