What is Social AR?
First, some context
Have you found yourself asking this question often? Never? Either way let me sprinkle some enlightenment around the subject.
To kick us off, AR stands for Augmented Reality (and the US postal abbreviation for Arkansas but that’s not important here). I could give my own slightly skewed definition of what AR is all about, but let’s ask Wikipedia for the sake of time.
“Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory.”
The definition above is a fancy way of saying AR is the practice of layering media over reality. A quick google search will give you conflicting info on the origin of AR, but it’s not new tech by a long shot — however the proliferation of AR into the greater public is relatively new!
A fun demonstration of this concept occurred as early as 1862. Peppers Ghost is a stage effect, that creates an illusion by projecting light onto an angled glass screen on stage, illuminating a figure thats hidden offstage. The audience perceives this reflection to be an actual person, which is pretty rad.
Some can argue this isn’t AR because digital tech isn’t involved, but there’s a screen isn’t there? I digress.
Ok but why the word social??
Alright, ambling preamble aside (you should get used to it, I write how I speak and I am not known for wise brevity) lets get into the meat of this stew. I want to caveat that terminology is subjective, and terminology in the tech sphere is a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. As demonstrated earlier, AR can be presented to the viewer in a number of ways. Projection mapping — using digital projectors to display visuals onto physical objects, wearables — think glasses, contact lenses — in development but that makes my eyes itch just considering it, are just a few avenues AR can be delivered through.
However, you most likely have an AR enabled device in you dominant hand right now as you scroll through this article, a smartphone! Mobile AR is an experience that utilizes a live camera feed on a smartphone to augment reality. Pokemon Go helped us out with popularizing that concept, and before that the Snapchat hotdog man may have been your first experience with a world facing (not selfie facing) camera effect.
Mobile AR, is that a term or did I just make that up?
Now here’s where the distinction comes in. Not all mobile AR is social but all social AR is mobile (for now). Social AR is any augmented reality work that is native to a service that has a social component. In this case the big fish are social media apps. Facebook and Instagram’s social AR creation tool is Spark AR Studio. Snapchat’s AR creation platform is Lens Studio. TikTok has AR effects but currently only works with a small group of approved agencies and internal employees to create them, but I feel like I should link something here since I did for the other two so ~link~.
Now you may think this distinction is silly, and that’s ok you are entitled to your opinions. However there are a good number of AR creation tools that let you develop your own AR apps that aren’t tied to social platforms. My very first AR work was a Unity app that plopped a very deformed low poly Shiba Inu on my business card. The app sat on my phone (so mobile, check!), and no one got to appreciate it but me — until I shared a video of it on Instagram.
These social platforms have developed intuitive software that allows people, tech savvy or not so, to develop their own work and immediately have a platform to share it on. They key here is the ease of proliferation, if I wanted other people to see my business card puppy I would need to convince them to give me their phone so I could install an objectively questionable app on it.
However, it’s safe to say a lot of people who own smartphones also use Instagram and/or snapchat. So the barrier to entry in terms of delivery is solved, they simply need to open an app they already have to use your work. And in turn, share said work, so others can see it and use it themselves (Instagram effects for example can be shared in posts but are most often used in stories, and a creator attribute and effect name is attached at the top and in the metadata). For some reason most of these platforms advertise their software with a lot of videos of talented people dancing and using effects, rest assured you don’t need or be talented OR a dancer to be a social AR developer, but it wouldn’t hurt I guess.
When you say effect are you referring to cause and effect?
I also realize I’ve thrown some terminology around without defining it. Effects are a colloquial term for work made in AR. It’s sort of synonymous with the word filter or lens, but filters seem more accurate for color changing overlays and hence we needed terminology that covers all of the other things you can throw into AR! 3D models, warping the camera feed itself, delaying time, countless things can be done with this medium (even audio manipulation, although audio feels a little like the undeservingly overlooked ice cream flavor sometimes).
But the similarities of these words are important, lens, effect, and filter, can also be used when talking about (drumroll please) cameras!! And that’s the secret sauce folks. AR when it involves the digital space also involves a real time camera feed to take in our environment and augment it. Projection mapping, mentioned earlier, skips this by negating the need for an interface, but we’re talking about social, mobile AR specifically so just ignore that for now. In the not so near future when I can slap an augmentator to my very pretty Warby Parker glasses you may think the camera feed is no longer needed, but rest assured these devices will also need to employ the humble camera feed to take in and interpret a users surroundings.
Alright this was very informative thank you Alexis
Your welcome! In all seriousness, the classification of digital doodads and whatnots changes every day, so in the not so near future this information could become irrelevant. I just wanted to shed some light on one of my favorite mediums, and maybe bring some vocabulary and context to things you’ve been seeing pop about Instagram lately. Augmented Reality is a powerful way to create that has infinite practical and entertaining use cases. Turning yourself into a little puppy seems fun, and, I don’t know, an augmented reality training overlay for a complex piece industrial equipment seems equally fun!
So venture into the unknown and start your AR journey today.
