HOW WE HELP DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES LEVERAGE AR

What is AR?

If you’ve ever used your smartphone to take a Facebook picture of yourself with dog ears, you understand how augmented reality works. Think of it as the technology that allows mixing real-life and fictional objects - creatures, buildings, landscapes, furniture, etc.

AR app developers use three approaches to deploy the augmented reality technology and let virtual elements revive within your environment:

• Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) uses combined data from different sensors to build a map of the environment and locate your device within it. It’s the most advanced AR technology so far.  
• Marker-based AR uses a camera to identify QR/2D codes or NFT markers and displays the hidden visuals only when the device finds these markers. This means that your smartphone will show you the 3D version of a hidden object only once it recognizes the tag.
• Location-based AR is tied to GPS, accelerometer, or similar tech, and activates the visualization based on the location data. This type of AR technology is quite popular in mobile apps that offer mapping directions, location-based suggestions, or finding nearby services.

There are several ways you can experience augmented reality. The easiest one is to use a smartphone or tablet with a camera or location services that will display virtual objects on the screen. Another way is head-mounted displays like helmets, smart glasses, and even lenses. In this case, AR elements become an element of your field of view, making the experience more solid and life-like. Imagine a helmet for drivers that projects information about speed, directions, maintenance details, and even incoming calls without distracting you from the road.

With the release of ARCore for Android and ARKit for iOS in 2017, the augmented reality technology has become more attainable to the general public. These frameworks allow developers to build mobile AR-based apps, covering almost all markets of smart devices. We’re talking about one billion users of AR apps by 2020 and a $209 billion market size of combined VR and AR technologies by 2022.

JetSoftPro developers give credit to both ARKit and ARCore by creating effective software for e-commerce, social networking, and construction.

JetSoftPro’s Expertise in Building AR-Based Apps

The augmented reality technology has the power to reshape industries. The military uses AR to create a close-to-life training and experimentation environment, highly efficient yet safe for trainees. Medicine leverages AR to rehearse operations, educate young doctors and even project vessels over the human body for more precise medical actions. And don’t get us started on the multiple ways movie producers, marketers, advertisers and manufacturers apply AR.

Here are the top AR solutions developed by JetSoftPro.

SMART E-COMMERCE

As online shopping wins the hearts and minds of the modern generation of tech-savvy users, brands are striving to provide a more advanced and personalized experience. Knowing exactly what you buy, how it will fit you, or whether it matches your wardrobe, room or hairstyle brings online shopping to a whole new level.

Our customer, an online furniture store, understands the importance of “try before you buy.” That’s why JetSoftPro helped them develop a mobile app that allows buyers to place 3D furniture models on top of their environment before making a purchase. No more struggles over style, color, and size. Their customers can now see how the selected items will look in their room before buying. 

We used Xamarin.iOS, the Apple ARKit framework, the MVVM pattern, Figma and Adobe Photoshop to develop the AR part of the Furnistore app.

SOCIAL NETWORK WITH AR

Social media has become our daily routine. Communicating, sharing emotions and places, finding new locations to visit, original food to taste, unique adventures to experience… Can you make socializing even more addictive? Yes, with the help of augmented reality.

Together with our customer, JetSoftPro created a video and photo-sharing social networking service that has AR functionality. Our app displays a 2D map with geolocation points. These points show the places where you’ve made photos or videos. What’s more interesting, you can view these photos in a real-life environment, full size, thanks to Google ARCore.

As with any other social network, you can share your media with the subscribers, view, like, comment, and share content with other social apps from your smartphone. 

To build a social network app with geolocation points and AR functionality, the JetSoftPro development team used its expertise in Xamarin.Android, Google ARCore Framework, OpenGL ES, Google Maps API, MVVM Pattern, and Material Design.

VISUALIZING 3D MODELS FOR CONSTRUCTION

Architecture and design are the fields that can obviously benefit from AR. Displaying 3D models within the real environment serves well both producers, marketers, and users.

JetSoftPro developers used Image Targets from Vuforia Engine to build an app that can detect and track any images that will help to visualize construction and design details. Unlike traditional fiducial markers and QR codes, the Vuforia engine uses a target resource database to detect, track and compare the features naturally found in the image. Image targets can be created with the Vuforia Target Manager using JPG or PNG images. 

This exciting task included working with Unity, Vuforia SDK, and Android SDK.

AR is an impressive technology that extends the limits of our world. We can see more, learn better, fulfill tasks more precisely, make fewer mistakes and, of course, fool around having fun. While earlier computers connected people to the Internet, now they can actually put us inside the Internet.

How can augmented reality improve your business processes? Let’s find it out together. Contact me and we’ll create something awesome for you too!