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Google ends Tango support to fully focus on ARCore

Tango support will end next year.

Kris Naudus (AOL/Engadget)

Google began delving into the world of AR with its 2014 venture Project Tango, or just Tango as of last year, and its AR work has grown quite a bit since then. Earlier this year, it unveiled ARCore, an augmented reality platform that differs from Tango in that it doesn't require any specialized hardware. Today Google announced an update to its ARCore Developer Preview and with it, the end of Tango support. "As we focus on bringing augmented reality to the entire Android ecosystem with ARCore, we're turning down support of Tango," Google said in a blog post.

With the accessibility of ARCore, moving away from Tango makes sense. But Google notes that its first venture into AR helped make ARCore possible. Google showed off what ARCore can do earlier this year and some projects taking advantage of the platform have used it to incorporate street view and give a more real-world experience of a distant place, to show how an under construction building will look like when it's finished and to bring AR stickers to the Pixel 2.

"Thank you to our incredible community of developers who made such progress with Tango over the last three years," said Google. "We look forward to continuing the journey with you on ARCore." Tango support will end on March 1, 2018.