Book Image

Augmented Reality for Developers

By : Jonathan Linowes, Krystian Babilinski
Book Image

Augmented Reality for Developers

By: Jonathan Linowes, Krystian Babilinski

Overview of this book

Augmented Reality brings with it a set of challenges that are unseen and unheard of for traditional web and mobile developers. This book is your gateway to Augmented Reality development—not a theoretical showpiece for your bookshelf, but a handbook you will keep by your desk while coding and architecting your first AR app and for years to come. The book opens with an introduction to Augmented Reality, including markets, technologies, and development tools. You will begin by setting up your development machine for Android, iOS, and Windows development, learning the basics of using Unity and the Vuforia AR platform as well as the open source ARToolKit and Microsoft Mixed Reality Toolkit. You will also receive an introduction to Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore! You will then focus on building AR applications, exploring a variety of recognition targeting methods. You will go through multiple complete projects illustrating key market sectors including business marketing, education, industrial training, and gaming. By the end of the book, you will have gained the necessary knowledge to make quality content appropriate for a range of AR devices, platforms, and intended uses.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Chapter 9. Poke the Ball Game

In the summer of 2016, the Pokémon Go location-based augmented reality game was released for iOS and Android devices. It quickly became a worldwide phenomenon as one of the most popular and profitable mobile apps in 2016. Pokémon Go uses GPS to identify your location and reveal nearby virtual Pokémon characters, superimposed on the live video feed on your screen. You flick a Pokéball towards a Pokémon to capture it.

AR and games are a natural fit for many reasons. Mobile games have been a major driver in the adoption of mobile devices and have become a huge market in itself. Adding AR features to games can be seen as an extension to mobile apps, rather than a new category. We anticipate that, as more devices become AR enabled, including mobile phones and tablets as well as wearable AR smartglasses, games will again be an important driver for adoption and proliferation of these devices.

In this chapter, we will build an AR ball game that uses your coffee table...