Niantic, the San Francisco tech firm best known for publishing the wildly successful mobile AR app “Pokémon Go,” is opening a version of its platform to the world with the release of the Lightship augmented reality developer kit, designed to enable AR experiences for “the real-world metaverse.” Niantic CEO John Hanke, who led Google’s geospatial division through the transformation of Google Maps and Google Earth, says Lightship will incorporate a “visual positioning system” that interoperates with glasses to place objects in the real world. In March, Hanke teased an image of Niantic-branded glasses created by Qualcomm. Continue reading Niantic Releases Lightship Tools for a ‘Real-World’ Metaverse