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 7. Augmenting the Instruction Manual

It took a bit of work, but in the previous chapter we built a solid app that guides someone through the instructional steps of how to change a flat tire. How can we make it even better? Using augmented reality, of course!

In this project, we are thinking of AR as just another media type you can add to enhance learning materials, and make them more effective, immersive, and engaging. While in some augmented reality apps, the AR is the central feature and raison d'etre of the app, not so here. We started with text, images, and video content. And now we will add AR, too.

In this chapter, you will learn about:

  • Designing user experiences for adding AR to existing 2D mobile apps
  • Using user-defined AR targets
  • Handling poor tracking events
  • Adding world space UI to AR scenes
  • Using spatial anchors (with ARKit)
  • User interface for Hololens

Our implementation started using just Unity for the mobile app, and now we'll add Vuforia and mobile AR. Then, we'll show you...