Niantic Lightship

GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

As per the blog, it appears that Ingress has not been given priority for integration of this AR platform.

Why not?


Ingress would definitely be improved with support and additions with this platform. In my opinion.

Comments

  • edited May 2021

    Maybe I missed it, but where does it say that Ingress won't be getting any priority? I mean, it makes sense that it wouldn't, since Lightship is just a rebranding of the Real World Platform, (which Ingress predates and to which, as far as we are aware, Ingress was never ported) but I don't see any mention that they wouldn't include Ingress eventually. It even says so in the first paragraph:

    Niantic Lightship encompasses the full Niantic platform, including the suite of tools and services that power Niantic games, from Ingress to Pokémon GO to our partnership with Nintendo to bring the Pikmin universe to our community. Niantic Lightship sets the industry standard for mapping and shared, planetary-scale AR experiences.

    For anyone joining us recently, Ingress predates the former Real World Platform (or RWP, now called Lightship) by a few years. Ingress Prime was the first big step to bring Ingress to the Real World Platform, but moving over the Ingress backend from legacy servers to the RWP was officially put on pause back in 2020. This announcement explicitly says that Ingress will be part of Lightship, which gives me hope that we either will be or already are finally on the newer backend and not the legacy one.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Which entails the other game has priority.

    That is a due to the server side already using RWP servers, whereas Ingress is not.

  • edited May 2021

    That's an interesting article! I hadn't seen it, so thanks for sharing.

    That being said, third party news sites typically use the titles that get them the most clicks-- Pokemon Go is a massive game that gets clicks, and has the marketing backing of Niantic and Nintendo, so it naturally will be the topic of conversation and not our beloved Ingress. At the end of the day, we don't really know how much priority one game will get versus the other, though it's probably easy to assume that the game native to Lightship, with an order of magnitude more active players, and a partnership with one of the largest video game companies in the world, will likely release features that leverage the new ARDK faster than Ingress.

    I'd love to get an update from @ofer2 on the status of the move to Lightship, but overall I believe that both games will eventually have access to the same development features, and will only be limited by their respective development resources.

    Edit: I'd like to also ask, what do people want to see in a world where Ingress is part of Lightship? I know Brian recently mentioned the ability to hide capsules in the real world for others to find. I mostly just want to see ambient XM coming off real-world objects, to start out.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    @BERN1ESANDERS

    The marketing team at Niantic basically took the project lead of the other game and had interviews with 3rd party news sites.


    It is click baity, but so often the case when topics should include Ingress, but do not. When these interviews should include @NianticBrian too.

    Because these interviews are marketing, I feel Ingress should be given the same air time as the other game.

  • edited May 2021

    I mean... it entails that there are enough developers on the PoGo team due to revenue, that they can afford to have people doing side projects to investigate possibilities.

    Ingress has an unending backlog of 'right now relevant' requests and intended features that aren't pie in the sky options. Give the tiny Ingress Dev team some credit for all the good features they've added over the last six months.

    Moving to Lightship servers, as people like @ofer2 and @NianticBrian have indicated, would require them to stop developing new features for Ingress while they develop the servers. A task of at least a year or more at a critical time when rebuilding the core player base is far more important than spending time on "possible uses that don't pan out".

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Perringaiden

    I did state over a year ago, that I had significant doubts that the Ingress Server would go to RWP before Christmas 2021


    It is just a massive bomb shell announcement yesterday, then have the project lead for pokemon go, go on record to show that the features are being heavily prioritized for that game, over all of the other games Niantic works with and on, including our beloved Ingress.


    Judging by twitter, virtually all Niantic Employee's broadcasted it.


    What does this mean for Ingress and Lightship servers?

    Nothing, there is no near term roadmap.

    Quite frankly, as I stated on the other thread last year, the work that the dev team had done, and the wizardry of @ofer2, the brilliant new features we have gotten are amazing.


    I still have zero expectations that the move for Ingress to RWP servers will not happen this side of 2021.

    Ingress is still limping through this covid-19 pandemic.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Just a please explain, how on the blog it suggests that Ingress uses Lightship, without saying that Ingress does not use the RWP server?


    Which heavily implies that Ingress does already use the RWP server.

    While the Ingress client, to my knowledge, still uses the previous NRWP.

    @NianticBrian can you please shed some information on this?

  • Just a please explain, how on the blog it suggests that Ingress uses Lightship, without saying that Ingress does not use the RWP server?

    Ingress Prime is built on the core client Niantic-written libraries that are used in all Niantic products. Those libraries are part of the Lightship platform.

    While the Ingress client, to my knowledge, still uses the previous NRWP.

    There is no 'previous NRWP'. The Niantic Real World Platform has been renamed to Niantic Lightship. They're one and the same.

    We don't use the servers, so while we automatically gained features from PoGo in the client like one finger rotation, and the non-POI based distance tracking, we don't gain things like Adventure Sync because the server component isn't there (yet).

    Lightship is both servers and UI, and Ingress does use the core libraries that Niantic is now calling "Lightship", even if we don't use the full ARDK or the Lightship server backend.

  • jontebulajontebula ✭✭✭✭✭

    Please view very early screenshot of the 3D map can look in Prime from all portals scans.

  • OthinnMxOOthinnMxO ✭✭✭


    I wish you luck. Because the general attitude of Ingress players is "if it doesn't help me make triangles, while destroying the other factions triangles, then it's useless".

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    @ofer2 thanks for clarifying where Lightship is for Ingress.

    Looking forward to seeing those updated libraries in action sometime in the future


    @OthinnMxO I prefer to think about what AR story would bring. For example seeing the extra dimensional aliens coming out of the portal, and using a new type of item, aid said entity or fight said entity depending if you are Resistance or Enlightened. Which would give a significant, temporary boost for the portal.

    Eg immunity from xmps for 15 minutes, and allows for up to 4 additional outgoing links.

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