DEV Community

Cover image for Augmented Reality App Development Frameworks
Aniruddh Agarwal for Extern Labs Inc.

Posted on • Updated on

Augmented Reality App Development Frameworks

Augmented Reality is one of the potential emerging technologies used in many technologies, and you should have used one of them. Augmented Reality sorted to AR is primarily being used in the gaming and smartphone industry. You might have seen the craze for Pokemon GO! That game was a huge success and made exceptional profits. All that is because of Augmented Reality Frameworks and tech that they used to enhance user experience and life-like feel. Let's first know what exactly is AR!

Augmented Reality is an interactive experience of a live world environment where computer-generated perceptual data improve and place objects in the real world, sometimes across multiple receptive modalities, including visual and audio, haptic, somatosensory. AR can be explained as a system that incorporates these primary characteristics: a blend of natural and virtual worlds, live interaction, and natural objects. Thus, the experience is perfectly knitted with the natural world recognized as an immersive aspect of the environment. In doing this, AR modifies one's ongoing perception of a real-world setting, whereas VR substitutes the user's real-world location with a simulated one. Thus, AR sounds similar to mixed Reality.

Augmented Reality Frameworks

There are more than 20 frameworks available for Augmented Reality App Development. Choosing the right one can be dragging work because the proper framework according to your work can ease the development process and make it less time-consuming. This article will help you find the right and best AR Framework for AR App Development that you want to build. I will be comparing some popular choices for different works and development; you can read them all and the final one that suits your work.

Unity3D

Unity3D; You heard it right, one of the tops and popular game development engines. Unity3D can efficiently build AR games and apps of any scale; whether you are a small business or full-scale development company, Unity3D has all components to help you in augmented reality app development.

Unreal Engine

The Unreal Engine, another top game development engine that helped many big and immersive games. Unreal Engine is owned and maintained by Epic Games, and they constantly add new tech to their framework. Unreal Engine is behind many popular movie CGIs.

ARCore

The first steps for AR technology using only a smartphone with Android started seven years ago with project Tango, developed by Google. Unfortunately, you need a specific Google-made device to run Tango, limiting the project to only some developers.

ARKit

ARKit is Apple's AR platform for their iOS devices. Developers can build and design interactive apps that can efficiently interact with the real world around the user by utilizing data collected from devices' sensors and cameras in real-time.

Vuforia

Vuforia is a new name emerging as a potential Augmented Reality SDK and Framework. It uses the device's screen as the lens to interweave elements of real-world and virtual components. It can effectively include virtual and real-world elements to look real. Vuforia can recognize both flat and 3D objects in real-time.

These are the most popular frameworks that are being used in augmented reality app development and game development. There are more besides these Simple CV, Wikitude SDK, Kudan, EasyAR, Onirix. Whatever you want to build, you can choose one from these famous five, and your work will be done conveniently.

Top comments (0)