After announcing online multiplayer battles last month, Niantic Labs are bringing some of its next-generation augmented reality tech to Pokémon Go. The company announced that a live multiplayer feature will make its way to the game over the next few months. The feature will use Niantic's Codename: Neon multiplayer AR technology, which the San Francisco-based game developer showed off last year.
The game's already impressive AR tech that blends 3D models of the pocket monsters into real-world environments will add a new feature called Buddy Adventure, Niantic revealed on Wednesday. In Buddy Adventure, not only can you interact with your "Buddy," which is essentially a Pokemon of your choice from your collection, by feeding it berries and giving it a pat on the head, but you can also view your friends' Pokémon at the same time.
You can then interact with them and your friends will be interact with your pocket monsters as well. Moreover, this feature is compatible with photo mode so Trainers will be able to share an augmented reality experience with their friends and even take pictures of themselves with their Pokémon creatures.
"Pokémon Go Buddy Adventure feature will not only allow you to interact with your own Pokémon via the AR camera, it will also provide Trainers with a shared experience of seeing their real world friends interacting with their buddy Pokémon in real time," Diana Hu, Niantic's director of AR Platform, said in the blog post.
So basically if three friends are playing the game outdoors with each one placing their Pokémon buddy in the same exact real-world location, their screens would show three Pokémon creatures in the same place, alongside their respective Trainers. Before Buddy Adventure came into the picture, you could only see one creature on the screen via the VR camera.
Buddy Adventure is a cross platform feature, so it doesn't matter if your friends own an Android or iOS device, you will still be able to see them when the feature is turned on. You and your friends only need to have the feature enabled and be in the same location for it to work.
