Pokémon Go Gets Enhanced Augmented Reality Photos Feature

Niantic is adding the ability to Pokémon Go to take ar photos of all captured Pokémon. There was already an ar function in the game, but it could only take pictures at the time of capture.

Niantic calls the feature GO Snapshot. Once the feature becomes available, it will be possible to create ar photos of all the Pokémon a player has in their Storage. A button for this will become available with all Pokémon and the function can also be accessed by clicking on the camera in the Item storage.

When activating the function, the camera opens and players have to point to a spot in the picture. The chosen Pokémon will appear there. Then players can move around it and take photos. By ‘patting’ the Pokémon on the screen, it will turn towards the camera.

Pokémon Go had an ar function since the game came out in the summer of 2016, but it could be used while catching Pokémon. Players could only take a picture of the relevant monster at the location of the capture.

In late 2017, the iPhone version of Pokémon Go got an improved ar mode by adding ARKit support. This improved the placement of monsters on the camera image and made it possible to walk around the Pokémon. That also only worked when catching. A year later, that improvement also came to Android through ARCore support.

Last year, Niantic demonstrated object recognition in the Pokémon Go engine, enabling rendering of virtual objects that disappear behind objects in the real world. However, it doesn’t look like that functionality is coming to the game now with the update.

At the time of writing, the new feature is not yet active. Niantic usually makes such changes a few days after the announcement.