In the last years we have seen hundreds or thousands new Augmented Reality applications. There are AR games for children, interior design AR apps, marketing tools to promote your products in AR and event though I haven't tested I'm sure there are AR adult entertainment apps as well. Because I'm using my corporate laptop I'm not going to google and try to search for them.
Most of the Augmented Reality solutions (Apps and other tools) are based on same underlying techniques I will present below:
1. Quallcomm Vuforia
Without checking any statistics I say that Quallcomm Vuforia is the market leader in Augmented Reality apps if we are talking about number of released apps. Quallcomm Vuforia is SDK for software developers that want to have Augmented Reality function in their application. If application developer buys Vuforia SDK, they just have to study the installation of SDK and have the 3D-models of content they want to present in Augmented Reality. Vuforia is so called Live AR. By Live AR I mean that it uses live picture from the mobile phone's or tablet's camera and combines real picture with Augmented Reality (3D models) in the software.
Without going into technical details Quallcomm Vuforia seems to be easy tool to publish simple or semi-simple augmented reality. However in some more specific cases there are techniques that are more flexible.
2. Metaio SDK
Munich bases Meatiao was pioneer in Augmented Reality. This German company developed Augmented Reality SDK long before Quallcomm Vuforia. In May 2015 Metaio was bought by Apple and at the end of 2015 Apple stopped selling Metaio SDK for new developers but you can still see Augmented Reality applications that are built on Metaio SDKs that were bought before Decemer 2015. The big question is what is Apple going to do with Metaio Augmented Reality?
3. The other SDKs: Total Immersion D'Fusion, Wikitude and some others
Other Augmented Reality SDKs are for example Total Immersion D'Fusion and Wikitude. Previously sold String is not on the market anymore. In addition to these there are some smaller players on the market but in most of the cases what they sell is not a SDK but combination of licences and professional services. For example Dutch company Twnkls owns IPRs to their own two-point scaling method and build Augmenter Reality Solutions based on that.
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