ARKit vs ARCore vs Vuforia vs 8th Wall

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Hello all; I'm still a junior developer, so please forgive the confusion. I have a few questions:

1) I use Unity to build 3D environments, and know that Unity can export to Android and iOS, but I guess this is for a standard game and not AR because we need AR SDKs such as ARKit, ARCore, or Vuforia. (Correct?)

2) Why do I need to use ARKit, ARCore, or Vuforia when I could just use 8th Wall? Are there extra capabilities in ARKit / ARCore / Vuforia's scripts?

3) I only have a Windows machine and an Android phone; can I build on them, and then 8th Wall will make it compatible with iOS? Is there any other way to build on one platform and export to others?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Answer 1

Answer by Tuitive · Feb 10, 2018 at 09:48 PM

1) Not sure exactly what you're asking here, but if you're not doing AR, you don't need any of those AR SDKs. Just deploy regular Unity content to iOS or Android like usual.

2) ARKit is only for iOS; ARCore is only for Android. Unity's ARKit plugin is pretty rough -- you're basically left to hack at the example projects and cobble together the functionality you need. Very inelegant, but it works. Vuforia is its own AR tech that runs on both iOS and Android and runs on older phones (ARKit, for example, will only run on iPhone 6s and newer). Vuforia will use ARKit/ARCore tech if the hardware it's running on support it, otherwise it will use its own AR tech. Vuforia also has image tracking, which means you can lock a virtual object with a real world object, bar code, etc. Vuforia is well-funded, well-documented and now baked directly into Unity. The only bad part of Vuforia is that unless you have paid for a license, you get a Vuforia watermark in your app. 8th Wall is like Vuforia in that it works for both iOS and Android, uses ARKit/ARCore when it can, and will gracefully degrade to run on older devices. 8th Wall doesn't have image tracking like Vuforia, but it's free and has great documentation and is cross platform.

3) You can build on Windows with 8th Wall and compile for iOS as an XCode project, but you'll need a Mac to actually open the XCode project and deploy it to an iOS device for testing and submitting to the App Store

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Lloyd_RedironLabs · Oct 05, 2018 at 12:43 AM 1

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Just some clarifications as this isn't entirely accurate anymore:

1) He specified he wants to use AR, and asked if using ARCore or AR$$anonymous$$it is a requirement.

2) This is a bit different now... AR$$anonymous$$it is iOS only. ARCore is iOS & Android (and wraps AR$$anonymous$$it). ARFoundation (Unity's built in AR) is a wrapper for ARCore and AR$$anonymous$$it, even though ARCore already wraps AR$$anonymous$$it, and it lacks functionality from both frameworks. Vuforia iirc started as an OpenCV project, but now pretty much is only a wrapper for ARCore and AR$$anonymous$$it - however Vuforia has been pulling its free offerings and it can only do image tracking on non-ARCore and non-AR$$anonymous$$it devices. EasyAR uses OpenCV (in otherwords doesn't require an ARCore or AR$$anonymous$$it supported device) when required. It has free Image tracking but not plane tracking. 8th Wall is similar to EasyAR but is fully free (the framework implementation is even very close). It uses OpenCV when ARCore or AR$$anonymous$$it is missing. Unlike EaseAR, it supports Planar tracking for free on all devices, but not image tracking. And finally OpenCV lets you do everything raw (and is great for things like raw facial recognition).

So, if you want to support non-ARCore and non-AR$$anonymous$$it devices - you should be using 8th Wall, Easy AR or OpenCV.

If you don't care about other devices, you can use ARCore & Vuforia for cross platform or use only AR$$anonymous$$it if you really only care about Apple.

Generally these days, Vuforia, ARFoundation, and AR$$anonymous$$it are considered to serve little to no purpose unless you need a very specific feature from them. For example Vuforia can support Windows Surface tablets and Vumarks. Although ARCore has a better free Vumark alternative.

3) You can also use $$anonymous$$ac V$$anonymous$$ services such as $$anonymous$$ac in the cloud

rigelbenton · Oct 05, 2018 at 03:25 AM 1

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This is close but not entirely correct. 8th Wall does NOT use OpenCV. It has a proprietary SLA$$anonymous$$ algorithm it defaults to when AR$$anonymous$$it/ARCore are not detected. Since I’m here: check out 8th Wall Web.

No apps required. Runs in current web browsers. 8thwall.com/web

Lloyd_RedironLabs · Oct 05, 2018 at 06:40 AM 0

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Fair point, I'd like to add I'm biased in that I personally like both 8thwall and easyar, although warranted they both have their limitations for larger AR applications and their own quirks and issues. 8thwall is consistently improving and getting close to where we need it for stability (but not quite there yet).

Whenever I see "proprietary", I always assume modded OpenCV.

Answer 2

Answer by Pepsidog · Feb 02, 2018 at 05:51 PM

You just have the option to choose between them. I don’t know which one you should use, but choose one.

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Answer 3

Answer by Sibivarman · Nov 14, 2018 at 06:21 PM

ARKit is for Apple( Most of the iPhones supported)

ARCore is for Android ( only selected models of android phone support)

Vuforia is for both Apple and Android(paid version for officially releasing to make money)

8th Wall is for both Apple and Android(free)

both Vuforia and 8th wall are less stable while building apps when compared with ARKit and ARCore.

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Lloyd_RedironLabs · Nov 14, 2018 at 06:36 PM 0

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ARCore went cross platform a while ago. And you're missing OpenCV, EasyAR, and AR Foundation (see my comment above)

GodOfwarsam · Nov 05, 2019 at 08:50 AM 0

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Wait did they add it for ios as well?? here- https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/unity/quickstart-ios

xxmariofer GodOfwarsam · Nov 05, 2019 at 02:14 PM 0

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it was posted above with some extra clarification http://answers.unity.com/comments/1559761/view.html

Answer 4

Answer by rigel-8thWall · Nov 14, 2018 at 07:07 PM

As it stands today, ARCore supports Cloud Anchors across ARKit + ARCore. ARCore's tracking is unavailable on iOS devices. This link is deceptive in that it openly claims ARCore iOS Support: https://developers.google.com/ar/discover/supported-devices. But in the Quick Start Guide, it's clear that it still requires ARKit for tracking on iOS and Cloud Anchors are the only ARCore feature supported on iOS. https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/ios/overview.

8th Wall's Unity integration is comprised of two distinguishing features: 1. Compatibility Detection 2. Lightweight markerless AR SLAM engine

We detect if you have ARKit built-in (iOS), ARCore installed (Android) or neither. We then serve ARKit/ARCore if available on your device. If neither are available, we serve our SLAM tracker which provides basically the same experience depending on your needs, but works on billions of devices.

This allows developers to continue to develop for ARKit and ARCore while simultaneously reaching a MUCH wider group than the ARKit + ARCore combined audience (particularly useful on Android).

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Lloyd_RedironLabs · Nov 14, 2018 at 07:40 PM 0

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While I do love 8th wall, it's important to mention the question is about AR frameworks beyond just one framework and had specific questions they are seeking to answer.

I would like to disclaimer though that afaik you can't access the arkit and arcore features directly through 8thwall, only an exposed subset. So it isn't really simultaneously building for arcore/arkit and 8thwall. Also, even though I love 8th wall, our testing last week including using the samples and demos showed that 8thwall (even on arcore enabled devices) was significantly less reliable for tracking versus arcore native. To the point in which we had to remove it from 4 active projects. In addition the online documentation is out of date and has significant differences that slow down new adopters.

So although I appreciate the framework in its own way, this post does not answer or address the original posters question.

rigel-8thWall Lloyd_RedironLabs · Nov 14, 2018 at 08:53 PM 0

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Thank you for your feedback. $$anonymous$$y intent was just to clarify confusion around our platform. I realize now I should have replied directly to Sibivarman's answer ins$$anonymous$$d of providing my post as an answer.

Some of the issues you bring up sound like bugs (i.e. ARCore using 8th Wall should be identical to ARCore anywhere else) and I would love to help you resolve those. If you have the time, please reach out to our support via https://8thwall.com/resources.html. We are constantly improving our product and your honest feedback helps us tremendously.

Thank you Lloyd_RedironLabs for using 8th Wall :)

ARKit vs ARCore vs Vuforia vs 8th Wall

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