AR has debuted on iOS and VR made its debut on macOS.
If you missed the big news yesterday, Apple is now supporting virtual reality (VR) on its Mac platforms thanks to the new OS High Sierra and augmented reality (AR) on iOS with ARKit. During the keynote address the immersive demonstrations from Wingnut ARand ILM used Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, but the other big player in the middleware space, Unity Technologies, will also support Apple’s venture into VR and AR.
Unity is fully integrated with ARKit for iOS, with the company providing an open source bitbucket project for ARKit to get developers started. On the VR side Unity is currently offering an experimental build for content creation with studios able to freely publish to the app store with High Sierra.
Unity editor on macOS with Space Pirate Trainer from I-Illusions in VR Mode Unity has been working with several studios to test out the software, including Space Pirate Trainer developer I-Illusions. On the Unity blog, I-Illusions’ Dirk Van Welden said: “Overall, the porting of Space Pirate Trainer to macOS with Unity went very smooth. We had it running on macOS under a couple of hours. I previously had some concerns about Metal support, but Unity and Apple made the whole process pretty straightforward. Metal support has been hugely optimized in these past weeks and months and most of our custom shaders were supported out-of-the-box, while we never had Metal in mind while creating those shaders. Great job Unity, Valve and Apple!”
For further updates from Apple on VR and AR developments, keep reading VRFocus.
I’m a huge fan of anything that advance AR. While late to the party, Apple’s contribution via ARKit is sweet. I am bummed that the full ARKit experience is limited to the A9 Processor. That limits your device selection to:
Given the mentality of a lot of iPhone users, you’ll have a good enough amount of people using the latest and greatest iPhone, don’t worry about having enough players
True enough. I know the tech decisions Apple makes never stops its advancements, for better or worse. Given the other tech solutions available, I would probably go with something else until there were more devices that support the full ARKit. OpenCV or Vuforia are my usual goto solutions.
The type of configuration object you choose determines the style and quality of AR experiences you can create:
On iOS devices with an A9 processor or later, the ARWorldTrackingSessionConfiguration subclass provides high-precision motion tracking and enables features to help you place virtual content in relation to real-world surfaces.
On other devices supported by ARKit, the ARSessionConfiguration base class provides basic motion tracking that permits slightly less immersive AR experiences.
That’s why I was careful by explicitly stating “full ARKit”. ARKit works on more devices, but not the full experience.
Thanks for the link. None of the OP’s links were to the docs which are often the best source of info.
Right, I knew why you were specifying it. I’m simply pointing out that it isn’t just the A9 but every processor starting with the A9 which includes the A10 and the A10X. Older chips not being supported is completely expected given that on the PC side of things we were stuck using the absolute latest and greatest hardware for VR when headsets became available.
Yup yup. Anytime a new feature, kit, product, or whatever is released, I immediately go to the docs. Fastest way to find out technical limitations and make an informed decision =)
Ah, ok. I could have described it better, like a minimum requirement. Appreciate the addendum
