Thursday, 12 March, 2020 UTC
Summary
Best examples, advantages, and pitfalls explained
AR-based apps became highly popular in 2016 when Pokemon Go was released. Today, augmented reality is a new trend in the digital world. AR market share is expected to reach $209.2 billion in 2022.
AR can be applied to a lot of businesses, but in this post, I would like to outline AR location-based applications.
What stands for location-based augmented reality
Location-based AR revolves around the current user position. Unlike marker-based AR, geo-based AR doesn’t need special markers to specify the place for a virtual object.
It mainly uses GPS, digital compass, accelerometer, and other similar technologies for detecting the user position precisely. Taking into account that every modern phone is equipped with these modules, AR apps are the product available for everyone.
Most curious among the readers have a question: “How does the AR app get information about the location?”. App simply sends queries to sensors. Then, the application compares the data with the local points of interest (POI) and transmits the virtual data into the real world.
Location-based AR can be divided into two types. First, outdoor AR uses GPS for locating the user outside the building. Indoor AR is able to find the user position inside the building by using beacons.
Impact of location-based AR
The rapid development of AR might bring significant changes to some of the business scopes. Now, I’m going to point out the main areas of influence for the AR.
Tourism
Location-based AR can improve applications from the travel and hospitality field. Today, it provides information about new places and popular sights in real-time via the camera. Travel mobile app development field could also benefit from implementing AR hints throughout the route on the map.
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Healthcare
We can’t deny the usefulness of merked-based AR in healthcare, but location-based AR has some aces in the sleeve. One of them is AED4EU, a search application that identifies the nearest points of automated defibrillators. When someone is at death’s door, every second counts. So, this application can save someone’s life by saving these seconds.
Advertising
AR is highly beneficial for promoting goods and services. The reason of AR campaigns is that they’re drastically cheaper than traditional digital or printed apps. They require you to pay for the paper and for the place to post the ads. While AR ads don’t require any of these points. Besides, they can be very adaptive. For example, while passing by the retail store, the customer may see all of the special offers and discounts available at the moment.
Education
It’s obvious that visualized 3D and 2D objects are more engaging than tons of words from books. So, AR can be a perfect solution for the educational industry. Astronomy can be an excellent science for implementing location-based AR.
Entertainment
Currently, this one is the main field in AR development. Why? Because it’s fun to put virtual objects into the physical world. The popularity of location-based direction is rapidly growing. Today, even such giants as Mojang aim to develop their own AR games. This resulted in Minecraft Earth, AR adaptation of well-known Minecraft.
Examples of AR apps available on the market
We won’t mention such giants as Pokemon Go on this list. Instead, let’s discuss really interesting cases that became popular among users.
Yelp Monocle
Yelp is a navigation AR mobile app. It’s the representative of the first generation of AR apps, it was launched in 2009. Yelp provides information about restaurants, bars, and other places of interest that surround the user. Besides, it displays the rate of a particular place based on user feedback.
WallaME
Here’s a great example of an entertainment app that involves creativity. The app allows users to draw, hide, and share messages on real-world surroundings. After the user finishes his message, each user of WallaMe can see his message. However, users can make private walls and assign persons who have access to their messages.
Ingress Prime
Ingress Prime is a multiplayer online game that uses AR GPS navigation. Players are divided into two factions — Enlightened and Resistance. They fight each other for control over the territories. The aim of the game is to capture the portals, which are usually located in places of cultural respect. Ingress uses Google Maps and is available both on iOS and Android.
Wikitude World Browser
Wikitude World Browser is a product of Wikitude, the company that developed the Augmented Reality SDK. A lot of features from this browser can come in handy for travelers. One of them is displaying information about the landmarks by pointing the camera at them. On top of it, cooperation with popular services like Yelp and TripAdvisor provides information about nearby stores and facilities.
Vortex Planetarium — Astronomy
Vortex Planetarium is an educational app for users who are fond of astronomy. While the user points a camera to the sky, this app scans the stars and outputs detailed information about the visible constellations.
IKEA Place
This one is a great use case of AR in advertising. The purpose of this app is to let customers try on the furniture of IKEA in their apartments. SO, IKEA Place handles two things at once, users are happy to experiment with the interior at no cost, and IKEA delivers a catalog of products the most natural way possible.
How to build a location-based AR app
As we already know the best examples of location-based AR apps, let’s get through the steps for building it.
Step 1. Prepare necessary data
Before building the app, you have to define what problem it will solve. It may be a simple solution that displays the text like Yelp and Wikitude Browser. Or, you may develop something more complicated that involves 3D objects or maybe develop a whole game. To create a game, you can’t get away from using game engines. Unity and Unreal Engine are the most popular engines for creating games at the moment. Without regard to your choice, first of all, you should come up with a great idea.
Step 2. Choose development tools
The next thing to care about is the choice of location-based AR SDK that can meet your demands. Now we’ll overview the essential tools for AR app development.
ARKit by Apple
I’ve mentioned this SDK before, but let’s get a closer look. This SDK provides the following features:
- Scanning horizontal and vertical environments
- Visual Inertial Odometry processes the data from the camera to precisely track the environment
- Works with Unreal and Unity engines
ARKit 3 is the latest update of SDK, and it tracks up to three faces simultaneously. Besides, it can place virtual objects in front and behind the user. Apple provides a high-quality SDK for developers that even lets users cooperate inside of AR. The biggest drawback of ARKit is that it is only available for iOS.
Wikitude
With Wikitude, developers can build both marker-based and markerless AR apps. The main features are:
- ‘Scene recognition’ that tracks large objects like buildings, rooms, and so on
- Integration with Unity engine
- Integration with development frameworks like Xamarin and Cordova
- Geolocation support
ARCore
The strongest rival of ARKit is ARCore by Google. The best feature of this SDK is the mapping that completely changes the concept of markerless AR apps. It performs motion tracking in both horizontal and vertical surfaces.
AR Core is capable of managing the same AR object by two separate gadgets. On top of that, it has the same light estimation feature as ARKit and allows placing objects on horizontal surfaces.
Step 3. Integrate Geolocation
If you choose the markerless AR library that doesn’t provide mapping, you should integrate it on your own. GPS is the most popular way to locate the user. It is the most accurate way of determining the position, but it has its price to pay. GPS consumes a lot of battery power, so your app should be well optimized.
These were the main steps required for the location-based app. The last thing to do is to add some points of interest to your app. It can be done with the Google Places API.
Points to look out while building a location-based AR app
Throughout the development of the location-based app, you can face some pitfalls. I will bring some understanding to the challenges you may face.
Holding a fixed position
When users rotate the camera, virtual objects should stay at their place. That’s where SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) comes into action. This technology parses a scene and compares the phone’s position to the data received. When the phone is being moved, the objects remain untouched. That’s the technology that got AR on the new level.
Accuracy
Accuracy plays a vital role in AR apps. Besides scene parsing, you should also care about the data provided by GPS modules. So, you should ensure that your application sends queries to all sensors and gets responses correctly.
Detailed models
If you don’t want to be a laughingstock of the AR market, then be sure to hire a qualified design team. Low poly models don’t look great even on computer screens. But when you transfer them into the real world, they just ruin the reputation of your application.
Wrapping up
Augmented Reality is getting more and more notable with time. It is already used in various fields and serves at the pleasure of users. In no time, AR will become the main trend in development. So, don’t hesitate, make your contribution to the AR world right now.
Author’s bio
Vitaly Kuprenko is a technical writer at Cleveroad. It’s a web and mobile app development company in Ukraine. He enjoys telling about tech innovations and digital ways to boost businesses.
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https://medium.com/media/1e1f2ee7654748bb938735cbca6f0fd3/hrefHow To Develop an Outstanding Location-Based AR App was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.