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January 31, 2022
Niantic Announces Lightship Winter Challenge Winners
Dev teams from around the world submitted entries demonstrating a wide range of skills and creative ideas using Lightship ARDK

The results of the first official Lightship developer contest are in and the winners represent the best of Lightship so far, just two months after opening the platform for developers around the world to use.

We’re blown away by the creativity and variety of experiences developers created with Lightship, but a few clear winners rose to the top:

Best in Show

Best in Snow, ahem sorry Best in Show, goes to Snow Fight by Alexson Chu. Snow Fight demonstrates the best of what developers can do with Lightship by combining the three core pillars of the Lightship ARDK, “Mapping”, “Understanding”, and “Sharing” all together into a unique AR experience.

Alexson created a multi-player AR snowball fight by turning any physical space into a playable area covered in virtual snow. Players then use their devices to quickly generate snowballs they can throw at their friends. We loved seeing this fresh and intriguing way to bring a classic winter activity into AR!

Best in Understanding

The Best in Understanding award goes to Weathergy by Patrick Catanzaritti and Meri Catanzaritti! This game allows players to face off against one another by choosing the Summer team or the Winter team, in a friendly battle for control of the weather.

Using Lightship’s semantic segmentation, Weathergy adds clouds in the sky and snow to the environment when Team Winter is in the lead, or it will brighten up the day by growing flowers in the ground and around trees when Team Summer has the advantage. Combining the constantly changing atmosphere with a fun multiplayer mechanic and other features, Weathergy demonstrates how to leverage several different components of the Lightship ARDK and brings them all together to create a cohesive experience.

Best in Mapping

We’ve selected Astral, built by Andre Elijah, as the recipient of our Best in Mapping award. This application takes mapping to a new level by capturing meshes in spaces and using those captures to see meshes through walls and surfaces. Astral leverages this functionality in a practical manner by allowing the user to place virtual stud lines on walls, and mark light locations on horizontal surfaces. With Astral, users can more efficiently start their home improvement journey, making precisely drilling holes or installing speakers a breeze.

Best in Sharing

Our final prize, Best in Sharing, goes to Duel of Wizards by Future House Studies! This intense game of multiplayer wizardry demonstrates the power of sharing with the Lightship ARDK by allowing several players to play in a single session and compete against one another by dodging and slinging spells. Users can change the type of spell they’re casting by grabbing different elements in the environment surrounding them like sky, ground, or foliage.

Honorable Mentions

The overall high caliber and large volume left the judges with a lot of challenging choices to make. The best of the rest built a wide (and wild!) range of experiences, from fire safety to musical creatures to painting 3d models, and even snail battles! Each of these experiences made impressive use of the Lightship ARDK, leveraging meshing, multi-player, and semantic segmentation. While we can’t describe each of these experiences, we think they speak for themselves. Take a look at what they created in the links below:

*OmigARi * Snailz * Ocean Painter AR * Tontachi AR * AREALM * ZoOllie * Snow Maker * Realverse * Fire Safety * Christmas Mood * RC Cars * DragonPet AR * Son AR * Aquatic Adventures * Creature Chorus * Lightship 3D Sky Segmentation * Rocket AR * The AR Translator * Karambol AR * Lightship Conquest *

Conclusion:
We’re grateful to everyone who participated in this year’s Winter challenge. As we continue to build the Lightship platform we’ll host more challenges like this, so join our developer community at Lightship.dev to hear about future opportunities!

The Niantic Lightship team


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