If you happen to be one of the lucky 5.000 attendees expected to visit the 8th annual edition of AWE USA, the largest AR+VR event in the world, you are in for a treat.
The three-day conference, which starts today – May 31st, is being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California and apart from exploring the “Superpowers to Change the World” theme and showcasing 250+ speakers, organizations, and startups, AWE 2017 will also introduce an amusing and highly interactive 20.000 m² AR+VR experience center, also known as the “AWE Playground”.
Visitors will be able to explore over 100.000 m² of exposition ground and connect with a total of 200 innovative exhibitors, including Wikitude who is excited to be, once again, an AWE participant, silver sponsor, featured speaker and Auggie Award finalist.
Follow Wikitude at AWE USA 2017 – (Booth #634)
Featured Talks
“Walmart’s Journey into AR // How Augmented Reality Creates Real Value in Retail” For those interested in learning about key success factors in AR-powered service in Retail and the benefits that arise from innovative augmented reality use, this one is for you. Wikitude CEO Martin Herdina shares the stage with Walmart’s Systems Analyst, Steven Lewis, on June 1st from 12:15 pm to 12:30 pm, Room J (Consumer Track).
Wikitude CTO Philipp Nagele will present an in-depth look into the company’s recent developments and talk about what the next version of the Wikitude SDK will offer augmented reality developers. Don’t miss the session happening today (May 31st) from 1:30 pm -2:15 pm, Room 209/210.
Press Conference
Want to hear the BIG news? Wikitude is among the selected group of companies speaking at AWE’s press conference this year. Join the most influential tech journalists in the industry on Thursday – Jun 1st, at the Main Stage starting from 9:30 am to hear the latest and greatest news on augmented reality, virtual and mixed reality. Companies joining the AWE press conference are:
Digibit Epson Kopin Manomotion Massless Meta Miralupa Optinvent Re’Flekt Resonai Shadow Creator Sony Tractica Wikitude/Lenovo Zappar
Auggie Awards
You voted and we got there! With the highest public voting count, we are proud to have been announced as an Auggie Award Finalist.
Wikitude’s SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) SDK is competing in the Best Developer Tools category and winners will be announced on June 1st. Thanks to our strong community for the support!
Booth 634 is the place to be
Last but not least, check out Wikitude’s recent developments and meet some of the creative minds behind our tech at booth 634 in the Tools Pavillion. Wikitude will be demonstrating its latest technology advancements including its most popular feature, Instant Tracking.
Be WOWed by our secret Magic wand demo and see the ‘whole world’ changing in front of your eyes and don’t forget to take your freebie home: an exclusive Superhero Hyperphoto powered by LifePrint.
You might have heard the big news: The Washington Post announced the beginning of its augmented reality journey. Powered by Wikitude, the renowned American daily newspaper launched an interactive AR series to creatively engage readers and transform storytelling.
The AR-enhanced series, initially planned to be divided into six installments, allows readers to explore first-hand some of the world’s most iconic buildings. But how?
The first story revolves around Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg’s world famous concert hall known for its refined acoustic capabilities. Users of the Washington Post Classic iPhone app now have the ability to experience, from the comfort of their own home, what it’s like to gaze upon the highly advanced acoustic panels in action.
When users point their phone at their ceiling, an animated projection of the acoustic panel layout is prompted to demonstrate how its impeccable sound is absorbed, transmitted, reflected and ultimately produced. A chance to “see what perfect sound looks like” – in the Post’s own words.
To create this experience, The Washington Post utilized Wikitude’s SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), launched earlier this year with SDK 6. This technology enables any Android or iOS device, including smart glasses, to instantly track the user’s environment and layer interactive AR content into the real world without the need for markers.
The Washington Post’s head of product, Joey Marburger, is confident they are on the right track – “We think [AR will] be more widely adopted — you can really see it bubbling up — and we wanted to be at the forefront of that so by the time it takes off, we’re really good storytellers there”.
Learn more about The Washington Post’s new AR series in the original article, and get started with Wikitude’s SLAM technology today.
Wikitude is among the top 1% rated startups, according to European-based rating agency Early Metrics. As a pioneer in the augmented reality industry, Wikitude was awarded 83 out of 100 points, placing the company in Early Metrics’ prestigious club of five-star startups.
Early Metrics’ ratings, which focus on key non-financial metrics, provide an independent assessment of a venture’ growth potential. The ratings support decision-makers, such as investors and corporations, in identifying and understanding in-depth the most innovative startups across Europe.
Wikitude is the world’s leading independent AR technology provider with a robust ecosystem of over 100,000 registered developers and 20,000 published apps covering a wide variety of industries and use-cases. Its fully in-house developed SDK enables enterprises, agencies, and developers to create powerful AR solutions for mobile devices and smart glasses that delight users and provide tangible ROI.
With the addition of SLAM technology in January 2017, Wikitude’s SDK is the AR market’s most comprehensive developer tool with a combination of location-based, image-based recognition and tracking, and 3D tracking capabilities. Wikitude’s SLAM-based markerless tracking is the most versatile 3D tracking system available for mobile today.
Martin Herdina, CEO at Wikitude, says: “We are delighted by this award. Over $2 billion of investments went into AR/VR in 2016. Being among the top 1% of startups rated by an independent third party shows that we are headed in the right direction in a super exciting market segment. You can expect even more exciting news from Wikitude this year”.
About Wikitude® Wikitude is the world’s mobile augmented reality (AR) pioneer and leading AR technology provider for smartphones, tablets and digital eyewear on both iOS and Android. 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. Wikitude® is a registered trademark of Wikitude GmbH, for more information please visit: www.wikitude.com
About Early Metrics Early Metrics is the pan-european rating agency for startups and innovative SMEs, analyzing non-financial metrics to assess their growth potential. Ratings are free for entrepreneurs and provide them with a third party assessment, supporting their growth development. Established in London, Paris and Tel Aviv, Early Metrics works on behalf of private and institutional investors as well as corporates ventures and business units. To get rated or to access rating reports: contact@earlymetrics.com
Let’s face it – despite the bright colors, clever Swedish design, and exceedingly happy salespeople, few of us would actually choose to spend their entire Saturday at IKEA. It’s a chore! But good thing for you – we now practically live in Back to the Future, and augmented reality is, in this case, going to get you to spend less time on life administration by streamlining the time you spend planning, designing, and purchasing furniture for your home.
It’s not only one of the best use cases of AR, it’s also one of the most obvious: planning and designing interior spaces using easy-to-understand visuals – while you stand in the space you’re planning. Of course, IKEA already tried it back in 2013 – but the technology has advanced significantly. Now start-up app Roomle is making the process even easier – using Wikitude’s SLAM 3D tracking.
Check out the short demo below:
The benefits are clear, for everyone involved: less hassle, less travel, quicker and more intuitive understanding of how a space will look and feel. Customers love it because it makes their lives easier; retailers love it because it means more sales, and less overhead on showrooms and stores. And those are just the big benefits – here’s a few more:
Real-time supply with up-to-date and individually relevant product information
Visualization of residential environments and interior architecture
The personalization factor is enhanced by the unique usability
Simpler presentation of complex products
Products ‘stick’ in the consumer’s memory and are recognized more quickly
So what makes Roomle the AR room design app of the future? The stuff behind the scenes. It’s got an incredibly simple user interface – users can jump on the app and start designing rooms and spaces intuitively. In the home, they can simply select a product from the catalogue, and use their phone’s camera to see it in live space. Key here is our SLAM 3D markerless tracking tech – without ‘seeing’ the room, the app wouldn’t be able to place the object in the room to see.
Using Roomle is this easy
Roomle is even more impressive in the hands of a trained professional (that’s a nice way of saying ‘salesperson!’). It turns an iPad into a custom furniture showroom. Sales staff can pick furniture from the brand catalog, configure it according to the customer´s preferences and demonstrate the result in convincing 3-D or augmented reality views, live in every room. See the longer explanation about how Roomle works, here.
So now that we’ve arrived at the future, what’s the future of the future? Good question – for one, we can imagine one-click ordering (á la Amazon) combined with the flat-packing genius of IKEA to facilitate home shopping even more – take a picture, pick your product, click ‘purchase’ and it shows up at your door one day later. What follows? Pre-fabbed house construction – calculate the price of a new floor or painting a room, or installing an addition to your home.
If you’ve been thinking about making some changes around the house, but the hassle of getting out the measuring tape, doing the research, and going shopping has been holding you back – wait no more, give Roomle a try!
Roomle is powered by Wikitude. Get started with the Wikitude SDK today!
When we launched Wikitude SDK 6 nearly 2 months ago, we were excited to see developers jump onto markerless SLAM tracking and creating fascinating augmented and mixed reality experiences. Today we are proudly releasing an update for SDK 6 with stability updates and a few new features. Check out what’s new:
Support for OpenGL ES 3.x Graphics API:
Over the past weeks, we have seen that many augmented reality projects are based on more modern graphics API than OpenGL ES 2.0. Developers using Wikitude SDK 6.1 can now make use of OpenGL ES 3.x. Support for Metal Graphics API is currently being worked on and a new iOS rendering API will be included in our next release.
Improved stability for image tracking:
This release comes with an updated computer-vision engine for image tracking, which delivers a smoother AR experiences. Particularly when holding the device still or using larger augmentations, developers will notice a more stable tracking and little to no jittering. See video below for a performance comparison.
Reworked communication from JavaScript API to native code:
An essential part of the JavaScript API is the ability to communicate with parts of the app that are not involved in the augmented reality experience as such, often written in Obj-C or Java. This communication has been based on a custom URL protocol to send and receive data. In Wikitude SDK 6.1 we are introducing a different approach to the communication between JavaScript API and native code based on exchanging JSONObjects directly.
Several stability updates:
SDK 6.1 comes with many stability updates and improvements – the most noticeable being the fix of a nasty bug that prevented 2D and 3D augmentations to be rendered separately. With this fix, the z-order of augmentations is properly respected. Additionally, developers now can use the ADE.js script again to debug experiences in the browser.
For a full list of improvements and fixes, make sure to check out the release notes for all supported platforms and extensions:
For customers with an active subscription, the update is free – depending on your current license key, it might be necessary to issue a new key. Please reach out via email for any license key related issues.
All other existing customers can try out Wikitude’s cross-platform SDK 6.1 for free and purchase an upgrade for Wikitude SDK 6.1 anytime.
The update SDK package is available on our download page for all supported platforms, extensions and operating systems. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to our developers via the Wikitude forum.
It’s been a long ride since we first launched the Wikitude App, the world’s first AR mobile app, and Wikitude Studio, the easiest AR content management tool in the market. With the launch of our SDK 6 Wikitude started a new chapter in its history, focusing on the development of powerful tools for developers to create their own augmented reality apps in a single platform.
This blog post aims to share important dates and details related to the upcoming changes in the Wikitude product suite in accordance with our Terms and Services. This information comes ahead of time so our community can have enough time to plan for the upcoming changes.
Wikitude is terminating Wikitude Studio (studio.wikitude.com) and replacing it by our newly developed Studio Editor. Additionally, Wikitude will terminate support for geo-worlds hosted in the Wikitude App.
Our team has been building the new generation AR content management tool, called Studio Editor, that will continue to provide the same features you loved in Wikitude Studio. Studio Editor is now available for free trial. Exact migration instructions and actions to be taken will follow via email to all customers within the next weeks.
Migration & hosting
Automatic migration of AR experiences from Wikitude Studio to Studio Editor will be provided for all customers later this year.
AR experiences hosted in Wikitude Studio will be upgraded for compatibility with Studio Editor.
Important dates (in chronological order)
Customers using Wikitude Studio hosting in combination with a SDK version lower than 4.1, should contact our team for further information latest by 2017-03-30.
Wikitude Studio will export worlds only in SDK 4.1 or higher version starting 2017-04-04 (if you use the Wikitude App as publishing channel, this does not affect you).
The Wikitude Studio (studio.wikitude.com) will be discontinued from 2017-09-30 onwards.
After 2017-09-30 AR experiences hosted in Wikitude Studio will not be editable (read-only).
Geo-Worlds in the Wikitude App will not be available after 2017-09-30.
Existing tools offering ‘Publish in Wikitude’ feature will not be available after 2017-09-30 except for upcoming the new features in Studio Editor.
AR experiences hosted in Wikitude Studio will be deleted after 2017-12-31.
Wikitude is committed to creating powerful tools that allow anyone to build ultimate AR experiences in just a few clicks.
Should you have any doubts please don’t hesitate to contact our team on the email sales@wikitude.com.
Introducing SDK 6, Wikitude’s powerful SLAM solution for Augmented Reality apps
We are excited to announce the latest version of our augmented reality SDK, powered by the all-new Wikitude 3D SLAM engine.
SDK 6 combines top-notch image recognition and tracking, improved geo-location AR, and new 3D tracking technology (SLAM-based), becoming the world’s most comprehensive augmented reality SDK for mobile, tablets, and smart-glasses.
With this release, Wikitude empowers the 400,000+ AR developers worldwide to transform their cross-platform apps into full-stack augmented reality experiences. Here is an overview of the new features:
Wikitude 3D tracking technology – Go markerless with Instant Tracking
Ditch the markers! With SDK 6, Wikitude introduces its SLAM-based 3D engine to the world. Our all-in-one solution is robust, accurate and 100% in-house developed.
Instant Tracking is the first feature using Wikitude’s 3D tracking technology. It allows developers to easily map environments and display augmented reality content without the need for target images (markers). This feature works in both indoor and outdoor environments, and is suitable for a wide range of industries including medical, architecture, gaming, industrial machinery, real estate, marketing, and more.
For details on how to get started with Instant Tracking, visit our documentation, try oursample app (included in the download package) and watch the instruction video to learn how to track the environment. SDK 6 markerless augmented reality feature is available for Unity, JavaScript, Native, extensions and Smart-glasses (Epson and ODG).
Gestures – Play with augmentations like never before
The new “gestures” feature allows developers to freely place and interact with multiple augmentations on both marker-based or markerless AR experiences. Unlike other SDKs, Wikitude now enables full control of AR content with support for multi-touch gestures: drag, rotate, zoom, pan, make augmentations bigger or smaller, etc. This feature was designed with the end-user in mind, making AR experiences more dynamic, intuitive and fun.
Robust AR everywhere – track targets in rough conditions
Low light condition, shadows, noisy backgrounds, shiny surfaces… SDK 6’s new computer vision engine is prepared to deliver AR in any environment. This means increased performance, unprecedented accuracy (92% recognition rate) and faster recognition speed for target collections.
Developers can also benefit from a new file format optimized for best performance in rough conditions. For more information on the new file format and compatibilities, please see our documentation.
Additional features
Improved Extended Tracking – first introduced in SDK 5, Extended Tracking allows developers to extend experiences beyond targets. Once the target image is recognized, users can continue the AR experience by freely moving their devices without needing to keep a marker in the camera view. Extended Tracking now shares the same SLAM algorithm as Wikitude’s Instant Tracking feature, providing more robust performance.
Advanced camera options – AR has never looked so realistic as with this sharp new feature. Enjoy high definition camera rendering on new devices and 60 fps for smoother AR experiences. SDK 6 comes with two camera setting options that gives developers full control of their AR experiences. Choose between auto mode or select your preferred rendering quality from standard definition SD to full high definition (FullHD). Moreover, developers now have extended control over focus behaviour of the camera.
Positioning – Let your augmentations fly. The Positioning feature enables free positioning of augmentations on targets in any dimension. Content associated with a geo-location can now also be freely positioned in any direction.
Start developing with Wikitude SDK 6 across platforms
Getting started with Wikitude’s new SLAM-based SDK is super easy! Here’s how
In this blog post, Wikitude CTO Philipp Nagele shares some insights into the technical background of SDK 6 and the changes that go along with the new version of Wikitude’s augmented reality SDK.
The planning and work for SDK 6 reach far back into 2015. While working on the previous release 5.3 to add support for Android 7.0 and iOS 10, we already had a clear plan on what the next major release of our SDK should include. It is very gratifying that we now can lift the curtain on the scope and details of what we think is the most comprehensive release in the history of Wikitude’s augmented reality SDK.
While Instant Tracking is without doubt the highlight feature of this release, there are many more changes included, that are worth mentioning. In this blog post, I’ll try to summarize the noteworthy changes and some additional information and insights.
Pushing the boundaries of image recognition
Most of our customers choose the Wikitude SDK for the ability to recognize and track images for various purposes. The engine that powers it has been refined over the years, and, already with SDK 5, reached a level of performance (both in speed and reliability) that puts it at the top of augmented reality SDKs today. With Wikitude SDK 6, our computer vision engine took another major step forward. In more detail, the .wtc file format now uses a different approach in generating search indexes, which improves the recognition rate. Measured on the MVS Stanford data set, SDK 5 delivered a recognition rate of around 86%, while SDK 6 now recognizes 94 out of 100 images correctly. Moreover, the recognition rate stays above 90% independent of the size of the .wtc file. So, no matter whether your .wtc file includes 50 or 1000 images, users will successfully recognize your target images.
Another development we have been working lately is to embrace the power of genetic algorithms to optimize the computer vision algorithms. Several thousands of experiments and hours on our servers led to an optimized configuration of our algorithms. The result is a 2D image tracking engine that tracks targets in many more sceneries and different light conditions. You can get a first impression on the increased robustness in this direct comparison between the 2D engine in SDK 5 and SDK 6. The footage is unedited and shows a setup with several challenging factors:
Low-light condition (single spot light source)
Several occluding objects
Strong shadows further occluding the images
Busy scenery in general
Reflections and refractions
The improvements in SDK 6 make the 2D engine more robust while keeping the same performance in terms of battery consumption and speed.
Instant Tracking – SLAM in practice
You might have seen our previous announcements and advancements in not only recognizing and tracking two-dimensional images, but instead, working with entire maps of three-dimensional scenes. It is no secret that Wikitude has been working on several initiatives in the area of 3D tracking.
For the first time, Wikitude SDK 6 includes a feature for general availability that is based on a 3D computer vision engine that has been developed in-house for the past 2 years. Instant Tracking is based on a SLAM approach to track the surrounding of the device and localize the device. In contrast to image recognition, Instant Tracking does not recognize previously recorded items, but instantaneously tracks the user’s surroundings. While the user keeps moving, the engine extends the recorded map of the scenery. If the tracking is lost, the engine immediately tries to re-localize and start tracking again, with no need for user input. Instant Tracking is true markerless tracking. No reference image or marker is needed. The initialization phase is instant and does not require a special initialization movement or pattern (e.g. translation movement with PTAM).
The same engine used for Instant Tracking is used in the background for Extended Tracking. Extended Tracking uses an image from the 2D computer vision engine as an initialization starting point instead of an arbitrary surface as in the case of Instant Tracking. After a 2D image has been recognized, the 3D computer vision engines starts recording the environment and stays in tracking mode even when the user is no longer viewing the image.
For details on how to get started with Instant Tracking, visit our documentation, see our sample app (included in the download package) and watch the instruction video to learn how to track the environment. SDK 6 markerless augmented reality feature is available for Unity, JavaScript, Native, extensions and Smart-glasses (Epson and ODG).
Putting the Pieces Together – Wikitude SDK and API
What is the strength of the Wikitude SDK? It is much more than a collection of computer vision algorithms. When planning a new release, the product and engineering team aim to create a cross-platform SDK that is highly usable. We try to think of use-cases for our technology, then identify missing features. So it should come as no surprise that Wikitude SDK 6 is packed with changes and new features beyond the computer vision features.
The most obvious and noticeable change, especially for your users, is FullHD rendering of the camera image. Previously, Wikitude rendered the camera stream in Standard Definition (SD) quality, which was perfect back in 2012 when the Wikitude SDK hit the market. Since then, device manufacturers have introduced Retina displays and pixel-per-inch densities beyond the distinguishable. An image rendered in VGA resolution on this kind of display just doesn’t look right anymore. In Wikitude SDK 6, developers can now choose between SD, HD or FullHD rendering of the camera stream..
Additionally, on some devices, users can now enjoy a smoother rendering experience, as the rendering frequency can be increased to 60fps. For Android, these improvements are based on new support of the Android Camera 2 API, which, since Android 5.0, is the successor to the previous API (technically more than 60% of Android devices as of 1/1/2017 should run the Camera2 API). It allows fine-grained control and access to the camera and its capabilities. While the API and the idea behind it are a welcome improvement, the implementations of the Camera 2 API throughout the various Android vendors are diverse. Different implementations of an API are never a good thing, so support for the new camera features are limited to participating Android devices.
“Positioning” was another feature needed to allow users to interact with augmentations. This feature is ideal for placing virtual objects in unknown environments. With Wikitude SDK 6, developers now have a consistent way to react to and work with multi-touch gestures. Dragging, panning, rotating – the most commonly used gestures on touch devices are now captured by the SDK and exposed in easy-to-understand callbacks. This feature has been implemented in a way that you can use it in combination with any drawable in any of the different modes of the Wikitude SDK – be it Geo AR, Image Recognition, or Instant Tracking
The new tracking technology (Instant Tracking) lead us to another change which developers will encounter quite quickly when using SDK 6. Our previously used scheme of ClientTracker and CloudTracker didn’t fit anymore for an SDK with a growing number of tracker types. SDK 6 now carries a different tracking scheme with more intuitive naming. For now, you will encounter ImageTracker with various resources (local or cloud-based) and InstantTracker, with more tracker types coming soon. We are introducing this change now in SDK 6, while keeping it fully backward compatible with the SDK 5 API, while also deprecating parts of the SDK 5 API. The SDK comes with an extensive migration guide for all platforms, detailing the changes.
Last, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to talk about two minor changes that I think can have great impact on several augmented reality experiences. Both are related to visualizing drawables. The first change affects the way 2D drawables are rendered when they are attached to geo-locations. So far, 2D drawables have always been aligned to the user when attached to a geo-location. Now, developers have the ability to align drawables as they wish(e.g. North), and drawables will stay like that. The second change also affects 2D drawables. The new SDK 6 API unifies how 2D and 3D drawables can be positioned, which adds the ability to position 2D drawables along the z-axis.
Naturally, all of our official extensions are compatible with the newest features. The Titanium (Titanium 6.0) and Unity (Unity3D 5.5) extensions now support the latest releases of their development environments, and x86 builds are now available in Unity.
The release comes with cross-platform samples (e.g. gestures are demonstrated in a SnapChat-like photo-booth experience) and documentation for each of the new features, so you can immediately work with the new release.
Start developing with Wikitude SDK 6
Getting started with Wikitude’s new SLAM-based SDK is super easy! Here’s how:
We are excited to see what you will build with our new SDK. Let us know what is your favorite feature via Twitter and Facebook using the hashtag #SDK6 and #Wikitude !
We had some pretty impressive submissions for this year’s Wikitude Xmas giveaway – over 100 submissions via email and social media from 18 different countries. We saw it all: a handmade letter to Santa, an artist wanting to augment paintings of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, a girl whose mission is to bring AR to Trinidad & Tobago and even a developer who wanted to make an AR time machine (our team agreed that if he can show us a prototype, we would give him a license right away!)
But our winner? An innovative idea we haven’t heard before, with a heck of a claim: AR can help save the planet. Congratulations PAN Project, you guys are getting a free Wikitude SDK!
Meet the PAN Project
If you happened to drop by Albert-Einstein-Strasse in Osnabrück, Germany, you might not be surprised to find some pretty smart people, who happen to be the winner of our 2016 Wikitude SDK Giveaway.
They’re the brains behind the PAN project – an augmented reality-powered, mobile-app based platform to crowdsource the monitoring of environmental changes. What? It’s simpler than it sounds – let us explain.
In today’s digital world, things often move too fast for us to see – the environment works the other way. It’s too slow – and continuous monitoring on a large scale is different. That’s where the power of crowds come in. Using an AR-app as a how-to aid, anyone can go out and engage in ‘citizen science’ – and it’s simple. Find the right spot, take a picture. See the 15-second demo below.
For Matthias Temmen – one of the heads behind the project – it’s not just the science, it’s raising awareness and getting people outside. “We encourage people who are not very interested in environmental care to engage their local and regional landscapes, think about their protection and understand natural change processes,” he says. It’s all about mobilizing and engaging a broad selection of citizens. He continues: “Citizens interested in nature, environmental protection or science, plus tourists, hikers, cyclists, school classes and study groups are enabled by the PAN app to navigate to various points of interest with GPS and AR to take photos from the same location and perspective over a long period of time.”
The ultimate goal, of course, is to raise environmental awareness and see how the natural world is changing right before our very eyes.
How will our SDK help save the planet?
Our technology makes their app work. “Geo-based AR is the core of this project. The users have to be directed to the place where they should photograph with ease and fun without thinking about the underlying technology.” But access to everything the Wikitude SDK will hopefully give them the opportunity to improve that experience even more. “Due to the intrinsic uncertainty of GPS and magnetometer we’re eager to experiment with the new 3D Tracking feature to enhance the reproducibility of the taken images!”
And the best part of them – it makes their job easier, and lets them focus on the features and functionality of their app. “Writing high accuracy and reliable AR code is a complex task which take a significant amount of time and skill,” says Temmen. “The Wikitude SDK provides the state of the art way of a ready to use AR framework on multiple platforms which unleashes its power out of the box. So why reinvent the wheel? The combination of various solutions is truly amazing and pays back immediately!”
All in all, we here at Wikitude couldn’t be more happy with the winner of our annual license giveaway – we’re really looking forward to seeing how the PAN project can save the world. And as the for the guy building a time machine… let us know when it’s time to go back to the future.
In the past weeks our development team has been digging deep into public beta versions of the new iOS 10 and Android 7.0 Nougat. With yesterday’s official release of Android’s new version of the OS, we wanted to make a quick summary for our dev community of the main changes and let you know we have an SDK update coming up soon.
So starting with the good news: our augmented reality SDK is ready for both Android 7.0 and iOS 10 changes! We are happy to announce we are in final stages of building our upcoming SDK 5.3, that will be fully compatible with both operating systems.
Android 7.0 Nougat
Android 7.0 Nougat was released yesterday, slightly ahead of schedule, and it came with a couple of new features that got us, AR developers, excited. Here are our highlights:
Vulkan API support – when it comes to 3D rendering APIs, Vulkan is an awesome-to-have. This is a low level API that gives direct access of the GPU to developers, allowing high-performance 3D graphics like we’ve never seen before. So get ready for some eye-candy AR games!
New JIT (Just in Time) compiler – this will allow faster compilation and reduce the size of apps. Improved performance by this new compiler will make the building process of Android-based AR apps much faster and intuitive.
Doze battery saver – introduced already on Marshmallow last year, Doze is Android’s battery-saving feature that shuts apps down once you are done with them. No real news here, but the more battery we have for AR experiences, the better!
VR mode – coming later this year, Nougat will make apps VR-friendly with their Daydream, Google’s upcoming VR platform.
Window split mode: Apps based on Android 7.0 can make use of the new split screen feature.
Right now, Nougat is only available for recent Nexus device owners (Nexus 6, 6P, 5X, Pixel C, or Nexus 9 tablet). For everyone else, there’s still some waiting time ahead for the over-the-air update.
To summarize: overall this update will bring more opportunities to build faster nice looking AR experiences in less “heavy” apps.
A word on iOS 10
You probably have heard that Apple is working on some kind of AR project behind the scenes and that we can expect something awesome some time in the future. Tim Cook himself confirmed that AR is “…extremely interesting and sort of a core technology”. Self-driving cars or AR headset, fact is Apple’s new iOS 10 doesn’t give us much to what direction the company is going with this technology.
Apple’s new OS, just like Google’s, revolves around improved messaging systems, new emojis, heavy machine learning for images and building a smarter home with IoT. Also, making Siri accessible through apps, which is kind of neat if you would ask us.
Rumor has it that iOS 10 will be officially released in about a month. Several public beta version have been around since the beginning July and our team has explored it inside out. So far, no sign of any feature that will make AR devs be on cloud 9.
Wikitude SDK 5.3
We’re excited about the new features Android Nougat and iOS 10 bring and can’t wait to reveal our fully compatible Wikitude SDK 5.3 in the next days. The release will be available for Wikitude SDK JavaScript API, Native API and all extensions including Unity. The later will see some more features as well.
What you can expect? Improved performance, faster building time for your AR apps and an awesome new feature to those already working with our Plugins API feature.
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Our technology makes their app work. “Geo-based AR is the core of this project. The users have to be directed to the place where they should photograph with ease and fun without thinking about the underlying technology.” But access to everything the 
