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Studied the market for AR development solutions recently. A few thoughts: - Probably using a lot of Metaio tech, a leading AR dev solutions provider Apple acqu

Studied the market for AR development solutions recently. A few thoughts: - Probably using a lot of Metaio tech, a leading AR dev solutions provider Apple acquired/shuttered in May 2015 - Unfortunate naming. Sounds extremely similar to ARToolkit [1], the leading open source/free AR dev solution. - Markerless is the future of AR, so good on Apple for getting this markerless tech out to compete with Google Tango and Microsoft Hololens. The status quo is currently marker-based recognition using "tags" or QR codes. It's also much harder than marker-based, or "on body" (Snapchat, Facebook AR Studio) recognition. I'd say Google Tango has some of the most impressive SDKs out there for tracking, area learning, and depth perception, but it does require specialized smartphone hardware from Lenovo or Asus, which significantly limits its utility and mkt penetration at this point. Google was just too early with Glass and got burned, but it needs a stronger hardware platform, which is something that Apple can deliver. - The Unreal-engine AR video demo was cool and the graphics seemed decent for real-time rendering on an iPad, but the real future of AR applications (read: $$$) will come from industrial applications on wearable devices or head mounted displays such as the Hololens, Vuzix, Daqri, or Epson Moverio devices. Examples of industrial/enterprise AR applications: Remote help, complex assembly, pick & pack, line monitoring, materials handling, systems training, etc. This is the market Microsoft and PTC (Vuforia, ThingWorx) are targeting, not the consumer gaming/advertising markets, which use more "basic" forms of AR. This is not to say Pokemon Go/Snapchat do not generate a lot of revenue, but it's very debatable if they can be considered true AR applications. - Other vendors in the AR development solutions space include: Aurasma (HPE), Blippar, Catchoom, EON Reality, Kudan, Pikkart, Wikitude, among others. - In conclusion, Apple is currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's somewhat late to market with ARKit, will have to compete with Facebook, Google, and Snapchat for consumer AR-oriented developer mindshare, and will have no play at the industrial/enterprise market if it limits its tools to development for the iOS family. - The best way for Apple to alleviate this jam is to release its own AR glasses/headset, which it is widely rumored to be developing. [1] https://artoolkit.org/ https://artoolkit.org/

mendeza 9y ago
For AR, to win, you do not have to be the first one to market to win, its who can make the best platform for developers will win. As an AR developer, previous platforms like Vuforia, ARToolkit, and even Tango are either limiting or very hard to work with.
- moron4hire 9y ago
  What? Vuforia is extremely easy to work with. Are you sure your difficulty issues weren't just Unity being a garbage heap of bad UI and poorly documented processes?
  - mendeza 9y ago
    Lol, I mean building a native ios swift app with vuforia was a pain in the butt, since they have NO documentation on their code or any tutorials. Github link here: https://github.com/interactivetech/VuforiaScenekit https://github.com/interactivetech/VuforiaScenekit I have been avoiding building AR for Unity for the reasons you described xD!
    - moron4hire 9y ago
      If you can get someone to walk you through it a few times, point out the major parts, it's the easiest way I know of to get 3D apps up and running. And it's in very high demand. The only problem is that I very much believe in the web application model as a means of reaching a wide audience with the fewest resources, but Unity's WebGL export is functionally useless.
      - mendeza 9y ago
        That would of been great to have mentorship, but I ended up doing it the harder way, Struggling and reading code like a book. I learned a ton though, and its taken a while.I hope to soon provide people with tutorial/walkthrough with 3D apps. You should take a look at AR.js, its a cool project that will hopefully provide that wider accessibility. The challenge with Apple's ARKit is that its AR technology( is much more challenging than Vuforia, and tricker to implement.
  - eric_h 9y ago
    I've not worked with Vuforia, but I can confirm "Unity being a garbage heap of bad UI and poorly documented processes"
- 9y ago
chrisdun 9y ago
| Probably using a lot of Metaio tech Almost certainly - Metaio presented realtime lighting estimation at InsideAR (their dev conference) in late 2014. It's also been shown by Hans Kaufmann's research at TU Wien in Austria [1] although this has tighter links with other vendors than Metaio. | Other vendors in the AR development solutions space include I've had the pleasure of dealing with most of these folks within the last few years. They all have their own specialisms around certain tracking methodologies, pricing models and other features. Evaluate them with your own purposes in mind, and choose the right tool for the job. | will have no play at the industrial/enterprise market if it limits its tools to development for the iOS family In this market, Vuforia really does have it fairly cornered - it seems to be a chunk of what PTC are chasing, although they're far from turning a blind eye to B2C. Edit: Grammar fail. [1] https://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/research/virtual-and-augmented-reality/projects https://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/research/virtual-and-augmented-...
Jare 9y ago
As you say, the Wingnut demo had nice content, but the whole experience looked unbelievably bad. Like, "original Wii ads with people jumping behind their couches" bad. If they showed it as a tech demo for integrating VFX in real time preview when shooting a movie I would have bought it 100%.
asmithmd1 9y ago
Just today PTC announced free trial access to their AR tools: https://studio.thingworx.com/ https://studio.thingworx.com/ Currently locking the AR to the real world requires a QR code-like mark but they are demoing AR with no mark. Not having a mark requires 3D data of something in the field of view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S-4oJ8C_fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S-4oJ8C_fo skip to minute 19 to see the markless demo
- figomatj 9y ago
  Thingworx 8.0 will release, and Thingworx Studio will be upgraded. The new version of Thingworx studio can recognize the Thing Object by Thing shape just like demo video, not only by QR Code-like mark.
pducks32 9y ago
There's also Sturfee which focuses on outdoor spaces which is a very hard problem for simple AR toolkits like this. Depth is hard and so most of these players cannot do outdoor AR. sturfee.com DISCLAIMER: I work at Sturfee and it's really great.
sandover 9y ago
> In conclusion, Apple is . . . somewhat late to market . . . The best way for Apple to alleviate this jam is to release its own AR glasses/headset, which it is widely rumored to be developing. I'm not sure this line of reasoning holds up. You mention 3 markets: 1. consumer 2. enterprise 3. the "market" for developer mindshare Apple doesn't especially care about being early or late to any of these markets. Let's take them one by one. 1. There is currently no real consumer market for AR, so Apple is not late. And I don't see any reason why Apple would not be content to wait and see if one develops. It's not clear how releasing an improved version of Google Glass saves Apple from any kind of "jam". People are not clamoring for this type of product, because its value is highly unclear. 2. There is currently no real enterprise market for AR, so Apple is not late. Apple has no history of making industrial equipment. Are you saying Apple is about to take the unusual step of starting a whole new sales channel, targeting a whole new class of buyers, to try to get first-mover advantage in a new and unproven market helping warehouse workers do line monitoring and "remote help"? It seems unlikely. 3. Apple has a huge, strong developer base it is in no danger of losing. Again, it's not clear how offering an AR SDK gets them out of a jam. If I had to guess as to why they are playing in this area, it may be to help seed the ground with more iOS devs familiar with this tech, so that in the event that the market does develop, they are in a good position to harvest ideas, talent, and apps.
- roymurdock 9y ago
  1. Consumer AR market - mobile phone AR-enabled applications - education/gaming/entertainment/enhanced retail. Niantic, Blippar, Catchoom, Snapchat would all beg to differ that this market does not exist. 2. Enterprise/industrial AR market - wearable AR-enabled applications - I've already listed them. This market is very small currently...but it exists. I've talked to engineers and AR tool vendors in this market, creating applications for Vuzix, Epson devices. My argument is that this portion of the market will see a lot of growth over the next 5 years. Hard to explain Microsoft's play with Hololens, or PTC's ThingWorx Studio tracking tech away. 3. They are in a jam with AR application developers specifically, not all developers as a whole. You're right they have a large, strong mobile developer base, but AR developers will move away from mobile/tablet-focused platforms (iOS) to Android/Windows in order to develop for AR wearables. They're playing in AR because they're looking for the new iPhone...a new form factor to deliver new applications and jump start sales. AR glasses could be that form factor if they can execute like Jobs did with the smartphone.
oliyoung 9y ago
> In conclusion, Apple is currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's somewhat late to market with ARKit, will have to compete with Facebook, Google, and Snapchat for consumer AR-oriented developer mindshare, and will have no play at the industrial/enterprise market if it limits its tools to development for the iOS family. See also portable music, phones, tablets … It's Apple's SOP, and if they've shown anything in the last 10-15 years, entering markets late is not a barrier to them competing
artfiend 9y ago
Do you know if Apple's new markerless AR tech automatically scales the digital object; or does the user resize the object to suit themselves?
- MBCook 9y ago
  The documentation says that it can do rough measurements and automatically scales things correctly. They pointed that out in the demo where the coffee cup was roughly the right size for a coffee cup instead of 5 feet tall or something like that.

mendeza 9y ago

For AR, to win, you do not have to be the first one to market to win, its who can make the best platform for developers will win. As an AR developer, previous platforms like Vuforia, ARToolkit, and even Tango are either limiting or very hard to work with.

moron4hire 9y ago
What? Vuforia is extremely easy to work with. Are you sure your difficulty issues weren't just Unity being a garbage heap of bad UI and poorly documented processes?
- mendeza 9y ago
  Lol, I mean building a native ios swift app with vuforia was a pain in the butt, since they have NO documentation on their code or any tutorials. Github link here: https://github.com/interactivetech/VuforiaScenekit https://github.com/interactivetech/VuforiaScenekit I have been avoiding building AR for Unity for the reasons you described xD!
  - moron4hire 9y ago
    If you can get someone to walk you through it a few times, point out the major parts, it's the easiest way I know of to get 3D apps up and running. And it's in very high demand. The only problem is that I very much believe in the web application model as a means of reaching a wide audience with the fewest resources, but Unity's WebGL export is functionally useless.
    - mendeza 9y ago
      That would of been great to have mentorship, but I ended up doing it the harder way, Struggling and reading code like a book. I learned a ton though, and its taken a while.I hope to soon provide people with tutorial/walkthrough with 3D apps. You should take a look at AR.js, its a cool project that will hopefully provide that wider accessibility. The challenge with Apple's ARKit is that its AR technology( is much more challenging than Vuforia, and tricker to implement.
- eric_h 9y ago
  I've not worked with Vuforia, but I can confirm "Unity being a garbage heap of bad UI and poorly documented processes"
9y ago

chrisdun 9y ago

| Probably using a lot of Metaio tech Almost certainly - Metaio presented realtime lighting estimation at InsideAR (their dev conference) in late 2014. It's also been shown by Hans Kaufmann's research at TU Wien in Austria [1] although this has tighter links with other vendors than Metaio. | Other vendors in the AR development solutions space include I've had the pleasure of dealing with most of these folks within the last few years. They all have their own specialisms around certain tracking methodologies, pricing models and other features. Evaluate them with your own purposes in mind, and choose the right tool for the job. | will have no play at the industrial/enterprise market if it limits its tools to development for the iOS family In this market, Vuforia really does have it fairly cornered - it seems to be a chunk of what PTC are chasing, although they're far from turning a blind eye to B2C. Edit: Grammar fail. [1] https://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/research/virtual-and-augmented-reality/projects https://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/research/virtual-and-augmented-...

Jare 9y ago

As you say, the Wingnut demo had nice content, but the whole experience looked unbelievably bad. Like, "original Wii ads with people jumping behind their couches" bad. If they showed it as a tech demo for integrating VFX in real time preview when shooting a movie I would have bought it 100%.

asmithmd1 9y ago

Just today PTC announced free trial access to their AR tools: https://studio.thingworx.com/ https://studio.thingworx.com/ Currently locking the AR to the real world requires a QR code-like mark but they are demoing AR with no mark. Not having a mark requires 3D data of something in the field of view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S-4oJ8C_fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S-4oJ8C_fo skip to minute 19 to see the markless demo

figomatj 9y ago
Thingworx 8.0 will release, and Thingworx Studio will be upgraded. The new version of Thingworx studio can recognize the Thing Object by Thing shape just like demo video, not only by QR Code-like mark.

pducks32 9y ago

There's also Sturfee which focuses on outdoor spaces which is a very hard problem for simple AR toolkits like this. Depth is hard and so most of these players cannot do outdoor AR. sturfee.com DISCLAIMER: I work at Sturfee and it's really great.

sandover 9y ago

> In conclusion, Apple is . . . somewhat late to market . . . The best way for Apple to alleviate this jam is to release its own AR glasses/headset, which it is widely rumored to be developing. I'm not sure this line of reasoning holds up. You mention 3 markets: 1. consumer 2. enterprise 3. the "market" for developer mindshare Apple doesn't especially care about being early or late to any of these markets. Let's take them one by one. 1. There is currently no real consumer market for AR, so Apple is not late. And I don't see any reason why Apple would not be content to wait and see if one develops. It's not clear how releasing an improved version of Google Glass saves Apple from any kind of "jam". People are not clamoring for this type of product, because its value is highly unclear. 2. There is currently no real enterprise market for AR, so Apple is not late. Apple has no history of making industrial equipment. Are you saying Apple is about to take the unusual step of starting a whole new sales channel, targeting a whole new class of buyers, to try to get first-mover advantage in a new and unproven market helping warehouse workers do line monitoring and "remote help"? It seems unlikely. 3. Apple has a huge, strong developer base it is in no danger of losing. Again, it's not clear how offering an AR SDK gets them out of a jam. If I had to guess as to why they are playing in this area, it may be to help seed the ground with more iOS devs familiar with this tech, so that in the event that the market does develop, they are in a good position to harvest ideas, talent, and apps.

roymurdock 9y ago
1. Consumer AR market - mobile phone AR-enabled applications - education/gaming/entertainment/enhanced retail. Niantic, Blippar, Catchoom, Snapchat would all beg to differ that this market does not exist. 2. Enterprise/industrial AR market - wearable AR-enabled applications - I've already listed them. This market is very small currently...but it exists. I've talked to engineers and AR tool vendors in this market, creating applications for Vuzix, Epson devices. My argument is that this portion of the market will see a lot of growth over the next 5 years. Hard to explain Microsoft's play with Hololens, or PTC's ThingWorx Studio tracking tech away. 3. They are in a jam with AR application developers specifically, not all developers as a whole. You're right they have a large, strong mobile developer base, but AR developers will move away from mobile/tablet-focused platforms (iOS) to Android/Windows in order to develop for AR wearables. They're playing in AR because they're looking for the new iPhone...a new form factor to deliver new applications and jump start sales. AR glasses could be that form factor if they can execute like Jobs did with the smartphone.

oliyoung 9y ago

> In conclusion, Apple is currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's somewhat late to market with ARKit, will have to compete with Facebook, Google, and Snapchat for consumer AR-oriented developer mindshare, and will have no play at the industrial/enterprise market if it limits its tools to development for the iOS family. See also portable music, phones, tablets … It's Apple's SOP, and if they've shown anything in the last 10-15 years, entering markets late is not a barrier to them competing

artfiend 9y ago

Do you know if Apple's new markerless AR tech automatically scales the digital object; or does the user resize the object to suit themselves?

MBCook 9y ago
The documentation says that it can do rough measurements and automatically scales things correctly. They pointed that out in the demo where the coffee cup was roughly the right size for a coffee cup instead of 5 feet tall or something like that.