ARToolKit 5 add-on for Open Frameworks (iOS & Android)

development
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Thanks to @buitregool I was looking in to ARToolKit again which is amazingly LGPL.
I was very surprised with the performance of their Natural Feature Tracker.
Additional it can generate markers from jpg images. Which comes in handy for a more streamlined hybrid object designing process.

As you know the Reality Editor builds up on Open Frameworks (OF) and the proprietary Vuforia AR Library.
Currently there is no OF addon for ARToolKit 5. Which would be needed to use ARToolKit within the Reality Editor.
Do you have interest to help building it?

I have added the LGPL ARTookKit library for iOS and Android in a new github project to start somewhere:

I also started a fresh discussion in the OF forum about it:

We should follow the API design from GitHub - julapy/ofxQCAR: openframeworks addon for Qualcomm AR.

Lets see what we can get started here.

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Thanks for the acknowledgement @valentin. I am sincerely convinced that it’s the right path. Will give us a much more simplify and robust solution. I am definitely interested in participating in the developing stage.

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Hi @valentin. I sent you a personal email referred to the above to your www.valentinheun.com contact address. I was wondering if you had time to read it? Thanks for your effort.

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Hi everyone, we have a fair amount of update on the ARTookKit side.
daqri who has made ARToolKit open source is supporting the ARToolKit Add-On and has hosted it on their repository: https://github.com/artoolkit/ofxARToolKit. I love this idea, as it helps to focus all interests.

We do have a complete first ARToolKit addon created by naus3a https://github.com/naus3a/ofxArtool5.
We have some support from a former PhD student for making the iOS version.

@buitregool maybe you want to start supporting the android version of the ARToolKit OF Addon?

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Hi @valentin. Great news then! Will be a pleasure to help with the Android support. I will think a little bit better about the best developing approach and come back later. Cheers.

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Hi @valentin. I’ve done some tests and so far so good. On the other hand, and maybe this will sound naive, I have the following doubt: Now that we won’t be using Vuforia addon for future versions, what’s the need of including OFx? Maybe there is something I am missing? Or a feature part of a Roadmap I haven’t seen or know about it. Is there an Architecture doc/diagram somewhere? Thanks for your time.

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Are there any improvements on the android version for Reality Editor ?

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I me also interest in an android version of Reality editor.
someone work on ot ?

thanks a lot.

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Hi @karlTH we want to stay agile and make fast progress. I just calibrated and debugged 8 different iOS devices with 3 different iOS versions for the Reality Editor to work flawless. What would this look like in the Android universe? We would end up fixing bugs and adopting code to all the Android versions and Phones instead of thinking how to make open hybrid better.

I understand that Android is a widely used OS but for anything phone related, it is better to innovate on iOS first and then bring it to Android once you have the capacity to commit to that extra amount of debugging. Right now we are thrilled to innovate, foster community and provide you with the research results.

Consider Open Hybrid as research in progress. :slight_smile:

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OF (http://openframeworks.cc) allows a simple platform independent code base that will compile on iOS, android and windows. We can rely on many well tested and community supported higher level libraries.

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Hi @valentin. I totally understand and agree with your comment. But after analyzing the source code, It gave me the impression that the only higher level library we were taking advantage of, was the one linked to Vuforia’s addon. If we shift to ARToolkit, I think there will be no real need of implementing OF, and to be honest, makes apps less performant and harder to develop to an experienced developer. Cheers.