Apple Just Quietly Gave Us the Golden Key to Unlock the Metaverse

Apple has a history of adding technology to its products that only makes sense much later. Developers, and hardcore geeks, know of it, but the general public does not. When a new product is later released to the public, the effect is that it is magically advanced and ‘just works’. One such technology is the advanced LiDAR scanner that now ships with every iPhone. Looking at your camera array, you see a small black dot. LiDAR is a technology that measures distance and shape of objects around it much like radar. It enables the phone to know the shapes and distance of objects in any direction of the phone’s field of vision. Effectively, it builds an instant 3D model, in any lighting condition, of the world around it. When Apple released the LiDAR scanner in the 2020 iPad pro, a similar scanner was the size of a car battery, cost 200K and had a third of the resolution. So from a purely technical standpoint, this was a big deal. But what to use it for? I, for one, am passionate about building the Metaverse. I got myself an iPad Pro and started seeing the world through Apples eyes. Pretty quickly, though, it became evident there was something missing. The scans produced with LiDAR were instant, and textured, but from a 3D geometry standpoint, just not good enough to use in any traditional sense. <a href="https://medium.com/blockchain-biz/apple-just-quietly-gave-us-the-golden-key-to-unlock-the-metaverse-54b34732e1cf">Click Here</a>