AR/VR Guide

A guide covering Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) including the applications, libraries and tools that will make you a better and more efficient Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) development.

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Getting Started with AR/VR

Augmented Reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a simulated experience that can be similar to or completely different from the real world. The applications of virtual reality include entertainment (video games), education (medical or military training) and business (virtual meetings).

Mixed Reality (MR) is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations, where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time.

Extended Reality (XR) is a concept referring to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables. Including augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR).

Developer Resources

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AR/VR Training Courses

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AR/VR Tools, Frameworks, and Hardware

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Tools & Frameworks

RealityCapture is a state-of-the-art photogrammetry software solution that creates virtual reality scenes, textured 3D meshes, orthographic projections, geo-referenced maps and much more from images and/or laser scans completely automatically.

Reality Composer is a powerful tool that makes it easy for you to create interactive augmented reality experiences with no prior 3D experience. The Reality Converter quickly converts your existing 3D models to USDZ so it works seamlessly in our tools and on all AR-enabled iPhone and iPad devices.

ARKit is a set set of software development tools to enable developers to build augmented-reality apps for iOS developed by Apple. The latest version ARKit 3.5 takes advantage of the new LiDAR Scanner and depth sensing system on iPad Pro(2020) to support a new generation of AR apps that use Scene Geometry for enhanced scene understanding and object occlusion.

RealityKit is a framework to implement high-performance 3D simulation and rendering with information provided by the ARKit framework to seamlessly integrate virtual objects into the real world.

RealityUI is a Swift Package for creating familiar UI Elements and animations in a RealityKit rendered Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality scene.

SceneKit is a high-level 3D graphics framework that helps you create 3D animated scenes and effects in your iOS apps.

GPUImage framework is a BSD-licensed iOS library that lets you apply GPU-accelerated filters and other effects to images, live camera video, and movies. In comparison to Core Image (part of iOS 5.0), GPUImage allows you to write your own custom filters, supports deployment to iOS 4.0, and has a simpler interface. However, it currently lacks some of the more advanced features of Core Image, such as facial detection.

GPUImage3 is the third generation of the GPUImage framework, an open source project for performing GPU-accelerated image and video processing on Mac and iOS. The original GPUImage framework was written in Objective-C and targeted Mac and iOS, the second iteration rewritten in Swift using OpenGL to target Mac, iOS, and Linux, and now this third generation is redesigned to use Apple's Metal in place of OpenGL.

ARCore is a software development kit developed by Google that allows for augmented reality applications in the real world. These tools include environmental understanding, which allows devices to detect horizontal and vertical surfaces and planes. It also includes motion tracking, which lets phones understand and track their positions relative to the world. Also ARCore’s Light Estimation API lets your digital objects appear realistically as if they’re actually part of the physical world.

Adobe Scantastic is a tool that makes the creation of 3D assets accessible to everyone. It can be used with just a mobile device (combined with Adobe's server-based photogrammetry pipeline), users can easily scan objects in their physical environment and turn them into 3D models which can then be imported into tools like Adobe Dimension and Adobe Aero.

Adobe Aero is a tool that helps you build, view, and share immersive AR experiences. Simply build a scene by bringing in 2D images from Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, or 3D models from Adobe Dimension, Substance, third-party apps like Cinema 4D, or asset libraries like Adobe Stock and TurboSquid. Aero optimizes a wide array of assets, including OBJ, GLB, and glTF files, for AR, so you can visualize them in real time.

Vuforia is a comprehensive, scalable enterprise AR platform. Our wide-ranging solution suite ensures that we can provide the right AR technology to every customer based on their business needs.

Vuforia Studio is a tool that allows anyone to create beautiful 3D augmented reality (AR) experiences in a matter of minutes with no coding required.

SceneView is a 3D and AR Android Composable and View with Google Filament and ARCore. This is a Sceneform replacement in Kotlin.

Polycam is the world's most popular LiDAR 3D scanning app for iOS(iPhone/iPad), Web, and Android. It let's you scan the world around you with your mobile device, DSLR camera, or drone to get beautiful, accurate 3D models.

3D Scanner App for Mac is a desktop tool for processing photos and videos into 3D models using the power of Photogrammetry; which makes it perfect for 3D Design, CAD, Architecture, Games Assets, AR, VR, XR. It shares USDZ models via iMessage to let friends and family see your models in Augmented Reality.

OpenVX™ is an open-source, royalty-free standard for cross platform acceleration of computer vision applications. OpenVX enables performance and power-optimized computer vision processing, especially important in embedded and real-time use cases such as face, body and gesture tracking, smart video surveillance, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), object and scene reconstruction, augmented reality, visual inspection, robotics and more.

OpenXR is an open, royalty-free standard for access to virtual reality and augmented reality platforms and devices.

OpenXR™ SDK is a Software Development Kit that contains OpenXR headers, as well as source code and build scripts for the OpenXR loader.

NVIDIA Flex is a particle-based simulation library designed for real-time applications.

ARToolKit is a fast and modern open source tracking and recognition SDK which enables computers to see and understand more in the environment around them. It's built from the ground up using modern computer vision techniques.

ALVR(Air Light VR) is a Stream VR games from your PC to your headset via Wi-Fi. ALVR uses technologies like Asynchronous Timewarp and Fixed Foveated Rendering for a smoother experience.

ARmedia is a plugin tool that makes it easy to develop and create AR experiences without coding.

Wikitude is a Cross-platform augmented reality SDK to create high-performing object tracking AR experiences using 3D models as an input method (CAD, glTF 2.0 and more) for multiple devices and operating systems.

Kudan AR SDK is a Professional AR SDK to develop compelling applications for mobile devices.

Kundan is a tool that provides proprietary Artificial Perception technologies based on SLAM to enable use cases with significant market potential and impact on our lives such as autonomous driving, robotics, AR/VR and smart cities.

OVR Toolkit is a utility