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Persistence is the ability to place things in space and make them stay in the same position over time. As such, persistent AR solutions enable the permanent placement of virtual content across multiple user sessions in an augmented scene. When you return to the AR application, you find the same content \u2013\u00a0such as objects and layouts<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 where you left it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Snap\u2019s city-scale AR grids, Niantic\u2019s Lightship, Microsoft Azure\u00a0Spatial Anchors, Google\u2019s\u00a0ARCore\u00a0<\/a>Cloud Anchors, and Apple\u2019s ARKit Location Anchors exemplify the concept. Together they lay the foundations for metaverse experiences that map and augment the\u00a0physical world<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, these companies explore the possibilities of persistent AR by providing developers with the necessary toolkits to build location-based applications. Thanks to such tools, developers can make use of \u201canchors<\/em>\u201d to connect the physical world locations with digital content. Anchors are objects that the AR software detects and tracks. A special type of anchor \u2013\u00a0cloud anchor<\/a>\u2013 makes the things appear to stay in place in a given scene.<\/p>\n An example is Apple\u2019s ARKit. The kit also includes the\u00a0ARAnchor<\/a>\u00a0that determines the position and orientation of an item in a physical environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Applications can extend to mixed reality, as well.\u00a0Microsoft Azure Spatial Anchors<\/a>\u00a0offers tools to build XR content to map and create persistent 3D content at a real-world scale. Developers can leverage it to build multiplayer mobile games, like Minecraft Earth and holographic scavenger hunts,\u00a0for instance<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among these companies is also the Lightship by Niantic \u2013\u00a0the publisher of the famous AR game Pokemon Go<\/em>. It provides developers with the Visual Positioning System (VPS<\/a>) to accurately localize users and place virtual objects in a real-world location so that they persist at the same locations. So, even if one user departs from that specific area, another user who arrives there will still be able to see the same thing.<\/p>\n As a result, Lightship\u2019s VPS facilitates AR apps where\u00a0multiple people<\/em>\u00a0can \u201csee\u201d a persistent object\u00a0simultaneously\u00a0<\/em>from different perspectives. Because many people can share the same AR experience, one use case can,\u00a0for example<\/em>, be to offer sightseeing group tours. Based on the same VPS system, and the other developer tools provided by the company, it\u2019s possible to build different types of shared AR sessions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \nHow to persist content in AR one anchor at a time<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Shared persistent AR sessions pave the way for a real-world metaverse<\/strong>.<\/h2>\n