Augmented Reality “Adds to your World” is a technology that overlays digital information on top of physical assets. This Digital Information can be in the form of schematics, instructions, annotations, and performance or condition status.
For anyone to experience AR, all they need is a digital display device like a smartphone, tablet, or wearable devices like the Microsoft HoloLens or the Magic Leap headset.
But how does AR work?
It’s key to understand how AR works, and the various AR use cases before delving into crafting your AR content strategy. An AR system works as follows:
The camera on your phone or AR HMD captures the users’ environment. The AR software interprets the images from the camera in real-time and calculates the positioning of virtual content.
The appropriate Virtual content is fetched from local storage or cloud servers and sent to the display device.
Augmented content is superimposed in the camera frame in real-time. The AR technology recognizes the object that you see through the camera view and overlays relevant digital information on the device’s screen.
You need AR authoring software to develop AR content, but let us save this a little later in this article.
AR use cases
A list of use cases that have been successfully deployed across several industries has been already discussed in our earlier published article “The Deployment stage of the AR maturity model.”
Here is a shortlist of the use cases where AR has shown significant promise;
- Healthcare: AR helps doctors, clinicians, and healthcare industry professionals to learn complex tasks.
- Manufacturing: Manufacturing companies use AR for field service, maintenance of complex equipment, and product marketing.
- Tourism: Travel and tourism companies use AR to provide immersive experiences of destinations to potential tourists, a “try before you buy” kind of experience to market the tourist destinations.
- Retail, Interior design, Home décor’: Retail businesses can allow their customers to experience their products using AR virtually.
- Beauty products: Hairstyle and face makeover AR apps promoted by leading beauty care brands use AR to enable their products’ virtual try-on.
- Gaming: Pokémon Go demonstrated that a game developer could effectively use AR to create fun interactive experiences.
The significance of content in AR
While AR has tremendous potential to create substantial business benefits, enterprises face a few challenges while scaling AR. One key challenge is the lack of high-quality AR content. This can manifest in low visual fidelity of the content, improper functionality, lousy user interface, awful tracking, and recognition, leading to a break in immersion in the AR experiences.
This results in poor user experience; moreover, the experience is often not immersive enough for the users to appreciate the value it brings to them.
Analysts cite that the absence of high-quality 3D content compels AR users to create their objects and environments in their AR applications.
Crafting your AR content strategy
To rapidly develop and deploy high-quality AR content for your audience while being in the “Connecting stage of the AR maturity model,” the following steps can be adopted by enterprises;
- Define your objective? – You will need to define the goals of your AR application clearly. Is it a product showcase for retail customers? Or is it a sophisticated training solution for employees, or is it a marketing solution intended to excite your users about your product? The objective will provide clear direction as to the type of content and authoring platforms needed to develop the AR content.
- Determine the type of source content – Several source content types that can be utilized for AR content authoring;
- 3D CAD – CAD models from various CAD software like Catia, Solid works, etc., can be imported into AR content authoring platforms to create AR applications.
- 3D point cloud generated by scanning including the latest Lidar scanners available on the newest iPhone and iPad – 3D point cloud can be generated using scanners that can then be converted to 3D polygonal mesh models imported AR content authoring platforms.
- 3D polygonal models from DCC tools like 3DS Max, Blender, Maya – Artists and designers in your enterprise can create 3D polygonal models from DCC tools that can then be imported into the AR content authoring platforms.
- 3D polygonal models downloaded from various asset stores like Unity Assets store (assetstore.unity.com), Unreal marketplace (unrealengine.com/marketplace), Reallusion marketplace (marketplace.reallusion.com), Sketchup 3D warehouse (3dwarehouse.sketchup.com) – several high fidelity free and paid models are available in these stores for immediate purchase and use. Always check licensing terms and conditions when using assets from these market places.
- 360 deg images and video, 2D images, videos and documents – any images, videos, and documents that are needed to be shown in the AR experience you are creating can be imported into the AR content authoring platforms.
- Volumetric video – some AR content authoring platforms allow importing volumetric video content for AR content authoring.
- Determine the AR content authoring platform – Given the importance of high fidelity AR content and the amount of work it requires to create such content, robust tools/authoring platforms are needed for creating augmented reality content.
- One of the best AR authoring platforms we work with for various enterprise AR use cases from training, field service, equipment maintenance, and marketing is the Worklink Create tool from Scope AR.
Worklink lets you create AR content that’s customizable. It is compatible with ARKit and ARCore and allows one-click publishing to any AR device of your choice, including AR HMD’s. It supports image tracking, object tracking, source content like direct 3D CAD, 3D polygonal models, images, animation, scripting using a visual programming interface, videos, 360 deg videos, and a 3D point cloud from reality capture systems, etc. These features make Worklink a suitable AR content creation tool for a wide range of AR use cases.
- Another platform that is easy to use and worth mentioning is the Vuforia Studio. Vuforia Studio is part of the Vuforia AR platform from PTC. It is a powerful AR platform with a drag-and-drop AR content authoring environment that is scalable and allows easy viewing of AR content. Its IoT and analytics capabilities make Vuforia highly suitable for industrial AR use cases.
- Determine which devices you will deploy your AR content to – It is crucial to determine the display device used by all your users within the enterprise. Some AR features may need the latest mobile devices with depth sensors; it may not work on legacy devices. Mobile AR is cumbersome to use as the user may find it difficult to hold the mobile device in their hand while experiencing the AR content. AR HMD’s are very expensive to buy and hence costly to scale. After careful consideration and exploring various devices in the “explore stage,” you may have the right knowledge to make this critical decision while scaling AR in your enterprise.
Conclusion
Augmented reality content authoring platforms for content creation can undoubtedly help you to build your augmented reality application. However, exciting content is only one part of AR app development, although an essential factor. Developing an AR application involves much more, e.g., finding AR developers, procuring the right infrastructure, formulating a practical development approach, and managing the project well.
AR application development can be complicated in the beginning. We always recommend organizations follow all the stages in the AR maturity model to allow the best chance for AR to succeed in your enterprise.
The Radiant Digital AR team has built a large number of AR applications. Our team features many expert AR and VR developers who have used all the above tools and platforms and others such as Unity, Unreal, and most important, AR hardware and software technologies.
Contact us to learn more.
