The Best Tools To Develop Augmented Reality Apps

The Best Tools To Develop Augmented Reality Apps

Augmented Reality (AR) technology is no longer considered to be a gaming feature or a technology for immersive entertainment. It has now penetrated all kinds of apps including eLearning, e-commerce, retail, research and development, enterprise apps, and many other app niches.

Augmented Reality (AR) apps have become popular all over the world irrespective of the niches. In Belgium, even the small brick-and-mortar stores are building retail apps with AR functionality. No wonder, any expert augmented reality app development company in Belgium gets frequent queries from businesses of all kinds for AR app projects. 

The popularity of AR apps is visible by the way both Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCode, and several other third-party AR tools are getting traction from all around. You can Hire the Right Full Stack Developers but before making the decision, you must know the way around the tools involved.
If you are looking for an aspiring AR developer, you must have a comprehensive knowledge of the leading AR tools. Here we are going to explain a few of them. That can help you in AR App Development 

Vuforia For AR App Development

Let’s start with the most famous tool of all time. This has been a widely popular AR development SDK brought to the developers by mobile microchip manufacturer brand Qualcomm has already been used across numerous successful AR projects on iOS and Android. Most of the features it offers result in extraordinary outputs for your app. Vuforia uses the QCAR library which is written in C++. 

Let’s have a quick look at the key features offered by Vuforia.

• It comes with an Object Scanner to detect both 2D and 3D objects.

• There is a word recognition feature backed by an in-built 100,000-word English language vocabulary built-in.

• A feature called VuMarks allows scanning barcodes containing data that can also play the role of markers.

• Vuforia also allows media playback in particular conditions.

• It can allow any regular surface into a touchscreen with the use of virtual buttons.

• It provides inbuilt support for smart AR glasses.
• Got more features like Extended tracking and Smart Terrain

• The tool facilitates storing data both on the cloud as well as the device.

Vuforia offers a free plan along with several paid plans such as Classic for $499 per time, Cloud for $99 monthly, and Pro version for only commercial use with custom pricing.

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Apple ARKit

Apple’s ARKit launched with iOS 11 was an ambitious and advanced move ahead of Android to help developers build highly immersive AR apps for iPhones and iPad devices. It holds a package of profiled tools brought in the industry during the WWDC 2017 event. 

Some of the key AR development features offered by the ARKit SDK include the following.

• ARKit to help AR apps adjust to the environment uses a feature called Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) and this ensures easier calibration of the camera and other sensors.

• It provides a powerful face tracking feature to help with device security, authentication, and adding facial expressions with 3D attributes.

• It can automatically track the lightning of the environment to adjust the appearance and lumination of the virtual objects.

• For rendering virtual objects it allows easy tracking of various horizontal surfaces such as tables, floors, vertical surfaces, and irregular surfaces.

• It can detect 2D objects easily to help developers use them in their app projects.

• ARKit offers full support to leading game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine and other tools.

• It offers support to all iPhone devices ranging from iPhone 6s and all iPad devices starting from iPad 2017.

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ARToolKit

ARToolKit is a free and open-source AR development library with cross-platform capabilities. Despite being free as a toolkit, it offers robust and advanced features for building immersive AR apps. Basically, it originated from DAQRI. For reference, there are loads of Youtube videos on its working. Some of the key features of the tool that deserve to be noted include the following.

• Full support for Unity3D game engine and OpenSceneGraph.

• It allows using both single and dual smartphone cameras for AR projection.

• For location-centric AR apps it offers full support to GPS and compass features.

• The tool can be used to build robust AR apps with real-time AR rendering.

• It offers extensive cross-platform support covering iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Smart Wearables, etc.

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Google ARCore

Having the most extensive mobile OS and device ecosystem under its command and with a couple of millions of active users, Android cannot stay aloof to the increasing popularity of AR apps and so the launch of ARCore by Google was quite a logical step. To determine the parameters of horizontal surfaces and physical objects, it uses a proprietary camera so that the objects are automatically attached to various surfaces. The toolkit working with Unity, and Unreal game engines, as well as Java/OpenGL, is the most used AR tool for Android apps.

Some of the key features offered by this tool include the following.

• Motion tracking offered by ARCore is very effective for tracking the position and orientation of the objects based on the focus of the device camera.

• It can intuitively comprehend the surrounding environment and detect various surfaces for tracking the motion of objects.

• It can also adjust to the light condition of the environment to render virtual objects with appropriate lamination.

• ARCore supports an extensive array of Android devices including most of the flagship devices launched within a few years. As for the operating system, it requires Android 7.0 or later versions.

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MaxST AR SDK

MaxST AR SDK has emerged as a robust and feature-rich AR development framework for mobile app developers. Among the third-party SDKs that are used by app developers across the platforms, it is regarded by many as the most advanced one.it comes with five key components such as image tracker(can support three tracking modes: Normal, extended, and multi), instant tracker, visual SLAM, object tracker and QR code, and barcode scanner. The 2D and 3D options include various supporting features of them. Talking about the access, it is free but can also provide a commercial license.

Let us have a quick look at the key features of this AR development SDK.

• This AR development SDK offers environment tracking and mapping capabilities.

• SDK That allows scanning QR codes and barcodes.

• It is capable of tracking several different targets simultaneously.

• The SDK comes with a robust physics engine for delivering a more realistic app experience.

• It offers the unique capability of creating occlusion effects by allowing a real object to screen a virtual object, either partially or fully.

• The toolset is fully compatible to work with the Unity game engine.

Conclusion

The demand for AR technology is widely expanding in various industries. Considering the abundance of AR development tools in the market, there are still several other tools that equally deserve a mention here. Keeping the toolkit’s pricing and app’s functionality, go for what suits best for your idea to grow. The Choice Is Yours. We mainly tried to bring in our discussion two platform-specific native toolkits from Apple and Google and a few third-party SDKs that are used for developing cross-platform AR apps. Whatever your choice is, make sure that the tool accomplishes and unleashes the application to its full potential.