Introduction to AR development tools

To get started with Augmented Reality development these are the tools you need to know about.

- Arnab Mukherjee

Last month, Pokémon GO officially launched in… oh wait! Not again! Not another article about augmented reality starting with Pokémon GO! It almost seems as if Pokémon GO and augmented reality have become synonyms thanks to the events of last year. Thankfully, there’s more happening which will change this perception, and fast.

We now have AR apps freely available on Android and iOS, and they perform beyond the expectations we had just a year ago. For example, the Google Translate app can detect text by using your smartphone camera, and translate it on the fly using augmented reality. You end up with the original text being replaced by software to look as if the book magically appeared in your language. And this isn’t even new, but it is an example of how AR can seamlessly integrate into our lives.

Vuforia

One of the most complete SDKs for the augmented reality platform, Vuforia is perhaps one of the most feature rich AR development tools out there targeted at mobile devices. Like most AR tech, it uses computer vision to comprehend the scene in front of the device camera and identify surfaces. Once identified, the orientation and visualisation of virtual objects is kept in sync with the device orientation.

Some of the features it offers are: