Google Developers Blog: I/O

Creating AR Experiences for I/O: Our Process

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Posted by Karin Levi, Product Marketing, ARCore A few weeks ago at Google I/O we released a major update to ARCore, Google's AR development platform. We added new APIs like Cloud Anchors, that enable multi-user, collaborative AR experiences and Augmented Images that enable activation of 2D images into 3D objects. All of these updates are going to change the way we use AR today and enable developers to create richer, more immersive AR apps. With these new capabilities, we decided to put our platform to the test. So we built real experiences to showcase how these all come to life. All demos were presented at the I/O AR & VR sandbox area. We open sourced them to make sure you can see how simple it is to build these experiences. We're pretty happy with how they turned out and would love to share with you some learning and insights from behind the scenes. Light Board - Multiplayer game Light Board is an AR multiplayer tabletop game where two players on floating game boards launch colored projectiles at each other.

While building Light Board it was important for us to keep in mind who the end users are. We wanted it to be a simple/fun game for developers to try out while visiting the I/O sandbox. The developers would only have a couple minutes to play while passing through, so it needed to allow players (even non-gamers) to pick it up and play with very little setup. The artwork for Light Board was a major focus. Our mission for the look of the game was to align with the design and decor of I/O 2018. This way, our app would feel like an extension of everything the attendees saw around them. As a result, our design philosophy had 3 goals; bright accent colors, simple graphic shapes and natural physical materials.

Left: Design for AR/VR Sandbox at I/O 2018. Right: Key art for Light Board game boards The artwork was created in Maya and Cinema 4D. We created physically based materials for our models using Substance Painter. Just as continuous iteration is crucial for engineering, it is also important when creating art assets. With that in mind, we kept careful track of our content pipeline, even for this relatively simple project. This allowed us to quickly try out different looks and board styles before settling on our final design. On the engineering front we selected the Unity game engine as our dev environment. Unity gives us a couple of important advantages. First, it is easy to get great looking 3D graphics up and running right away. Second, the engine component is already complete, so we could immediately start iterating on gameplay code. As with the artwork, this allowed us to test gameplay options before we made a final decision. Additionally, Unity gave us support for both Android and iOS with only a little extra work. To handle the multiplayer aspect we used Firebase Realtime Database. We were concerned with network performance at the event, and felt that the persistent nature of a database would make it more tolerant of poor networks. As it turned out, it worked very well and we got the ability to quit and rejoin games for free! We had a lot of fun building Light Board and we hope people can use it as an example of how easy it can be to not only build AR apps, but to use really cool features like Cloud Anchors. Please check out our open source repo and give Light Board a try! Just a line - Draw with your friends In March, we released Just a Line, an Android app that lets you draw in the air with your phone. It's a simple experiment meant to showcase the power of ARCore. At Google I/O, we added Cloud Anchors to the app so that two people can draw at once in the same space, even if one of them is using Android and the other iOS. Both apps were built natively: The Android version was written in Android Studio, and the iOS version was built in xCode. ARCore's Cloud Anchors enable Just a Line to pair two phones, allowing users to draw simultaneously in a shared space. Pairing works across Android and iOS devices, and drawings are synchronized live through a Firebase Realtime Database. You can find the open-source code for iOS here and for Android here.

Illusive Images - Art exhibition comes to life "Illusive Images" demo is an augmented gallery consisting of 3 artworks, each exploring a different augmented image use case and user experience. As one walks from side to side, around the object, or gazes in a specific direction, 2D artworks are married with 3D, inviting the viewer to enter into the space of the artwork spanning well beyond the physical frame. Due to the visual design nature of our augmented images, we experimented a lot with creating databases with varying degrees of features. In order to get the best results, we iterated quickly by resizing the canvas for the artwork. We also moved and stretched the brightness and contrast levels. These variations helped to achieve the most optimal image without compromising design intent. The app was built in Unity with ARCore, with the majority of assets created in Cinema 4D. Mograph animations were imported into Unity as an fbx, and driven entirely by the position of the user in relation to the artwork. An example project can be found here.

To make your development experience easier, we open sourced all the demos our team built. We hope you find this useful! You can also visit our website to learn more and start building AR experiences today. #imgFull {width:100%;} #flexImg {width:99%}

Browse the updated Google I/O 2018 schedule and reserve seats for Sessions

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

The Google I/O 2018 schedule just got a big update! Find additional Sessions and Codelabs, as well as new App Reviews, Office Hours, and After Hours events. Times and locations for all events are also now available, so you can start planning accordingly. New this year: we'll have a series of Keynote Sessions, which take a broader look at how the technology we build can impact the world around us! The I/O schedule is subject to change until the event, so check back often, and keep an eye out for scheduled Meetup events taking place at the Community Lounge to help you connect and network with other developers. Attending in person To help make it easier to attend your favorite talks and minimize lines, confirmed attendees will be able to reserve seats for Sessions in advance of I/O - as long as they’re signed in with the same email address used to register for the 2018 event. A portion of seats will still be available first-come, first-served onsite. To reserve a seat:

Navigate to google.com/io/schedule, sign in, and click on the ticket icon for each Session you want to reserve.

If a particular Session has already reached the reservation capacity, you'll see an hourglass icon instead. If you've joined a waitlist and a spot opens up, we'll automatically change your reservation status to reserved.

You can reserve as many Sessions as you'd like per day, but only one reservation/waitlist per time slot is allowed.

Reservations will remain open until 1 hour before the start time for each Session.

NOTE: Reservations are only available for Sessions, not other event types listed on the schedule.

Reserve seats via the main Schedule page…

…Or via the Session detail pages. Anyone who's signed in can also star all event types listed on the schedule as a way to easily find them later on or on other devices. In addition to more than 160 technical and Keynote Sessions, onsite guests will have the chance to explore various Sandbox domes, covering product areas like Android, Assistant, Design, IoT, Web, just to name a few. Sandboxes are dedicated spaces to learn and play with our latest products and platforms via interactive demos, physical installations, and more. You can also take advantage of 100+ Office Hours and App Reviews. Office Hours gives you a chance to meet one-on-one with Google experts to ask all your technical questions, and App Reviews will give you the opportunity to receive advice and tips on your specific app-related projects. Don't forget to save time in your schedule for Codelabs. Here, you'll have everything you need to learn about the latest and greatest Google technologies via self-paced tutorials, or bring your own machine and take your work home with you. Google staff will be on hand for helpful advice and to provide direction if you get stuck. Joining remotely? Don't worry - you're not alone and you won't miss a thing! We'll be livestreaming the majority of our Keynotes and Sessions from Shoreline. If you prefer to watch I/O with your developer community, find an I/O Extended viewing party near you. We'll also let you experience I/O firsthand via our I/O Guides who will be touring the venue and giving you eyes on the ground. I/O is only 27 days away! We'll continue to share updates in the upcoming weeks to help you get ready and make the most of this year's event. Stay tuned!

What's new from Firebase at Google I/O 2017

Friday, May 26, 2017

Originally posted on the Firebase Blog by Francis Ma, Firebase Group Product Manager It's been an exciting year! Last May, we expanded Firebase into our unified app platform, building on the original backend-as-a-service and adding products to help developers grow their user base, as well as test and monetize their apps. Hearing from developers like Wattpad, who built an app using Firebase in only 3 weeks, makes all the hard work worthwhile. We're thrilled by the initial response from the community, but we believe our journey is just getting started. Let's talk about some of the enhancements coming to Firebase today. Integrating with Fabric In January, we announced that we were welcoming the Fabric team to Firebase. Fabric initially grabbed our attention with their array of products, including the industry-leading crash reporting tool, Crashlytics. As we got to know the team better, we were even more impressed by how closely aligned our missions are: to help developers build better apps and grow successful businesses. Over the last several months, we've been working closely with the Fabric team to bring the best of our platforms together. We plan to make Crashlytics the primary crash reporting product in Firebase. If you don't already use a crash reporting tool, we recommend you take a look at Crashlytics and see what it can do for you. You can get started by following the Fabric documentation. Phone authentication comes to Firebase Phone number authentication has been the biggest request for Firebase Authentication, so we're excited to announce that we've worked with the Fabric Digits team to bring phone auth to our platform. You can now let your users sign in with their phone numbers, in addition to traditional email/password or identity providers like Google or Facebook. This gives you a comprehensive authentication solution no matter who your users are or how they like to log in. At the same time, the Fabric team will be retiring the Digits name and SDK. If you currently use Digits, over the next couple weeks we'll be rolling out the ability to link your existing Digits account with Firebase and swap in the Firebase SDK for the Digits SDK. Go to the Digits blog to learn more. Introducing Firebase Performance Monitoring We recognize that poor app performance and stability are the top reasons for users to leave bad ratings on your app and possibly churn altogether. As part of our effort to help you build better apps, we're pleased to announce the beta launch of Performance Monitoring. Firebase Performance Monitoring is a new free tool that helps you understand when your user experience is being impacted by poorly performing code or challenging network conditions. You can learn more and get started with Performance Monitoring in the Firebase documentation. More robust analytics Analytics has been core to the Firebase platform since we launched last I/O. We know that understanding your users is the number one way to make your app successful, so we're continuing to invest in improving our analytics product. First off, you may notice that you're starting to see the name "Google Analytics for Firebase" around our documentation. Our analytics solution was built in conjunction with the Google Analytics team, and the reports are available both in the Firebase console and the Google Analytics interface. So, we're renaming Firebase Analytics to Google Analytics for Firebase, to reflect that your app analytics data are shared across both. For those of you who monetize your app with AdMob, we've started sharing data between the two platforms, helping you understand the true lifetime value (LTV) of your users, from both purchases and AdMob revenue. You'll see these new insights surfaced in the updated Analytics dashboard. Many of you have also asked for analytics insights into custom events and parameters. Starting today, you can register up to 50 custom event parameters and see their details in your Analytics reports. Learn more about custom parameter reporting. Firebase for all - iOS, games, and open source Firebase's mission is to help all developers build better apps. In that spirit, today we're announcing expanded platform and vertical support for Firebase. First of all, as Swift has become the preferred language for many iOS developers, we've updated our SDK to handle Swift language nuances, making Swift development a native experience on Firebase. We've also improved Firebase Cloud Messaging by adding support for token-based authentication for APNs, and greatly simplifying the connection and registration logic in the client SDK. Second, we've heard from our game developer community that one of the most important stats you monitor is frames per second (FPS). So, we've built Game Loop support & FPS monitoring into Test Lab for Android, allowing you to evaluate your game's frame rate before you deploy. Coupled with the addition of Unity plugins and a C++ SDK, which we announced at GDC this year, we think that Firebase is a great option for game developers. To see an example of a game built on top of Firebase, check out our Mecha Hamster app on Github. Finally, we've taken a big first step towards open sourcing our SDKs. We believe in open source software, not only because transparency is an important goal, but also because we know that the greatest innovation happens when we all collaborate. You can view our new repos on our open sourceproject page and learn more about our decision in this blog post. Dynamic Hosting with Cloud Functions for Firebase In March, we launched Cloud Functions for Firebase, which lets you run custom backend code in response to events triggered by Firebase features and HTTP requests. This lets you do things like send a notification when a user signs up or automatically create thumbnails when an image is uploaded to Cloud Storage. Today, in an effort to better serve our web developer community, we're expanding Firebase Hosting to integrate with Cloud Functions. This means that, in addition to serving static assets for your web app, you can now serve dynamic content, generated by Cloud Functions, through Firebase Hosting. For those of you building progressive web apps, Firebase Hosting + Cloud Functions allows you to go completely server-less. You can learn more by visiting our documentation. Firebase Alpha program and what's next Our goal is to build the best developer experience: easy-to-use products, great documentation, and intuitive APIs. And the best resource that we have for improving Firebase is you! Your questions and feedback continuously push us to make Firebase better. In light of that, we're excited to announce a Firebase Alpha program, where you will have the opportunity to test the cutting edge of our products. Things might not be perfect (in fact, we can almost guarantee they won't be), but by participating in the alpha community, you'll help define the future of Firebase. If you want to get involved, please register your interest in the Firebase Alpha form. Thank you for your support, enthusiasm, and, most importantly, feedback. The Firebase community is the reason that we've been able to grow and improve our platform at such an incredible pace over the last year. We're excited to continue working with you to build simple, intuitive products for developing apps and growing mobile businesses. To get started with Firebase today, visit our newly redesigned website. We're excited to see what you build!

Get ready for Google I/O 2017

Friday, May 12, 2017

Posted by Mónica Bagagem, Product Marketing ManagerShoreline Amphitheatre Attending in person?Badge pick-upPlan to come by early to get the best seats!Developer Keynoteweb appAndroid appiOS appAfter Hours Block PartyMountain View weather forecastwe recommend bringing a jacket for the evening festivities as it can get chilly after darkhere Attending remotely?

I/O Extended: Find an I/O Extended event near you to watch the keynotes with your community, participate in hackathons, codelabs, and much more.

Livestream: Tune into the livestream throughout the 3 day festival on desktop and mobile.

I/O Live Widget: If you want to bring the livestream and the #io17 social conversation to your audience, you can customize and embed our I/O Live widget on your site or blog.

I/O Guide: Follow our Guide, Timothy Jordan, as he tours the venue and gets the inside scoop. You can find him on any of our livestream channels throughout the event, in-between sessions.

#io17request: Between May 17-19, send us your questions about I/O via English-language tweets that include the #io17request hashtag. A team of Googlers across Android, Chrome, Assistant, VR, Machine Learning, and more will track down answers to your burning questions.

I/O in photos: Be sure to follow out our real-time I/O photo album from Shoreline!

FAQ page#io17

Google I/O 2017 on your mobile devices

Monday, May 8, 2017

Posted by Mónica Bagagem, Product Marketing ManagerAvailable now: Android appiOS appWeb app

SCHEDULE Browse, filter and find Sessions, Office Hours, Codelabs, and App Reviews across 14 tracks. All sessions will be livestreamed this year and you can access the livestream channel or the session recording after the fact in the respective session detail screen.

MY I/O

Exclusive for onsite registered attendees: reserve seats for sessionsgoogle.com/io/schedule

FEED

MAP

INFO

Update: The iOS app is now available for download.

Start planning your Google I/O 2017 schedule!

Friday, April 28, 2017

Posted by Christopher Katsaros, Product Marketing ManagerGoogle I/Obuilding apps for the Google AssistantZero to App with Firebasegoodies inside Android OOver 150 Technical Sessions, Livestreamed
Google KeynoteDeveloper Keynote google.com/ioI/O websiteJoining in person?
See you in 3 weeks!

Sep	OCT	Nov
	09
2017	2018	2019

Creating AR Experiences for I/O: Our Process

Browse the updated Google I/O 2018 schedule and reserve seats for Sessions

What's new from Firebase at Google I/O 2017

Get ready for Google I/O 2017

Google I/O 2017 on your mobile devices

Start planning your Google I/O 2017 schedule!

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