Samsung reportedly plans Project Whare Cloud service and AR headset

Until now, Samsung’s mixed reality efforts have been largely focused on virtual reality headsets such as Gear VR and the Odyssey HMD, but the South Korean company will dive deeper into augmented reality this week, Variety reports. During its annual developers conference in San Francisco, the company plans to unveil a new AR cloud service currently known as Project Whare Cloud, and might also preview a new AR headset.Project Whare Cloud won’t be the company’s first foray into AR, but it appears to be a considerably broader effort than what came before. Samsung previously introduced AR Emoji on its Galaxy phones, enabling people to replace their faces with Snapchat-style cartoony graphic overlays including personalized and Disney/Pixar characters a very basic implementation of AR.By contrast, Whare is an effort to enable multiple AR developers, devices, and users to access shared information and virtual assets placed in the real world. The concept is apparently to create a Samsung-specific collection of AR content that can persist beyond individual users opening separate apps. In May, Google introduced similar functionality in ARCore 1.2 with Cloud Anchors, which work across Android and iOS devices, and Apple followed in June with rival ARKit 2.0 features to support multi-user access to AR data, as well as cross-platform assets.