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AR.js - Efficient Augmented Reality for the Web using ARToolKit

I am focusing hard on making AR for the web a reality. This repository is where I publish the code. Contact me anytime @jerome_etienne. Stuff are still moving fast, We reached a good status tho. An article has been published on uploadvr. So I wanted to publish thus people can try it and have fun with it :)

  • Very Fast : it runs efficiently even on phones. 60 fps on my 2 year-old phone!
  • Web-based : It is a pure web solution, so no installation required. Full javascript based on three.js + jsartoolkit5
  • Open Source : It is completely open source and free of charge!
  • Standards : It works on any phone with webgl and webrtc

AR.js 1.0 Video

Try it on Mobile

It works on any browser with WebGL and WebRTC. So android works. Window mobile works. IOS doesnt work unfortunately. IOS safari doesn't support WebRTC at the moment. Apple is currently working on it tho.

To try on your phone is only 2 easy steps, check it out!

  1. Open this hiro marker image in your desktop browser.
  2. Open this augmented reality webapps in your phone browser, and point it to your screen.

You are done! It will open a webpage which read the phone webcam, localize a hiro marker and add 3d on top of it, as you can see below.

screenshot

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

So we shown it is now possible to do 60fps web-based augmented reality on a phone. This is great for sure but how did we get here ? By standing on the shoulders of giants! It is thanks to the hard work from others, that we can today reach this mythic 60fps AR. So i would like to thanks :

  • three.js for being a great library to do 3d on the web.
  • artoolkit! years of development and experiences on doing augmented reality
  • emscripten and asm.js! thus we could compile artoolkit c into javascript
  • chromium! thanks for being so fast!

Only thanks to all of them, i could do my part : Optimizing performance from 5fps on high-end phone, to 60fps on 2years old phone.

After all this work done by a lot of people, we have a web-based augmented reality solution fast enough for mobile!

Now, many people got a phone powerful enough to do web AR in their pocket. I think this performance improvement makes web AR a reality. i am all exited by what people are gonna with it :)

Performance

We are still early in the project but here are some initial numbers to give you an idea.

Obviously you mileage may vary. The performance you get will depend on 3 things: How heavy your 3D is, How you tune your parameters and the hardware that you are using.

screenshot

Full Featured Marker based

With this project, we bring more performance to artoolkit. artoolkit is a software with years of experience doing augmented reality. It is able to do a lot!

It is marker based. It supports a wide range of markers: multiple types of markers pattern/barcode multiple independant markers at the same time, or multiple markers acting as a single marker up to you to choose.

What’s New?

Recently, we’ve been getting creative and working on developing new things with AR.js. One of them is playing around with shadows, syncing the position of virtual lights with reality for a more life-like finish: screen shot 2017-03-16 at 21 06 24

We’ve been collaborating very closely with Fredrick Blomqvist. His input has had a great impact on AR.js innovation and we want to thank him. Together, we’ve been implementing refraction, giving the 3d a transparent/glassy effect. It ended up having a nice polished look. What do you guys think? screen shot 2017-03-06 at 16 31 28

Other crazy ideas we’ve been working on include a hole in the wall and a portal into another world. We want to take AR.js to new dimensions. screen shot 2017-03-12 at 15 19 51 screen shot 2017-03-07 at 10 08 39

principles

  • "Shared #ar is a lot more real than solo #AR." - Augmented reality principle tweet
  • "The marker must be a portal from where the virtual emerges." by @AndraConnect - #AR principles at dinner 😏 tweet

Status

  • At the three.js level is the main one. It is working well and efficiently
  • a-frame component - it export <a-marker> tag. It becomes real easy to use. It allows the things three.js extension does. Here are some slides aframe-artoolkit
  • webvr-polyfill: it is kind of working - still a work-in-progress

Augmented reality for the web in less than 10 lines of html

A-Frame magic :) All details are explained in this super post "Augmented Reality in 10 Lines of HTML - AR.js with a-frame magic" by @AndraConnect.

<script src="https://aframe.io/releases/0.5.0/aframe.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://jeromeetienne.github.io/AR.js/aframe/build/aframe-ar.js"></script>
<body style='margin : 0px; overflow: hidden;'>
	<a-scene embedded artoolkit='sourceType: webcam;'>
		<a-box position='0 0 0.5' material='opacity: 0.5;'></a-box>
		<a-marker-camera preset='hiro'></a-marker-camera>
	</a-scene>
</body>

See on codepen or bl.ocks.org

Posts on medium

We started a AR.js blog, thus we can write about all the crazy ideas related to AR.js.

Examples

Some applications:

Three.js Examples:

a-frame Examples:

WebVR-polyfill Examples:

Folders

  • /three.js is the extension to use it with pure three.js
  • /aframe is the extension to use it with a-frame
  • /webvr-polyfill is the WebVR polyfill so you can reuse your #AR / #VR content easily

Licenses

It is all open source ! jsartoolkit5 is under LGPLv3 license and additional permission. And All my code in AR.js repository is under MIT license. :)

For legal details, be sure to check jsartoolkit5 license and AR.js license.

Change Log

CHANGELOG.md

What's Next ?

We did good on performance, but there are still a lot of room for optimisation. Using webworkers would increase cpu usage. Compiling in webassembly instead of asm.js should improve loading time and likely cpu performance. And obviously, we can still do more parameters tweaking :)

I would like people start experience augmented reality and play with it. This is highly creative! Just look at this puzzle game in #AR playing with mirror and laser beam. You could do it with AR.js, so opensource and running on normal phones, no need to buy a new device. isn't that great!

Augmented reality on phone have applications in many fields: history education , science or gaming. I exited to see what people will do with AR.js :)

Futures

Browser Support

Demo tested on the following browser setups:

  • Desktop Chrome with webcam and 2 tabs (one for Hero, one for result) (works!)
  • Android native 4.4.2 (doesn't work, doesn't ask for permission to use camera. I see white background and text)
  • Android native 5.0 (doesn't work, doesn't ask for permission, I see white background and text)
  • Chrome on Android 4.4.2 (works!)
  • Chrome on Android 5.0 (doesn't work, asks for permission, I see black background, text and a chart)
  • Safari and Chrome on iOS 8.2 (iPad) (doesn't work, doesn't ask for permission, I see white background and text)
  • Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 (Chrome on Google Pixel phone to view hologram)

Credits: @HelloDeadline, @sorianog

Ideas

FAQ

How small can we print the markers ?

There is no absolute. It is a ratio between the physical size of the marker, and the resolution of the camera image. It is a tradeoff: the larger the camera image, the slower it is running. The larger the camera image, the smaller the marker can be.

How to Run AR.js Locally

To run AR.js locally on your computer, first clone a copy of the repository, and change to the AR.js folder:

git clone git@github.com:jeromeetienne/AR.js.git
cd AR.js

After that, serve the files using a static http server. I use a simple command line http server called http-server. This can be installed using npm:

npm install -g http-server

to start the http-server, simply run:

http-server

Can't access user media error

On mobile, accessing the camera using getUserMedia requires that you have a secure HTTPS connection to the server. To do this, you will need to generate a certificate by running:

openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -new -nodes -x509 -days 3650 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem

This will generate two files: key.pem and cert.pem.

You then run the server with the -S to enable SSL and -C for your certificate files:

http-server -S -C cert.pem -o

Alternatively, you can deploy to github pages which by default, is served using HTTPS. This avoids having to configure a SSL server.

Also working from localhost, you can avoid having to use HTTPS since localhost is assumed secured.

Thanks to @mritzco for configuration directions.

How To Release ?

# replace REVISION to the proper version
atom three.js/threex-artoolkitcontext.js package.json

# Rebuild a-frame and webvr-polyfill
(cd aframe && make minify) && (cd webvr-polyfill && make minify)

# Commit everything
git add . && git commit -a -m 'Last commit before release'

# tag the release
git tag 1.0.0

# push the tag on github
git push origin --tags

# update npm package.json
npm publish

# update the a-frame codepen
open "https://codepen.io/jeromeetienne/pen/mRqqzb?editors=1000#0"