Google launched ARCore to the public making AR experiences available to over 100m Android devices. Apple continues to innovate in this space with new AR features, such as vertical planes and image/marker tracking, being added to ARKit 1.5. React Native developers can now building and distribute cross platform AR apps or add AR features to existing apps using ViroReact. With ViroReact 2.4, we now support ARCore 1.0 and ARKit 1.5 along with some great new features to enable truly immersive AR applications.

Fast, iterative AR development using ViroReact

ViroReact is a developer platform for rapidly building AR/VR applications using React Native. Use a single code base to build and distribute your AR/VR features across iOS and Android. The Viro platform is open source. Developers can get set up and start building apps in under 10 minutes.

1. ARCore 1.0 Support

The Viro platform now supports ARCore 1.0 so you can officially distribute your AR apps to Android users. The ARCore feature set is similar to ARKit 1.0 including horizontal plane detection, cloud points, world tracking and more. You can make rich immersive AR apps by leveraging ViroReact features like 3D Objects, Videos, Sounds, Physics, Particle Effects and ARPortals. See a full list of all ViroReact features by checking out our Documentation.

If you are already developing on Viro, follow the Upgrade Instructions in our release notes to upgrade to ARCore 1.0.

ViroReact 2.4 Release Notes

If you are ready to start building cross platform AR apps for Android, follow our guides and get set up in minutes.

ViroReact Quick Start

2. ARKit 1.5 Support

We also now support ARKit 1.5 developer preview. Get a jump start of building your iOS AR experiences with upcoming features from Apple including:

Vertical plane detection: now you can detect walls in addition to horizontal surfaces.

Marker/Image tracking: Upload any marker or image and track it in the real world.

Dollar Bill Marker Tracking

ARKit 1.5 is currently in developer preview and you will not be able to release your application until it goes live to the public (Spring 2018). Additionally, developers who choose to develop ARKit 1.5 features on ViroReact will not be able to use the iOS testbed app for rapid development and will have to use xCode. But we felt it was important to give you access to these new features so you can get a jump start on your development and be ready for ARKit 1.5 launch.

Read our Enabling ARKit 1.5 Features documentation to get started on ARKit 1.5 development using ViroReact.

3. Physically Based Rendering (PBR)

We added support for PBR models to enable more realistic objects into your scenes. Physically-based rendering, or PBR, is a collection of rendering techniques that produces more realistic lighting results for your scenes by incorporating an advanced model of real-world lights and materials. The theory behind PBR closely matches the physics of real-world lighting and surfaces.

In addition to looking better, PBR offers an artist workflow that’s far more intuitive: lighting and surface materials are based on physical parameters, so things naturally “look right” without having to resort to random tweaks.

See the ViroReact PBR Guide in our documentation for more information. Also, designers, check out our blog post, Asset Pipeline: Exporting PBR Textured 3D Models for AR/VR, for detailed instructions on how to create PBR models.

Start Building Your AR Apps Today!

Get Setup with ViroReact using our Quickstart Guides (Mac/Linux | Windows) Run through our initial Tutorial AR where we go through how to modify the Hello World Scenes. Check out our AR Tutorial Blog Posts and Code Samples on Github that highlight different use cases:

We are excited to see all the great AR applications you build using the Viro platform.