Pokemon GO’s AR-multiplayer Buddy Adventure is now live

This new feature will let players interact with their friend’s Pokemon via the AR camera

The new feature will allow a shared augmented reality experience where you will get to interact with your friend’s buddy Pokemon via the AR camera. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo - RTX2N4E4 (REUTERS)

Pokemon GO is all set to get a new multiplayer feature called Buddy Adventure and it is live now. The new feature will allow a shared augmented reality experience where you will get to interact with your friend's buddy Pokemon via the AR camera.

We tried it out and for now and it works. However, your AR camera will have to be on for you to access this feature. Once you spot your buddy around you can feed it berries and fill up the happiness meter. This also means that Pokemon Go might come up with the Happiness Evolution feature by which certain Pokemon will only be able to evolve when they are 'happy'.

You can watch in real time as you or your friend pets the Pokemon and since this feature is supposed to be cross-platform, both Android and iOS players should be able to interact with each other. This feature we have not tried out yet.

Niantic has been working on a unique multiplayer AR experience for Pokemon GO for a while with the developer running trails for test cases like Codename: Neon and Codename: Tonehenge to test the possibilities of AR. All these trials have culminated into the upcoming Buddy Adventure.

Niantic is also working on the Niantic Wayfarer program which is a tool for high-level players to submit new locations, photos, titles and extra information about locations in Niantic's AR fames. Niantic is also working on the lack of occlusion (the ability by which AR subjects can move behind real-world objects) to create a more immersive AR experience. The developer has mentioned that this will be coming to the Niantic Real World Platform in the future.

Clearly, the aim for Niantic seems to be to increase the player-to-player interaction scope in the game. In October they had announced a new mode, that is expected to come soon, in GO Battle League that will pair players with opponents regardless of their location. This way you can battle against players from across the world.