The News

Reincubate, makers of Camo, the app that gives you video superpowers, and Snap Inc. are partnering to bring augmented reality (AR) to everyday meetings, presentations and streams through Snap’s Camera Kit. Snap’s AR capabilities, along with Camo’s zoom, pan, and other features give people tools to personalize how they appear and interact while streaming, gaming, or videoconferencing.

“Camo is at the forefront of what comes after webcams, and that means devices with entirely new capabilities. For the first time, PC and Mac users have the power to use AR technologies without needing an expensive setup. By offloading the AR processing to your cell phone, we take advantage of their incredible cameras and processors for smoother, faster recording, podcasting, and streaming,” says CEO and Founder of Reincubate, Aidan Fitzpatrick. “We’re excited to be building on Snap’s expertise to bring AR to the millions of streams already using Camo.”

How Does it Work?

The new AR webcam features are available free and fully unrestricted for all users. Accessing the AR lenses is as simple as selecting them in Camo Studio, and the launch set comprises a dozen lenses across the following categories:

• Focus: Lenses that help users focus on the speaker in streams, with aesthetic techniques such as “Portrait Mode” and background muting.
• Accessibility: Lenses that help streamers and presenters convey visual cues for emotion and reaction more clearly, with face-tracking and use of emoji for face and hand signals.
• Masking: Lenses to render the user with varying degrees of fidelity, such as with a light beauty filter, reduced color-set, or even in sketch form. These lenses may help reduce presenter overwhelm on streams, combating the effects of “Zoom fatigue”.
• Novelty: A collection of more entertaining lenses from the Snap Lens Creator community, which range from adding a photorealistic cat to the streamer’s scene through chromatic lighting effects to making them largely invisible!

Why is this important?

This is the next step in the evolution of AR apps. There were several AR apps launched this year but very few worked with online streaming. This will open up a ton of new ways users can interact and continue to drive AR adoption.