For the first time to do AR project friends, in the face of a wide range of AR plug-ins, it is difficult to choose, and part of the introduction is relatively old. I checked the various types of introductions, organized as follows, I hope to help friends in need.
Selection focus: good versatility (platform support, Android, iOS, mini-games, head-up displays), powerful (able to fulfill most usage scenarios)
Note: Support mobile android and apple devices, support unity development. Not for head-mounted devices, for selection analysis
1、ARcore
Supported device models: https://developers.google.cn/ar/devices#android_china
Google, for a wide range of environments. Not all devices are fully supported and you may need to use Android Emulator to test your project.
Comparative guide to AR frameworks: ARCore offers three main features that allow you to build powerful and rich AR projects:
- Motion tracking: It’s critical to not only put virtual objects into the real world, but to make sure they look realistic from all angles, and ARCore ensures this by aligning the virtual 3D camera that renders the 3D content with the device’s camera (which for the first time will require you to turn on camera permissions on your phone).
- Environment Understanding: ARCore detects planes and feature points so you can correctly place virtual objects on real planes. For example, objects on a table or wall.
- Light estimation: Using your phone’s camera, ARCore detects the current location of light in the physical world. ARCore then illuminates the virtual object in the same way as the real object, adding to the sense of realism.
Pros: - For multiple environments: Android, iOS, Unity3D and Unreal Engine 4
- Natural light for virtual objects
- liberty
Project Case:
https://gitcode.net/mirrors/unity-technologies/arfoundation-samples?utm_source=csdn_github_accelerator
Drawbacks: - Not all devices are fully supported, and you may need to use Android Emulator to test your project.
- Lacks some iOS features compared to Apple’s ARKit
2、ARkit
Supports development on Apple devices and allows you to use ARKit when developing for other platforms using Unity’s AR Foundation framework.
ARKit 3 comes with several new features such as:
- Character occlusion: 3D AR content realistically passes behind and in front of people in the real world
- Track up to three faces at a time
- Motion Capture: Use poses and gestures as input to AR apps to create content that interacts directly with human movement
- Reality Composer as a Rapid AR Prototyping Tool
Insufficient: - Only for modern iOS devices (iPhone 6s+, iPad Pro+)
- No backward compatibility with previous versions that use SceneKit
3、Vuforia
Vuforia Engine has been integrated directly with Unity3D to make it easier to create AR projects directly within the game engine.
You can also use Vuforia Engine with iOS through XCode, Android Studio through the Vuforia Android SDK, and Visual Studio.
Vuforia Studio, on the other hand, is a standalone drag-and-drop application for building AR experiences without the need for extensive programming or design skills.
Pros:
- Both images and shapes can be used as markers for AR experiences, allowing you to create ubiquitous AR interactions based on deep learning and advanced shape recognition techniques
- Smooth integration with Unity3D
- Multiple Programming Languages Support: C++, Java, Objective-C and .NET Extended by Unity3D
Drawbacks: - Pricing is higher compared to other AR tools. Subscriptions start at $42/month. However, you can develop the app for free before deploying it.
- Unreal Engine 4 is not supported
4、AR Foundation
AR Foundation is a package that lets you build cross-platform AR applications in Unity3D.
The tool includes ARKit and ARCore XR packages, which means you can develop your AR app in Unity3D and then build it for Android or iOS. If you want to implement AR apps for Android and iOS devices, you’ll have to deal with the AR Foundation.
Even better, the AR Foundation can use features from both the ARCore and ARKit frameworks in the same project.
Which AR framework is the best? Suppose you are building an iOS AR app that uses 3D object tracking capabilities. You want your app to be able to recognize and interact with physical objects of a specific shape.
The problem is that 3D object tracking is currently available in ARKit, but not yet in ARCore.The AR Foundation adds special hooks to objects. Thanks to these hooks, when you build an app for Android, it will still work, even if the feature doesn’t work on Android yet.
Once ARcore provides 3D object tracking, all you have to do is update your AR Foundation application package without having to rebuild your application from scratch.
Pros:
- Extensive community support and easy access to the Unity3D codebase and asset store
- Other Unity Features
- Ability to develop an application for multiple platforms simultaneously
Drawbacks: - Standard Unity pricing system applies – if your project earns more than $100,000 per year, a Unity3D Pro license will cost you between $40 and $150 per month.
5、EasyAR
The official link to EasyAR is as follows, https://www.easyar.cn/
- Great versatility, compatible with Android, iOS, WeChat applets, Nreal AR glasses, and also compatible with AR core, ARkit, AR Foundation, Huawei AR Engine.
- Comprehensive functions: sparse space map, dense space map, motion tracking, surface object tracking, 3D object tracking, flat image tracking, screen recording.
6, Huawei AR Engine
Due to Google’s sanction, ARCore can’t cover Huawei’s new models, resulting in new models can’t use the ARFoundation program; using third-party universal ARsdk is not perfectly compatible with commonly used Huawei models, after all, the official native sdk is the most suitable for their own models. Recently, I have been learning to access HuaweiAREngine and ARFoundation compatible use of the project, collected some solutions and summarized, due to the unity of the relevant program official delay has not been updated (the official also closed the old 2.0 version of the download portal), the following sdk version is also a test version.
unity is only available in beta:
The original link: https://blog.csdn.net/ssssssilver/article/details/120548647
7. Other
WikiTude, ARToolsKit, LayAR, Kudan, Maxst AR: feasibility unknown, fewer references to documentation, not attempted.
Magic Leap: Eye Tracking
LeapMootion: Gesture Tracking
Summary:
I combined with the project use scenarios, and finally chose EasyAR. special tout EasyAR, excellent experience. 19 years when I first used easyAR, a lot of introductions are EasyAR is a local product, the function is very simple, suitable for the beginning. Recently, the project again used to AR, especially compared to the function of the various plug-ins. easyAR has grown into a powerful AR platform, comprehensive functionality, development-friendly API Chinese documentation is comprehensive, easyAR platform support is good, but also consulting technology-related issues. The stability of the function is also very good, the gap from Vuforia basically can not be seen, of course, limited to the unevenness of the hardware of each cell phone and technology, there is still a big gap from the hololens2, this requirement is already begging to be blamed. After all, Microsoft specializes in equipment and adaptive software development, and easyAR focus on versatility, to a certain extent, has done very well.