Niantic's Spatial SDK

Unlocking Immersive Experiences: A Deep Dive into Niantic's Spatial SDK

Niantic's Spatial SDK, formerly known as Lightship, empowers developers to craft groundbreaking augmented reality (AR) experiences that seamlessly blend the digital and physical worlds. Built upon Niantic's extensive experience in location-based AR, as demonstrated in globally successful games like Pokémon Go and Ingress, the Spatial SDK provides a robust suite of tools and features. Primarily designed for use with the Unity game engine, it allows creators to leverage advanced spatial understanding and create truly immersive applications. Harmony Studios recognises the transformative potential of this technology and is actively exploring its capabilities to deliver cutting-edge VR and AR solutions for our diverse clientele.

Integration with Unity

The Niantic Spatial SDK offers seamless integration with Unity, a widely adopted platform for developing 2D and 3D interactive content. This integration extends Unity's AR Foundation framework, allowing developers to easily incorporate Niantic's advanced AR features into both new and existing projects. This streamlined process allows developers familiar with Unity to quickly get started and leverage Niantic's unique capabilities without a steep learning curve. By enabling the Niantic SDK in Unity's XR Plug-in Management, developers can override and extend standard AR Foundation features like occlusion and meshing with Niantic's more advanced and cross-platform implementations.

Key Features of the Spatial SDK

The Niantic Spatial SDK boasts a rich set of features designed to enable sophisticated AR interactions:

• Visual Positioning System (VPS): This is a core feature that allows for precise localisation of users and anchoring of AR content with centimetre-level accuracy in real-world locations. Leveraging Niantic's vast database of scanned locations, VPS enables persistent and shared AR experiences in publicly accessible spaces. Apps that require accurate and stable placement of virtual objects in the real world, such as location-based games, interactive museum exhibits, and AR navigation tools, greatly benefit from VPS.  
• Real-time Meshing: The SDK can rapidly generate a machine-readable 3D representation of the physical environment using the device's camera. This allows for realistic interactions between virtual objects and the real world, including accurate occlusion (virtual objects appearing behind real ones), physics simulations that respect the environment's geometry, and intelligent object placement. Applications in architecture, design visualisation (e.g., visualising digital factory equipment on a real factory floor), and enhanced safety training simulations can utilise real-time meshing to create highly realistic and interactive experiences.  
• Semantic Understanding: This feature employs computer vision to instantly identify and categorise key elements within the user's surroundings, such as ground, sky, buildings, and foliage. This semantic awareness enables virtual content to interact more intelligently with the environment. For instance, a virtual creature could realistically walk on the ground or hide behind a building. This is invaluable for creating believable AR games, environmentally responsive art installations, and accessibility applications that understand the user's context. The SDK supports over 200 categories for advanced object detection.  
• Shared AR: The SDK facilitates multi-user, real-world AR experiences for up to 10 simultaneous users. It provides networking APIs for synchronising content and actions across devices within a shared AR session. This includes co-localisation, ensuring all participants see virtual content anchored in the same physical space. Shared AR opens up possibilities for collaborative games, multi-user design reviews in a physical space, and interactive educational experiences where participants can engage with virtual objects together in the real world.  
• Depth Estimation and Occlusion: Regardless of a device's LiDAR capabilities, the Niantic SDK provides robust depth estimation, allowing for realistic occlusion of virtual objects by real-world elements. This enhances the sense of immersion and believability in AR experiences. Any AR application aiming for visual realism will benefit from this feature.  
• Navigation Mesh: This feature enables the creation of dynamic navigation within the AR scene, allowing AI agents or virtual characters to move intelligently around the real-world environment as it is perceived by the device. This is particularly useful for AR games where virtual characters need to navigate complex real-world spaces.
• Object Detection: With support for over 200 object categories, the SDK allows applications to understand and react to specific objects in the user's environment, enhancing contextual awareness and enabling richer interactions.  

Example Applications

The capabilities of the Niantic Spatial SDK have been demonstrated in various innovative applications:

• Pokémon Go: This global phenomenon showcased the power of location-based AR, using a precursor to the current Spatial SDK to overlay virtual creatures onto the real world map, encouraging exploration and social interaction.
• Ingress: Niantic's first AR game, Ingress, also heavily relied on location data and basic AR overlays, pioneering the concept of real-world gaming that the Spatial SDK now significantly enhances.
• Emoji Garden: This sample project built with the SDK demonstrates shared AR play in public locations. Users can localise to a specific location using VPS and interact with a shared virtual garden, highlighting best practices for multi-user AR experiences.  
• SKATRIX: This AR skateboarding game allows players to navigate real-world streets, collect virtual skatepark elements, and perform tricks using hyper-accurate AR and realistic physics powered by the SDK.  
• Wonderlab AR: Developed in collaboration with the Science Museum in London, this application extends scientific exploration beyond the museum walls, allowing users to discover scientific phenomena hidden in their everyday surroundings using AR.  
• MATTER AR: This platform enables multiplayer laser tag in real-world locations, with up to four players battling using advanced AR and AI, showcasing the SDK's potential for dynamic and immersive competitive experiences.
• Coachellaverse: For the Coachella music festival, Niantic partnered to create immersive AR experiences within the festival app, including interactive portals, animated elements, and AR navigation, enhancing the in-person event experience.

These examples highlight the versatility of the Niantic Spatial SDK across various sectors, from gaming and entertainment to education and practical applications. Harmony Studios is excited by the potential to leverage these features to create bespoke AR solutions for our clients, enhancing user engagement and delivering innovative experiences.

Pricing Considerations

The pricing for the Niantic Spatial SDK is tiered and depends on the specific features and usage volume. As of April 2025, Niantic offers a free tier for developers to get started, with limitations on monthly active users (MAU) for the core SDK features, monthly VPS calls, and monthly Shared AR sessions.

For commercial deployments and higher usage volumes, Niantic offers various paid tiers. For instance, VPS usage beyond the free tier is billed per 1,000 calls, with the price decreasing at higher volumes. Similarly, Shared AR sessions and SDK usage based on MAU incur costs beyond the free thresholds. Private VPS locations, which offer more control over the visibility and access of scanned locations, have their own pricing structure based on the number of locations.

It's important for developers to carefully consider their expected usage and choose a pricing tier that aligns with their needs. Niantic provides detailed pricing information on their website (www.nianticspatial.com), allowing developers to estimate costs based on their anticipated scale. Harmony Studios will carefully evaluate the pricing structure for each client project to ensure cost-effective and scalable AR solutions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Niantic's Spatial SDK represents a significant step forward in the development of truly immersive and interactive augmented reality experiences. Its robust feature set, seamless Unity integration, and proven track record in high-profile applications make it a powerful tool for developers looking to push the boundaries of AR. Harmony Studios is committed to staying at the forefront of VR and AR technology and sees the Niantic Spatial SDK as a key enabler for delivering innovative and engaging experiences to our clients.