6 things about mobile AR you may not know
Mobile AR leads the way in innovation
Over the last few years, augmented reality has quickly become one of the hottest trending technologies for mobile devices. Popularised by social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, almost every smartphone you can buy today is capable of high quality augmented reality experiences.
Companies such as Apple investing heavily to add hardware such as LIDAR sensors to their devices to further make augmented reality experiences more powerful, smoother, and technologically groundbreaking.
Here’s 6 things you may not know your AR devices are capable of…
1. You can view AR and 3D files without an app
In 2017, Apple and Google announced ARKit and ARCore. Along with a suite of developer tools, they added the ability to natively preview augmented reality files on your mobile devices without any need for an app.
Native AR experiences can take advantage full advantage of your deices, and give you neat things like hardware acceleration, gyroscopes and accelerometers which basically means the experience is far and above superior to their web-based AR counterparts.
2. You can send and save AR files on the web
ARKit and ARCore use .usdz and .glb files respectively — opening the file instantly triggers the AR viewer on your device.
Here’s an example of it being applied to eCommerce (open the page from a mobile phone)
3. You don’t need an image marker to place an object
Being able to put an object down on any surface, without any markers, is a game changer. Now AR experiences are not locked to any physical object. This gives you the ability to place, reposition, scale and move around objects as if they were in the room with you — and all of this is working off just your phones camera.
4. You can put objects on walls too
The AR experience works great for vertical surfaces too, check out the above video for an example of mounting a photo frame on the wall. It automatically detects the vertical surface, as well as transitions seamlessly as the object switches planes.
5. Objects blend in seamlessly with the real world
Another great thing these native AR experiences are capable of is blending virtual and real objects together. By sensing the distance of objects in relation to the camera, your phone can determine wether the object you placed is in front or behind objects and mask them accordingly. The result is an experience that feel true to life.
6. It’s really easy to set up a virtual shop
AR scenes can pull in your product data and price, as well as display a call to action to purchase. One click with Apple pay and you’ve gone straight from browsing to buying before you can say “Add to cart”.
Bonus Fact — They’re really easy to make
Augmented reality seems like a highly technical and complicated thing to get into, but it’s never been easier to get started!
Social media platforms Snapchat and Facebook have created their own AR studios to produce content for their services. Apple has an AR program called Reality Composer that lets you create AR projects straight from a Mac, iPad or even your own iPhone.
There are also a number of third party services such as VECTARY that allow you to create highly engaging AR projects on the web to distribute across a range of different platforms.
We’re excited to start producing more augmented reality projects in the future, using these new platforms — and are eager to see what the future has in store.
