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Snap has announced that it is rolling out ray tracing for the Snap AR platform starting today. The new technology will allow developers to incorporate light reflection effects on objects into their augmented reality lenses. Ray tracing is now available for developers to use in Lens Studio.
The technology itself is familiar to gamers, as many modern games incorporate ray tracing into their graphics. However, on Snap AR, it looks like the primary application will be store-related lenses. As the company said in his announcement“Snapchatters love using augmented reality to try on products from beloved fashion brands, making the shopping experience personal, accessible, and fun…Now lenses with AR diamond jewelry, clothing, and more can achieve an ultra-realistic quality.”
The first lens to use ray tracing was built in collaboration with Tiffany & Co. Users can virtually try on Tiffany bracelets that shimmer realistically. Since Snap has integrated shopping into its Lenses, consumers can use this Lens to try on these AR jewelry and then purchase them in the app.
Snap revealed in its finacial report Last month, developers built more than 3 million AR lenses on the app’s augmented reality platform. While it didn’t provide sales figures for the shopping apps, it did say that millions of Snapchatters have tried products from its partners using augmented reality.
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