Expanding the reach of WebAR
A few weeks back, I built a web app of the Solar System. It received a lot of positive feedback and they were excited to show it to their children. However, some of the users encountered issues. Their devices did not support WebAR and were not able to view the Solar System in their physical environment. This triggered me to provide an alternative solution for the users who also wanted a piece of the fun.
Why should we cater to smartphones (or mobile phones) that do not support WebAR?
There may be a need to cater for unsupported users when the project is engaging and visually attractive to the users such as displaying a model of a dinosaur, molecules or the planets of the Solar System. Potentially, we would not like to leave them out of the fun of learning new thing and the main difference between these devices is the method of displaying AR in the physical environment.
Marker-less AR vs Marker-based AR
One of AR’s underlying technologies is determining the position of the object in the physical environment. In order to achieve this, the device must use a camera to scan the space around or use a marker in order to place the object. The industry has labelled this as marker-less AR and marker-based AR. This is one of the factors that separates smartphones and mobile devices.
What is Marker-less AR?
As the word suggests, marker-less AR does not use any markers to determine where to place the object in the physical space. The device scans the environment and looks for a solid object such as a floor or a table and registers it as a flat surface. The device then places the object on the surface. This method does not rely on any image or markers to display the object.
Marker-less AR is commonly found in mobile apps due to technology requirements such as SDKs (Software Development Kits) specifically for AR…
