Looking for that festive cheer in AR? Niantic’s See Santa Fly hopes to provide the answer with a new AR experience.
Powered by Niantic’s WebAR platform, See Santa Fly is a new browser-based AR experience from the Pokémon Go developer. As you’ve probably guessed, this lets users worldwide use their smartphone camera to see Santa fly. This changes the sky above you into a night scene through Sky Effects, Niantic’s new feature identifies and segments the sky, effectively turning it into an AR canvas. Using the moon as a backdrop while Santa flies ahead, you can watch this in action below.
“Augmented reality transforms the ordinary into extraordinary, adding some magic to our lives, and what better time of the year to do that than the holidays,” says Tom Emrich, Niantic’s Director of Product Management in a prepared statement. “We knew that we needed to showcase the use of this technology with Santa’s infamous sleigh ride in the skies.”
It’s the latest Niantic project we’ve seen in a long line of AR games and apps. Best known for free-to-play releases like Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom and Ingress Prime, it’s also developing Marvel World Of Heroes, which is scheduled to launch next year on iOS and Android. In the meantime, See Santa Fly is available through the official website right now at no cost.
