Get SMART – Seamless AR Tracking with ARCore and ARKit

Paula

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) was one of the most impactful technologies in recent years. It opened a wider spectrum of augmented reality experiences going beyond image & object targets by instantly tracking real-world scenes and placing digital layers in everyday environments.

With the release of Wikitude’s markerless AR feature, followed by Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore, lots of new eyes turned to augmented reality. The impressive markerless apps developed in the past year spoke for themselves: SLAM is here to stay.

Now that the dust has settled, an inconvenient truth arises: dealing with different SDKs and APIs for different platforms is cumbersome, time-consuming and not cost-efficient.

Determined to solve developers’ hardship of dealing with multiple APIs, our team created SMART – Wikitude’s ‘Seamless AR Tracking’ Feature for the Wikitude SDK.

Track, save and share: download the new Wikitude SDK 8.

SMART – Wikitude’s ‘Seamless AR Tracking’

SMART is a seamless API which integrates ARKit and ARCore on top of Wikitude’s SLAM engine in a single augmented reality SDK, cross-platform, for any device. This new SDK feature does more than a simple fusion of augmented reality platforms: it wraps them all on Wikitude’s intuitive API. This means developers won’t have to bother dealing with specific ARKit/ARCore code. The Wikitude SDK will dynamically identify the end user’s device and decide if ARKit, ARCore or Wikitude’s SLAM should be used for each particular case.

The SMART feature is part of SDK 7.2 (and latest versions) and makes ARKit and ARCore accessible to developers working with JavaScript, Unity, Xamarin, Titanium, PhoneGap, and Cordova. If you are just getting started with your AR development journey, don’t miss our blog post covering all the development tools and extensions supported by Wikitude.

A free trial the SMART is now available for download.

Expanded Device Compatibility

ARKit and ARCore surely contribute to making AR more readily available for developers, but up to now, both SDKs have restricted device compatibility.

SMART ensures the delivery of the best possible augmented reality experience on a wider range of devices, covering 92,6% of iOS devices and about 95% of all suitable Android devices available in the market. This makes Wikitude the first toolkit in the market to truly democratize markerless AR for developers.

No matter if you are tracking horizontal or vertical planes, SMART is able to place 3D objects, videos, buttons, widgets and more using Wikitude’s SLAM engine.

For those interested in a wider variety of augmented reality experiences, check out our SDK’s geo-location, image recognition and tracking, multi-target recognition, object recognition and more with ample device coverage (smartphones, smart glasses, and tablets) and multiple platform deployment (iOS, Android).

Are you ready to get SMART?

• Download the SDK of your choice
• Read all about SMART (part of Wikitude’s Instant Tracking feature)
• Get the setup guide
• Use Wikitude’s sample app to try your project

We can’t wait to hear your feedback! Please let us know via Twitter, Facebook and in the comments below how you like SMART. Share the good news using #SMART & #wikitude.