Bubbles app icon

AR Interactive game

Exploring the possibilities of Augmented Reality with ARKit.

Screenshot of the bubbles application being used in a backyard

Introducing Digital Bubbles from Livefront.

At Livefront, our passion for innovation drives us to explore new technologies as soon as they become available. When Apple announced ARKit at WWDC 2017, we saw an opportunity to push the boundaries of augmented reality.

Our initial aim was simple: to immerse ourselves in ARKit and discover its capabilities. After a quick meditation session to ideate an app concept—blowing virtual bubbles in the real world—the Digital Bubbles iOS app was born, and within a few days, we released our first version to the App Store.

While Digital Bubbles started as a fairly simple AR app allowing users to blow into their phones to generate virtual bubbles, we continued to iterate and innovate over the years. In 2018, we explored connecting the app between iPhones so users could blow bubbles together in the same digital world. However, iPhones in 2018 lacked the precision in position and orientation necessary—and we inadvertently ended up blowing bubbles out of friends' ears or from random points around them. In 2020, we added Siri Shortcuts and whimsical items like rubber duckies, bananas, and dead fish. In 2022, we introduced snowballs—after all, we are based in Minnesota!

The Digital Bubbles app continues to be an experimental playground for our developers and gets periodic enhancements and improvements. Keep an eye out for newer versions of Digital Bubbles in the future!

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How we built it.

ARKit

Leveraged ARKit's world tracking to seamlessly integrate virtual bubbles into the real environment.

AVAudioEngine

Captured the user's breath with device microphone and used it as a signal to emit real-time digital bubbles.

SceneKit Physics

Utilized SceneKit to simulate gravity, air resistance and surface tension.

SceneKit Lighting

Optimized textures and shaders to provide a convincing representation of bubbles in the surrounding environment.

ARKit

Leveraged ARKit's world tracking to seamlessly integrate virtual bubbles into the real environment.

AVAudioEngine

Captured the user's breath with device microphone and used it as a signal to emit real-time digital bubbles.

SceneKit Physics

Utilized SceneKit to simulate gravity, air resistance and surface tension.

SceneKit Lighting

Optimized textures and shaders to provide a convincing representation of bubbles in the surrounding environment.

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