How does AR Foundation handle older, unsupported devices?

Unity Engine
,
1

I used to use Vuforia awhile back. From what I remember, if your android/iOS device supports ARCore/ARKit, then Vuforia would have all the functions you’d expect (e.g. horizontal plane detection, placing an object in AR space that you can then move closer/further to).

However, if you used an older, unsupported device, it would “default” to a more basic version of “AR”, where only the phone’s rotation is taken into account (i.e. the object in AR space will not be in view if you rotate your phone away from it, but you cannot move closer/further from it).

This behaviour exists in Niantic games whereby there’s a basic version of AR that only takes rotation into account if the phone model is older, whereas if it’s a supported model the user can toggle ARCore/ARKit on.

Is there any way to achieve similar behaviour with AR Foundation? Or is AR completely unusable if the device is too old.

EDIT: I finally remembered the terms I was thinking of were “positional tracking” vs “rotational tracking”. Basically asking if AR Foundation has the ability to enable “rotational tracking” if the device does not support positional (i.e. with ARCore/ARKit)

1 Like
2

Sounds like you need to look into other AR SDK’s, and this functionality probably won’t be free either unless ARCore/ARKit enable support for older devices. 8th Wall is one worth looking at, Vuforia is also, there are plenty others around if you look.

It is likely that Niantic are using their own solution mixed with ARCore/ARKit as they have a lot of investment into research in that area.