Is augmented reality really going to be as big as Tim Cook thinks it is? At WWDC last year it wowed the audience and had people in a frenzy. Fast forward a few months and the reception noticeably cooled after iOS 11 saw its public release. However, it received a shot in the arm this past week with the announcement of the latest version of AR Kit.
In a very un-Apple move, the company detailed what to expect in the upcoming iOS 11.3 update due out this Spring. One of the most important, and likely overlooked components, is AR Kit 1.5. While features like iMessage in iCloud or new Animoji will get users to upgrade, developers are poised to receive a far more functional version of AR Kit than what shipped in iOS 11.
That’s not to say anything bad about the AR Kit team – quite the opposite in fact. They have done a remarkable job in upping the quality of AR content and have done so in a relatively short amount of time.
The History of AR Kit
However, I’m sure the following story is all too familiar to many devs. When the iOS 11 betas were released, my first thought was “What can I do with AR?”. The demos were impressive and Tim Cook had repeatedly talked the tech up in the media. Once developers got their hands on the tech, the limits became more clear – and unfortunately they rendered my plans for AR Kit moot (and surely many other developers).
AR Kit 1.0 only supported horizontal planes, meaning the software could sense floors, tables and other flat surfaces. However it could only sense those surfaces – there was no vertical surface detection, so objects like walls were invisible to AR Kit.
In AR Kit 1.5 that has changed.
AR Kit – The Next Generation
While they didn’t bill this as version 2.0, it easily qualifies. The star of course in this 1.5 update is vertical surface detection – walls, doors and the like are now fair game. This will extend the capabilities of AR Kit exponentially, bringing a whole new generation of apps that were impossible previously.
Some other big improvements include an improved ability to map irregularly shaped surfaces like circular tables, a resolution bump from 720p to 1080p and support for auto-focus.
Interestingly, Apple also mentioned support for interactive detection of signs. Direct from the press release :
Using advanced computer vision techniques to find and recognize the posit...
Read Full StoryMy first post has to be App Coda. When I started teaching myself Objective-C and learning how to make iOS apps, I learned the most from App Coda and Ray Wenderlich. App Coda is a 100% free site that the author walks you through step by step (in amazing detail for newbies) how to accomplish programming tasks in Xcode and MORE IMPORTANTLY why you are doing them.
The site has tutorials that cover a variety of topics. While they don’t cover everything the material they do have is solid gold. For anyone trying to get into iOS programming without much of a background I would recommend giving a few of their tutorials a read and immersing yourself in the material.
Link – App Coda Website
Read Full Story