A new article from Bentley Systems, Stephane Cote.
Augmented reality is a fascinating technology that could change the way we live and interact with the world that surrounds us. Unfortunately, we don’t see many good applications of AR in engineering yet, partly because achieving good visual integration of digital objects with reality is very challenging. To display the augmented elements at the right location on a tablet display at every instant, the AR app must know the position of your tablet in real time - that is fundamental to AR. Now that problem is hard to solve on a handheld device, because it may require multiple sensors and heavy calculations, which are not always easy on small devices with limited battery capacity. Initial tracking solutions made this tracking easier through the use of markers (QR codes). The tablet’s camera captures live video of the scene that includes a marker, and based on the shape and orientation of the marker seen on the video, the AR app can calculate the tablet’s position with reasonable accuracy. Markers work quite well, but to be of any use, they must be visible in your camera view – so depending on the situation you may need to install many of them.
