Quintar uses Google ARCore to help people navigate live events and big venues

Quintar wants to enhance navigation with augmented reality so you can have an easier time navigating live events at big venues for sports or concerts. And so it announced today at Google I/O that is has partnered with Google on its ARCore tech platform.

Quintar tried out the tech recently as the official mobile augmented reality developer of the PGA Tour. It accurately places virtual objects on any physical place in real time, turning normally ordinary spaces into Quintar Places. This means a user can look at a phone with a camera pointed at the real world and see directional overlays on where to go, said Sankar Jayaram, CEO of Quintar, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“This will just open people’s eyes,” Jayaram said. “This is actually really big. It’s an enterprise solution that can change a lot of things.”

The combination of Google’s ARCore Geospatial API and Quintar’s Q.reality platform has created a comprehensive solution that produces live augmented wayfinding and interactive AR that can enhance engagement and improve the overall consumer experience for virtually any live event.

The combined technologies were first tested at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, home of the PGA Tour Championship, the culminating event of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup playoffs, with the goal of creating an unprecedented interactive door-to-door fan experience. The results were highlighted at Google I/O 2023.

“We are excited with the future of live sport augmentation and look forward to continue working with partners such as Quintar to bring unique, helpful and immersive experiences to life,” said Stevan Silva, product manager of ARCore at Google, in a statement.   

Google’s Geospatial technology allows for the creation of global-scale, location-based AR experiences, while Quintar Places delivers live customized data in specific “places” like golf courses, stadiums, arenas, and malls that can be overlaid precisely onto a physical space, creating a unique interactive XR experience.

By combing the two technologies, consumers now can seamlessly navigate to and around a venue, find friends and interact with the live events happening in front of them, offering event owners and content creators the ability to create memorable experiences for users.

“Together we have created a core technology that brings the same capability as Google Geospatial and Google Maps down to a smaller scale with higher accuracy and much more flexibility and adaptability in real time,” Jayaram said. “Google really likes what we’ve been doing in sports with the PGA TOUR and AT&T, and we decided to combine forces to make an even better, more holistic experience for fans at live events. Sports is just a starting point. The applications for this combined technology are unlimited.”  

Quintar has been delivering interactive fan experiences at live PGA Tour events for the last three seasons, including player and ball indicator cards, dynamic shot tracking, and distance-to-pin measurements, all of which fans can capture and share with their friends on social media.

Quintar has also been working in collaboration with AT&T to develop highly engaging in-game AR experiences for sports fans in arenas and venues, including AT&T 5G Game Vision, which launched in the NBA G League in March.

“If you think about it, Google gets you from place to place. They started digitizing maps,” Jayaram said. “And from digital maps, we moved to tracking via your phone and giving you turn-by-turn (instructions).”

Now, Google with their geospatial API and XR capabilities let you hold up your phone and you see arrows and directions on what is in front of you, he said.

Google Maps can easily get you to a place like a golf course. But once you get there, you’re on your own. That’s the place where Quintar Places can help you, he said. If you are at a sporting venue, a mall, a warehouse, or anything big, Quintar and Google can help you navigate inside the venue and then get back out of it.

“The key is the gap that’s in between the places the map can get you,” he said. “You to have very accurate positioning for augmented reality in the plane. It has to be within inches of accuracy, not five yards.”

The test at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta showcased what the tech can do, combining StreetView and the geospatial API mapping with Quintar. But in the end, Jayaram said, “This goes way beyond sports.”

The company has about 25 people and it has raised a couple of seed rounds so far.