AR industry growth is accelerating at a pace that is exciting and rewarding for both developers and businesses seeking to leverage popular AR development tools and platforms.
Introduction:
The digital world has become overwhelmed with the inclusion of Augmented Reality in the technology domain. Without a doubt, Pokemon Go is the prime reason behind the popularity of AR in non-technical communities.
This is the reason why people tend to believe that AR development tools are only confined to the entertainment industry. On the contrary, domains like Healthcare, Ecommerce, Architecture, and Real Estate are leveraging multiple AR capabilities.
Today, organizations across the globe are harnessing this technology in their operations to augment user experience and engagement.
Implementing AR in creating interactive product demos, advertisements, and delivering real-time information is helping brands to carve a niche in their domain. With AR development tools, customers can engage better with a product and with better engagement. It paves the way for a quick buying decision.
This is the reason, the biggest tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, and more are making heavy investments to make Augmented reality tools and technology more feasible to use.
Now, before going down further on how companies can develop augmented reality apps by using different top-notch tools. We must discuss what types of Augmented Reality apps exist. So, there are two types of AR apps: Location-based applications and Marker-based applications.
Location-based applications
Location-based AR apps work without markers. They take the help of a GPS, an accelerometer, or a digital compass to detect the user’s position. With the help of these app development tools, users can overlay AR objects on top of real-world objects. Pokemon is the best example of this type.
These apps have integrated functions that allow them to send notifications about AR-related content to the user based on their location.
Marker-based applications
These applications are based on image recognition. To display any content, they use markers in black and white as triggers. Users have to point the camera in a marker’s position. When a device recognizes it, the app automatically overlays the data on the marker and reflects the augmented object.
When you develop a marker-based app, you have to set a database of images or descriptors to ease the process for the camera to search them. It simply means, the objects are already in the database in the app, so they are easy to detect.
If you also want to build an AR app for your business and see how it will pave the way for enhanced user engagement. This article will encircle all the necessary tools on how to create augmented reality apps.
But before mentioning the tools, you must have an understanding of how to choose great AR tools. All the good AR development tools must support these features:
- 3D object tracking
- OpenSceneGraph support
- Cloud storage or local storage
- GPS support
- Image recognition
- Game Engine Support
- SLAM support
According to the Statista forecast, the market of augmented and virtual reality is $16.8 billion in 2019, which is expected to reach $160 to $215 billion in 2023.
Related reading:
What are the different types of Augmented Reality?
Now, let’s look at the AR development tools in the market:
1. Vuforia
A leading portal for augmented reality apps development with some amazing multiple features and support. Vuforia Augmented reality SDK has:
- Ability to recognize multiple objects (toys, boxes & others) and images altogether
- It also has text recognition ability and can be recognized among 100,000 words
- Better experience than QR code, it empowers to create customized VuMarks
- By its Smart terrain feature, it can create a 3D geometric map of any environment
- It can turn static images into a motion video to play on any real surface
- It comes with a unity plugin
- Supports Cloud and local storage
Compatible platforms: Android, iOS, Unity, Windows
Price quote: Its basic version comes free of cost. Users have to buy a subscription for classic and pro version
2. ARToolKit
To develop augmented reality apps, it is one of the best open-source AR development tools in the market.
It features a free library and multiple features for tracking including:
- It comes with the dedicated support of Unity3D and OpenSceneGraph
- Perfect adaptiveness with single and dual camera
- GPS and compasses support for location-based AR apps
- Real-time applications can be developed seamlessly
- Smart-glass integration
- Best fit for small to medium size teams across all platforms
Compatible Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and Smart Glasses
Price Quote: Available for free
3. Google ARCore
Now, with more than 2 billion users, Google just can’t afford to miss the opportunity to empower AR developer tools for their operating system. This toolkit works with java/OpenGL, Unity, and Unreal. Its features are:
- It features motion tracking. ARCore identifies the correct placing of the device by using the camera and spotting all the available feature points. It ultimately helps to place virtual objects accurately.
- It understands the environment precisely. So it can detect horizontal surfaces and allows users to place virtual objects on the floor. These features are also useful in motion tracking
- It can perfectly judge the natural lights and allows users to adjust the light of virtual objects to look natural as well.
- It creates more realistic objects.
- Best for anyone who’s looking to develop AR apps in the Google environment
Supporting Platform: Android
Price Quotes: Available for free
4. Apple ARKit
With the introduction of iOS11, Apple came up with an indigenous ARKit. This announcement came up at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2017. Have a look at the features of AR SDK for iOS.
- Without having any additional calibration, iOS inbuilt Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) can adapt to any environment
- It comes with face tracking ability so it is easy to apply face effects of 3D characters
- To make objects more realistic, it can track the environment light and apply it to the virtual objects to balance the whole effect
- It can detect vertical, horizontal, and irregular surfaces
- It detects 2D objects and empowers developers to interact with them
- Seamless integration Unity and Unreal engine
Supporting Platform: iOS
Price Quote: Available for free
5. Maxst
It comes with two SDK’s available in Augmented Reality Services:
- 2D SDK for image tracking
- 3D SDK for environment recognition
Have a look at its 3D SDK features:
- Tracking and mapping feature provided by visual simultaneous localization and mapping by MAXST
- Maps can automatically extend beyond the first view while tracking surroundings
- Amazingly, it let you save maps for later
- 3D rendering ability to more immersive AR experiences
- 3 images can be tracked simultaneously
- Seamless integration with Unity
Compatible Platforms: iOS, Windows, and Android
Price Quote: Its basic version comes for free. Users have to pay for its Pro and Enterprise version.
6. Wikitude
A new entry in the market of AR reality development, but it has earned a good reputation. It is one of the popular app development tools for iOS, Android, and Smart Glasses devices. It supports multiple technologies and tracking features and it recently introduced its SDK7. Have a look at its features:
- It comes with 3D recognition technology and tracking
- The ability of image recognition and tracking
- It has cloud support, so can target images hosted in the cloud
- Smart-glass integration
- It comes with the ability of third-party plugin integration
Supported Platforms: iOS, Android, and some Smart Glasses
Price Quote: Users has to buy its Pro, Cloud, and Enterprise Version
7. EasyAR
EasyAR is one of the popular AR development tools that was created by a team of AR developers from Asia. The solution focuses mainly on creating AR apps that don’t visit a distributor or an app store to be downloaded.
- It features a runtime target generation functionality
- It has special objects already built-in for creating the simplest possible Augmented Reality applications.
- Its biggest advantage is an extremely wide range of supported features, allowing for creating most of the applications within certain interfaces.
- EasyAR is fairly hard to use
- It requires serious knowledge of both Unity and AR technology and knowledge of Unity’s meta language – JavaScript.
Compatible Platforms – Android, iOS, UWP, Unity Editor, Windows, and Mac OS.
Price quote: free (requires a generated key).
8. Kudan
Kudan is another augmented reality app builder that utilizes the most advanced SLAM technology to allow your devices to recognize various simple images and 3D objects, like cards, product packages, phones, etc. in real life. The difference between other platforms is that Kudan provides a simple database generator within your Unity editor.
All you need to do is follow the easy setup steps outlined at the end of this presentation, then download and import the generated files into your project when they are uploaded onto our Marketplace.
- Helps create excellent 3D models
- Uses a marker-based approach since this method provides the best precision in geolocation definition
- A complete solution for collaborative mapping
- Localize the camera via SLAM algorithms
Compatible Platforms – iOS, Android
Price quote – there is a free version for testing apps and licenses priced at $1,230.
9. ARMedia
ARmedia is a cross-platform framework for developing software based on 3D model tracking that’s available in both freeware and paid versions. You can not only work with your own projects but also participate in a project by the community of resellers which contributes to the further AR development tools.
- Used to develop apps for smart glasses or for something like GPS tracking
- Manage your apps via the cloud and share them
- A go-to solution instead of the popular but closed source Vuforia or Wikitude
- Focuses on embedding Google Glass, web browsers, and smartphones with augmented reality content
Compatible Platforms – iOS, Android, Windows и, Flash.
Price quote – there are both freeware and paid versions (the paid costs 249 Euros).
The Road to Conclusion
There is no doubt that augmented reality services have become an increasingly popular trend in the mobile industry. So if you can harness the true potential of Augmented Reality by using these AR developer tools, you can also develop immersive and engaging experiences for your customers like never before.
Since few best-augmented reality apps are highly agile and adaptable, you can use them with different domains like E-commerce, Gaming, Healthcare, Fitness, and Entertainment industries.
The AR developer tools mentioned above have everything you can look for to develop full-fledged AR apps with multiple capabilities. If you want to try out any too and looking forward to building-augmented reality app, you can try with a free version before purchasing any paid version.
