Book Image

Learn ARCore - Fundamentals of Google ARCore

Book Image

Learn ARCore - Fundamentals of Google ARCore

Overview of this book

Are you a mobile developer or web developer who wants to create immersive and cool Augmented Reality apps with the latest Google ARCore platform? If so, this book will help you jump right into developing with ARCore and will help you create a step by step AR app easily. This book will teach you how to implement the core features of ARCore starting from the fundamentals of 3D rendering to more advanced concepts such as lighting, shaders, Machine Learning, and others. We’ll begin with the basics of building a project on three platforms: web, Android, and Unity. Next, we’ll go through the ARCore concepts of motion tracking, environmental understanding, and light estimation. For each core concept, you’ll work on a practical project to use and extend the ARCore feature, from learning the basics of 3D rendering and lighting to exploring more advanced concepts. You’ll write custom shaders to light virtual objects in AR, then build a neural network to recognize the environment and explore even grander applications by using ARCore in mixed reality. At the end of the book, you’ll see how to implement motion tracking and environment learning, create animations and sounds, generate virtual characters, and simulate them on your screen.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 10. Mixing in Mixed Reality

Mixed reality (MR) is the evolution of combining augmented reality and virtual reality into the same experience or app. MR typically uses a wearable device to overlay the virtual world on top of the user's reality. The concept first gained traction with Microsoft's introduction of HoloLens. HoloLens is a wearable glasses device that allows you to overlay your real world with virtual content using hand gestures, not unlike what we have been doing with ARCore in this whole book, except the difference of the wearable part and, of course, the price tag.

Note

Microsoft is currently leading the charge in mixed reality development with their platform of the same name, which is great exposure for the whole AR/VR and now MR space. Microsoft is a big technology company and, like many big technology giants, has decided to redefine the concept of mixed reality to also include virtual reality.

Wearable devices that allow users to experience mixed reality have been traditionally...