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Is it possible to render Unity graphics elements on top of iPhone / Android video feed?
So, the answer is no to cam support on iPhone / Android http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/16811/will-unity-3-support-net-streaming-video-on-the-iphone-android-platforms
But, is it possible to render or overlay Unity on top of an iPhone / Android video feed?
wondering if that'd be too much for mobile processors. live video + unity render, complete with specular textures and all - any examples?
There is a large performance hit on iOS for making the EAGllayer transparent.
Answer by Ashkan_gc · Aug 11, 2010 at 06:03 PM
it's really heavy for current devices. maybe later droid phones with great tegra 2 GPUs can do it or some of the windows phnes but currently it's not a possibility for applications that they are more complex than a moving sphere or cube. :)
well, it's possible to import collada files into various Flash-based augmented reality kits - but then those don't let you have neat effects like specularity and transparency - say rendering a glass of water for example. just flat solid-texture meshes
Answer by DaveA · Oct 08, 2010 at 10:58 PM
The docs say that iPhone and Android can have plugins (not web browser though). If a plugin can be written to access the camera, they why not? It would be akin to the one that's already available (ARToolkit).
As to how well it would perform, that's caveat scriptor. If you want heavy duty graphics on top of video, good luck. But if it's something fairly modest, I think so.
So while that would not technically be what you are asking for (3d on top of video), conceivably you could get video into 3D (as a background texture or whatever).
Now we just need someone to take up the challenge and write those plugins.
See http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Plugins.html