Tag Archives: Adobe Aero

Congratulations to the winners of Google’s Immersive Geospatial Challenge

Posted by Bradford Lee – Product Marketing Manager, Augmented Reality, and Ahsan Ashraf – Product Marketing Manager, Google Maps Platform

In September, we launched Google's Immersive Geospatial Challenge on Devpost where we invited developers and creators from all over the world to create an AR experience with Geospatial Creator or a virtual 3D immersive experience with Photorealistic 3D Tiles.

"We were impressed by the innovation and creativity of the projects submitted. Over 2,700 participants across 100+ countries joined to build something they were truly passionate about and to push the boundaries of what is possible. Congratulations to all the winners!" 

– Shahram Izadi, VP of AR at Google

We judged all submissions on five key criteria:

  • Functionality - How are the APIs used in the application?
  • Purpose - What problem is the application solving?
  • Content - How creative is the application?
  • User Experience - How easy is the application to use?
  • Technical Execution - How well are you showcasing Geospatial Creator and/or Photorealistic 3D Tiles?

Many of the entries are working prototypes, with which our judges thoroughly enjoyed experiencing and interacting. Thank you to everyone who participated in this hackathon.



From our outstanding list of submissions, here are the winners of Google’s Immersive Geospatial Challenge:


Category: Best of Entertainment and Events

Winner, AR Experience: World Ensemble

Description: World Ensemble is an audio-visual app that positions sound objects in 3D, creating an immersive audio-visual experience.


Winner, Virtual 3D Experience: Realistic Event Showcaser

Description: Realistic Event Showcaser is a fully configurable and immersive platform to customize your event experience and showcase its unique location stories and charm.


Winner, Virtual 3D Experience: navigAtoR

Description: navigAtoR is an augmented reality app that is changing the way you navigate through cities by providing a 3 dimensional map of your surroundings.



Category: Best of Commerce

Winner, AR Experience: love ya

Description: love ya showcases three user scenarios for a special time of year that connect local businesses with users.



Category: Best of Travel and Local Discovery

Winner, AR Experience: Sutro Baths AR Tour

Description: This guided tour through the Sutro Baths historical landmark using an illuminated walking path, information panels with text and images, and a 3D rendering of how the Sutro Baths swimming pool complex would appear to those attending.


Winner, Virtual 3D Experience: Hyper Immersive Panorama

Description: Hyper Immersive Panorama uses real time facial detection to allow the user to look left, right, up or down, in the virtual 3D environment.


Winner, Virtual 3D Experience: The World is Flooding!

Description: The World is Flooding! allows you to visualize a 3D, realistic flooding view of your neighborhood.


Category: Best of Productivity and Business

Winner, AR Experience: GeoViz

Description: GeoViz revolutionizes architectural design, allowing users to create, modify, and visualize architectural designs in their intended context. The platform facilitates real-time collaboration, letting multiple users contribute to designs and view them in AR on location.



Category: Best of Sustainability

Winner, AR Experience: Geospatial Solar

Description: Geospatial Solar combines the Google Geospatial API with the Google Solar API for instant analysis of a building's solar potential by simply tapping it.


Winner, Virtual 3D Experience: EarthLink - Geospatial Social Media

Description: EarthLink is the first geospatial social media platform that uses 3D photorealistic tiles to enable users to create and share immersive experiences with their friends.


Honorable Mentions

In addition, we have five projects that earned honorable mentions:

  1. Simmy
  2. FrameView
  3. City Hopper
  4. GEOMAZE - The Urban Quest
  5. Geospatial Route Check

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all the participants! Check out all the amazing projects submitted. We can't wait to see you at the next hackathon.

Create world-scale augmented reality experiences in minutes with Google’s Geospatial Creator

Posted by Stevan Silva, Senior Product Manager

ARCore, our augmented reality developer platform, provides developers and creators alike with simple yet powerful tools to build world-scale and room-scale immersive experiences on 1.4 billion Android devices.

Since last year, we have extended coverage of the ARCore Geospatial API from 87 countries to over 100 countries provided by Google’s Visual Positioning System and the expansion of Street View coverage, helping developers build and publish more transformative and robust location-based, immersive experiences. We continue to push the boundaries of introducing helpful applications and delightful new world-scale use cases, whether it's the innovative hackathon submissions from the ARCore Geospatial API Challenge or our partnership with Gorillaz, where we transformed Times Square and Piccadilly Circus into a music stage to witness Gorillaz play in a larger-than-life immersive performance.

One thing we’ve consistently heard from you over the past year is to broaden access to these powerful resources and ensure anyone can create, visualize, and deploy augmented reality experiences around the world.

Introducing Geospatial Creator


Today, we are launching Geospatial Creator, a tool that helps anyone easily visualize, design, and publish world-anchored immersive content in minutes straight from platforms you already know and love — Unity or Adobe Aero.

Easily visualize, create, and publish augmented reality experiences with Geospatial Creator in Unity (left) and Adobe Aero (right)

Geospatial Creator, powered by ARCore and Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Google Maps Platform, enables developers and creators to easily visualize where in the real-world they want to place their digital content, similar to how Google Earth or Google Street View visualize the world. Geospatial Creator also includes new capabilities, such as Rooftop anchors, to make it even easier to anchor virtual content with the 3D Tiles, saving developers and creators time and effort in the creation process.

These tools help you build world-anchored, cross-platform experiences on supported devices on both Android and iOS. Immersive experiences built in Adobe Aero can be shared via a simple QR code scan or link with no full app download required. Everything you create in Geospatial Creator can be experienced in the physical world through real time localization and real world augmentation.


With Geospatial Creator, developers and creators can now build on top of Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Google Maps Platform (left) which provide real time localization and real time augmentation (right)

When the physical world is augmented with digital content, it redefines the way people play, shop, learn, create, shop and get information. To give you an idea of what you can achieve with these tools, we’ve been working with partners in gaming, retail, and local discovery including Gap, Mattel, Global Street Art, Singapore Tourism Board, Gensler, TAITO, and more to build real world use cases.

SPACE INVADERS: World Defense immersive game turns the world into a playground

Later this summer you’ll be able to play one of the most acclaimed arcade games in real life, in the real world. To celebrate the 45 year anniversary of the original release, TAITO will launch SPACE INVADERS: World Defense. The game, powered by ARCore and Geospatial Creator, is inspired by the original gameplay where players will have to defend the Earth from SPACE INVADERS in their neighborhood. It will combine AR and 3D gameplay to deliver a fully contextual and highly engaging immersive experience that connects multi-generations of players.



Gap and Mattel transform a storefront into an interactive immersive experience

Gap and Mattel will transform the iconic Times Square Gap Store into an interactive Gap x Barbie experience powered by Geospatial Creator in Adobe Aero. Starting May 23, customers will see the store come to life with colors and shapes and be able to interact with Barbie and her friends modeling the new limited edition Gap x Barbie collection of clothing.

moving image of Gap by Mattel

Global Street Art brings street art to a new dimension with AR murals

Google Arts & Culture partnered with Global Street Art and three world-renowned artists to augment physical murals in London (Camille Walala), Mexico City (Edgar Saner), and Los Angeles (Tristan Eaton). The artists used Geospatial Creator in Adobe Aero to create the virtual experience, augmenting physical murals digitally in AR and bringing to life a deeper and richer story about the art pieces.



Singapore Tourism Board creates an immersive guided tour to explore Singapore

Google Partner Innovation team partnered with Singapore Tourism Board to launch a preview of an immersive Singapore guided tour in their VisitSingapore app. Merli, Singapore's tourism mascot, leads visitors on an interactive augmented tour of the city’s iconic landmarks and hidden gems, beginning with the iconic Merlion Park and engaging visitors with an AR symphony performance at Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall. The full guided tour is launching later this summer, and will help visitors discover the best local hawker food, uncover the city's history through scenes from the past, and more.


Gensler helps communities visualize new urban projects

Gensler used Geospatial Creator in Adobe Aero to help communities easily envision what new city projects might look like for the unhoused. The immersive designs of housing projects allows everyone to better visualize the proposed urban changes and their social impact—ultimately bringing suitable shelter to those who need it.

moving image of city projects from Gensler

Geospatial Creator gives anyone the superpower of creating world scale AR experience remotely. Both developers and creators can build and publish immersive experiences in minutes in countries where Photorealistic 3D Tiles are available. In just a few clicks, you can create applications that help communities, delight your users, and provide solutions to businesses. Get started today at goo.gle/geospatialcreator. We’re excited to see what you create when the world is your canvas, playground, gallery, or more!