Tag: Wikitude

Categories
SDK releases

The future of AR creation is here – try the all-new Wikitude Studio Editor now.

AR content creator

Today Wikitude starts a new chapter launching the next generation of our AR content creator: our next version of Wikitude Studio, called Wikitude Studio Editor – currently in beta.
We introduced the world’s easiest AR creation tool back in 2013. Studio was phenomenal for its time! The old version of our tool was considered the most viable alternative to Metaio Creator, back then, the benchmark AR authoring and publishing tool – and one which is no longer available.
Since then, a lot has changed: new tools appeared in the market – and others have disappeared. AR experiences have become more sophisticated, and the need for customer engagement is now that much higher.
So as technology advances, so must the tools we use to create it! We’ve opened up public access to the next generation of our platform– the beta version of Wikitude Studio Editor. Our mission was to create an even more powerful tool that would allow anyone to build awesome AR experiences in just a few clicks.
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With the beta version you will be able to use all functionalities of Studio, including previewing and testing of AR projects. With the official release of the new Wikitude Studio, you’ll be able to export to both the Wikitude app and to your own apps.

Here’s everything you need to know about Wikitude Studio Editor!

Augmented Reality experiences – bring any print to life

Wikitude Studio Editor enables you to create interactive augmented reality experiences for magazines, newspapers, business cards, billboards, catalogues, or any 2-dimensional or planar surface. You can add the following digital content to your print:

  • 3D models
  • Videos and transparent videos
  • Images
  • Social media sharing buttons
  • Other buttons and labels

New features and navigation

“Quick, easy and fun” was our motto when developing the new Studio Editor. The list of what’s new on Studio is long – but here are the highlight features:

  • 3D model visualization – a reason to celebrate for our old Studio users: now you can see 3D-model silhouettes making it much easier to work with your augmentations.
  • New 3D space for targets – see your target and augmentations from different angles, freely move and adjust augmentation properties with the new Studio view.
  • Integration with Wikitude Cloud Recognition – Studio is now connected with our Cloud recognition service, which allows you to access your targets much faster online
  • Quick-load of projects via QR-code – preview and test your projects in just one scan, on the QR code reader of your choice
  • Monitor and report of projects – Use Google Analytics to follow your project performance and create precise report for your AR campaigns

What’s coming next?

  • Final version of Studio: our new Studio Editor is now available for free trial on the European set-up, so you can get started with our new AR content creation tool. The final version of Studio is planned for 2017. The old Studio remains with all its functionality and exporting properties until summer 2017.
  • Project exporting: this beta version currently doesn’t allow exporting of projects. This functionality will be available on the full release of the next Wikitude Studio.
  • Project migration: if you currently have projects in the old Studio, no need to worry! All projects remains untouched. Wikitude will provide a full migration guide once the new Studio is released.

Try it now!

We hope you enjoy working with Wikitude Studio Editor!

If you have any questions or feedback feel free to drop us a line on the Feedback section on the new Studio page. Spread the good news on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The Wikitude team

Categories
News

Wikitude and Mosquito combine 3D ‘vision’ with 3D ‘audio’

London, 15th March: It’s the not-so-hidden secret of Hollywood: one of the most important parts of creating an immersive experience isn’t mind-blowing visuals on a massive screen – it’s incredibly intricate, highly nuanced sound design. It’s the second-most important human sense, and indispensable to the way we move, communicate, and think. That’s why, today at the Wearable Technology Show in London, Wikitude introduces the first 3D audio enabled augmented reality experience, adding one more incredibly useful tool to its powerful Wikitude AR SDK.

In partnership with Mosquito Engine, a leading developer of high quality 3D audio tools, the two companies have developed a 3D audio plugin that empowers AR experiences and concepts with something never seen (and more importantly, never heard) before. And if you’re in London for the Wearable Technology Show, you can try it at the Wikitude booth #258.

The 3D audio engine automatically follows virtual objects, making it possible to play audio that indicates the position of the object(s) in the 3D augmented environment. The engine manages proper audio positioning, volume, and all other audio cues that make up for a true immersive experience. It’s the most immersive, enriched augmented reality experience there is.

Daniel Talma CEO from Mosquito Engine describes it as follows: “The Wikitude SDK is boundless in its versatility. It was super easy for us to integrate our 3D audio engine, and the results are simply stunning.”

Philipp Nagele, Wikitude’s CTO believes that “3D audio in augmented reality highly enhances the sense of immersion since your eyes believe what your ears hear. We need partners to deliver powerful sound toolkits to accomplish this, and Mosquito delivers exactly that!”

Want to see it in action? Check out  “Skeeto” – a simple AR game with 3D audio integration. Gameplay is the modern, mobile equivalent of the arcade classic ‘Whac-a-mole’ – but in Skeeto, the bug lives on your phone, tablet or AR glasses, and you need to get it before it gets you. Your only way to do that? Listen. Find Skeeto on the Appstore.

Also keep an eye out for the soon-to-be available template demo app called Wikiwings, designed specifically by Wikitude and Mosquito Engine for developers who are interested in building their own AR apps with 3D sound. Or, drop by to see us at Wikitude booth #258 at WTS in London.

About Wikitude:

Wikitude GmbH is the world’s leading mobile augmented reality (AR) technology provider for smartphones, tablets and digital eyewear. Its fully in-house developed AR technology is available through its SDK, Cloud Recognition and Studio products enabling brands, agencies and developers to achieve their AR goals. With 100,000+ registered developer accounts, Wikitude has grown to be the world’s leading independent AR platform. The Wikitude SDK is an integral part of more than 10,000 apps run by both small enterprises as well as many Fortune 100 companies across multiple industries. Wikitude’s latest product addition is 3D Tracking, allowing apps to see in rooms, spaces and environments.

About Mosquito Engine:

Mosquito Engine is a Dutch company that develops high quality 3D audio tools for virtual and augmented reality applications. Mosquito Engine has many years of experience in both the film and music industry. The recently-launched Mosquito 3D Engine provides real 3D immersive sound for any kind of game or app. The Mosquito 3D Engine allows real time movement and rotation of both the listener and multiple sound sources, fully enhancing the sense of immersion.

Download Wikitude SDK

 

Categories
Dev to Dev

Using Unity to boost your AR apps

Unity and Wikitude logo image

There’s a reason mobile developers love to integrate Unity in their apps: it’s portable, agile and in some cases, it’s free.

While known mostly as a gaming engine, Unity is also frequently employed by anyone looking to model a virtual and now augmented three-dimensional space. The finer visual details, like texture or reflection mapping on 3D virtual objects, make Unity-based apps some of the most immersive experiences available.

For the millions of developers using Unity, Wikitude’s Unity plugin is exciting – because it allows them to combine detailed, textured virtual worlds with real ones. The plugin integrates Wikitude’s computer vision engine into anything you build with Unity, which allows you to augment interactive 3D content in real time on your mobile device.

Unity is all about supporting the growing Virtual and Augmented Reality markets! The company has invested in a number of specific features out of the box, such as head tracking and an appropriate field of view, to ease the development of VR/AR apps. 

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“With the increasing demand for augmented reality technology among our Unity app developer community, we are excited to see Wikitude offering a free plugin to connect our technology platforms.” 

JC Cimetiere, Sr. Director Product Marketing of Unity.

If you want to see the Wikitude SDK + Unity plugin in action, you’ve got the perfect chance to do so at the Vision VR/AR Summit in Los Angeles next week, 10-11 February. Wikitude CMO Andy Gstoll will be on hand to check out the keynote presentation from Alex McDowell, designer, storyteller, and creative director behind Unity’s new 5D Global Studio.

Download Unity SDK

So what can you build with Wikitude and Unity? Find out by downloading the Wikitude SDK and free Unity plugin – both free as trial. The possibilities are endless and we can’t wait to see your apps!

Categories
AR features

Shaping the future of technology with SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping)

Update (August 2017): Object recognition, multi-target tracking and SLAM: Track the world with SDK 7

Wikitude’s SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) SDK is ready for download!

The world is not flat and so as our technology begins to spill out from behind the screen into the physical world it is increasingly important that it interacts with it in three dimensions. To do this, we are waking up our technology, equipping it with sensors to give it the ability to feel out its surroundings. But seeing the world as we do is only half the solution.

One secret ingredient driving the future of a 3D technological world is a computational problem called SLAM.

What is SLAM?

SLAM or simultaneous localization and mapping, is a series of complex computations and algorithms which use sensor data to construct a map of an unknown environment while using it at the same time to identify where it is located. This, of course, is a chicken-and-egg type problem and in order for SLAM to work the technology needs to create a pre-existing map of its surroundings and then orient itself within this map to refine it. The concept of SLAM has been around since the late 80s but we are just starting to see some of the ways this powerful mapping process will enable the future of technology. SLAM is a key driver behind unmanned vehicles and drones, self-driving cars, robotics, and augmented reality applications.

“As we are only at the very beginning of augmenting the physical world around us, visual SLAM is currently very well suited for tracking in unknown environments, rooms and spaces,” explains Andy Gstoll, CMO at Wikitude. “The technology continuously scans and “learns” about the environment it is in allowing you to augment it with useful and value-adding digital content depending on your location within this space.”

Prototype of Google’s self-driving car. Source: Google

SLAM use-cases

Google’s self-driving car is a good example of technology making use of SLAM. A project under Google X, Google’s experimental “moonshot” division, the driverless car void of a steering wheel or pedals, uses high definition inch-precision mapping to navigate. More specifically it relies on a ranger finder mounted on the top of the car which emits a laser beam generated to create detailed 3D maps of its environment. It then uses this map and then combines it with maps available of the world to drive itself autonomously.

From the roads to the skies, drones are also using SLAM to make sense of the world around it in order to add value. A great example of this is a concept from MIT research group, Senseable City Laboratory called Skycall. Skycall employs the use of a drone to help students navigate around the MIT campus. The concept sees students call a drone using a smartphone application and then tells it where it wants to go on campus. The drone then asks the student to “follow them” and guides the student to the location. Using a combination of auto-pilot, GPS, sonar sensing and Wi-Fi connectivity the drone is able to sense its environment in order to guide users along pre-defined paths or to specific destinations requested by the user.

Track the World with Wikitude Augmented Reality SDK

Here at Wikitude, we are using SLAM in our product lineup to further the capabilities of augmented reality in the real world which will open up new possibilities for the use of AR in large scale and outdoor environments. From architectural projects to Hollywood film productions, SLAM technology will enable a variety of industries to position complex 3D models in tracked scenes ensuring its complete visualisation and best positioning in the environment. In the demo below, we show you how SLAM was used to help us augment a 3D model of a church steeple that had been destroyed in World War II by allowing users to see what it looked like before the war.

“As the leader in augmented reality technology, it is a natural process for us to expand from 2D to 3D AR solutions as our mission is to augment the world, not only magazines and billboards. Visual SLAM and our very unique approach, you may call it our “secret sauce”, allow us to provide the state of the art AR technology our rapidly growing developer customer base demands,” says Gstoll.

The use of SLAM in our augmented reality product line will be the focus of our talk and demo at this year’s Augmented World Expo which takes place in Silicon Valley June 8-10. We encourage you to come by our booth to see this technology in action!

Start developing with an award winning AR SDK

Getting started with SDK 7 has never been easier! Here’s how:

Multiple Platforms and Development Frameworks

The Wikitude SDK is available for both Android and iOS devices, as well as a number of leading augmented reality smart glasses.

Developers can choose from a wide selection of AR development frameworks, including Native API, JavaScript API or any of the supported extensions and plugins available.

Among the extensions based on Wikitude’s JavaScript API are Cordova (PhoneGap), Xamarin and Titanium. These extensions include the same features available in the JS API, such as location-based AR, image recognition and tracking and SLAM.
Unity is the sole plugin based on the Wikitude Native SDK and includes image recognition and tracking, SLAM, as well as a plugin API, which allows you to connect the Wikitude SDK to third-party libraries.

Wikitude Augmented reality SDK development frameworks

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This post was written by Tom Emrich, co-producer of the sixth annual Augmented World Expo or AWE. AWE takes place June 8-10 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. The largest of its kind, AWE brings together over 3,000+ professionals and 200 participating companies to showcase augmented and virtual reality, wearable technology and the Internet of Things.

Help us spread the news on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin using the hashtag #Wikitude.