Comparing ARKit vs ARCore vs Vuforia: The Best Augmented Reality Toolkit
Augmented reality is one of the most popular trends in app development today. This is because AR apps offer higher user engagement and interactive user experience.
AR apps are getting popular in all major industries. Studies show that the AR market is expected to reach USD 60.55 billion by 2023 (Source). Businesses are leveraging AR in apps for virtual shopping, industrial equipment fixing, education/training, design/modeling, car maintenance/repair, gaming, and more.
The rising popularity of AR in app development can also be attributed to the two major tech giants like Apple and Google that developed their own AR development toolkits with frameworks and SDKs to include ARKit and ARCore, respectively. Similarly, PTC developed Vuforia that is gaining immense popularity in AR development.
ARKit, ARCore, and Vuforia are among the most popular toolkits that facilitate the tools needed to build an augmented reality app. These have simplified AR app development. While all of these have good capabilities to offer, there are minor points of difference that developers must know and consider while choosing the right tools, framework, and SDKs for AR app development!
So, let’s see here the features of these three popular AR development toolkits!
#ARKit
ARKit by Apple is a toolkit or a set of tools (framework and SDKs) that help developers in building AR apps for the iOS platform to include iPhones 6 and above models and iPad Pro models.
The prominent offerings of ARKit are points, plane detection, AR world map, light estimation, anchors, face tracking, motion capture, people occlusion, and collaboration sessions.
ARKit supports image detection and image tracking and helps embed virtual objects into AR experiences or on surfaces. This immediately reminds of the popular IKEA Place AR app, doesn’t it? Another common example of ARKit use for an augmented reality app is the Pokemon Go game app.
The major benefit of ARKit for developers over other popular AR development tools is the Apple ecosystem that makes development easier. Moreover, it offers frequent updates and new features for more exciting app development opportunities.
But, as discussed, a significant limitation with ARKit for app development is the fact that its use is limited to the iOS platform that too iPhone 6s+ and iPad Pro+ only. Besides, it cannot handle motion capture for very fast motion.
ARKit is available at $99 per year for AppStore distribution.
#ARCore
ARCore is Google’s toolkit (framework and SDK) for creating augmented reality apps. The best thing about ARCore is that it supports development for both Android (7.0 and higher) & iOS platforms (11 or higher). Plus, this AR development toolkit is available for free!
ARCore offers points, plane detection, pose, light estimation, anchors, image tracking, face tracking, object occlusion, and cloud anchors. These capabilities and results are similar to ARKit.
With ARCore’s motion tracking capabilities, developers can track the phone’s position relative to the surroundings. Other important capabilities of ARCore are environmental understanding to include detecting size and location of surfaces and light estimation including real-life lighting conditions.
With the capabilities of real-time position tracking and integration of virtual and real objects, ARCore is a great tool for AR in e-commerce apps. It lets you place objects and text within physical surroundings.
For example, note how eBay benefitted by utilizing augmented reality and ARCore! Sellers on eBay can use AR to choose the right box size. With the help of ARCore, this app allows the users to superimpose different size boxes over the item and find the perfect fit to avoid wastage and reduce shipping costs.
A popular Android application
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