Technologically speaking, AR combines real and virtual, is interactive in real time and is registered in 3D (Ron Azuma, 1997). In other and more common words: AR is a paradigm shift in accessing, understanding and experiencing information as it combines the digital and the real world around us. With Augmented Reality it is possible to make the digital a more natural experience.
As a universal interface technology, AR can make life easier (or more efficient) in almost any market or industry, scenario or at any place. Especially with the high and rising penetration rate of smartphones, an ultimate AR device will be always at hand.
According to Gartner Inc., AR is one of the Top Ten strategic technologies of the future. Aligned by market forecasts saying that the "AR market" could be a 732 million dollar market (Juniper Research) already in the next five years and that the worldwide smartphone sales will exceed 1.1 billion by 2013 (Parks Associates), the whole mobile industry casts an eye on Augmented Reality. We believe that we have just seen the tip of the iceberg until now. Just think about bringing the internet to the real world - isn´t that inspiring and promising enough?
The tracking configuration file (also known as TrackingData file) is used by the WEB SDK to configure the tracking system. It configures the tracking approach to be used (currently only planar markerless tracking also known as feature tracking) and the targets/pattern to be tracked. The format of this file is the exact same format as in other metaio products like metaio PC SDK, metaio Design or the metaio Mobile SDK with the exception that WEB SDK only accepts encrypted tracking configuration files which you can't edit/create by yourself. But the WEB SDK package contains sample tracking configuration files which you can use during your development phase.
Before deployment you will need to purchase the deployment license and metaio will encrypt your specific tracking pattern for you. Please refer to the section: Sending the tracking configuration to metaio for more details on what information is needed during that process.
Before that you should make sure to provide an appropriate configuration. Please refer to the tracking configuration section.
Shockwave 3D: In general you should not use more than 30.000 to 50.000 polygons at the same time. Please refer also to (Bad) Rendering performance/DTS article.
Flash 3D: At the moment Adobe Flash does not provide a native 3D rendering engine. If you want to render 3D elements you will have to use a so called Software renderer. The WEB SDK package e.g. uses the popular Papervision3D engine (http://code.google.com/p/papervision3d/). Due to the restriction to a software renderer polygon count is very limited. We suggest to use not more than approx. 1000 polygons at the same time.
w3d supports both:
Although Bone-animation gives you lots of possibilities in creating nice animations, you have to be aware that most exporters do not support much more than the "basic"-animation stuff. So e.g. effectors, constraints or special attributes will most likely not make their way into the final w3d-file. Be sure to check your that your animations can be exported, before you spend too much time on animating a rigg, that has to be rebuilt.
Yes, that's possible. Therefore you have to export your movie as a flv-file. This movie-format supports transparency and can be used as a texture for 3d-models in Shockwave.
In metaio Design you can use all cameras supporting Windows DirectShow (most current webcams that are connected via USB/!FireWire do support this). Also DirectShow compatible framegrabber-cards can be used as well as most via FireWire connectedDV-cams.
metaio Design supports two different render modes : DirectX and OpenGLTo switch between those two options open View -> Renderer in the main-toolbar.
The license is bound to the PC where you first install metaio Design. If you need to migrate the license at some point you need to send a request to sales@metaio.com.
The maximum number of polygons that all models within one scene may have is strongly dependent on your hardware.
The better your graphics card is the more polygons can be rendered simultaneously, wherelse the storage size determins how many polygons the whole scene may have.
However on an average uptodate consumer PC you should be able to work with between 100.000 to 300.000 polygons.
To verify if your marker is suited for markerless tracking use the “Quality check”-button in the Configuration tool for planar markerless tracking (That's the red-blue-green-bar-symbol).
If the rating is too low you might want to use a different image or alter the one you already use. Another possibility is to define a smaller area (but not too small) inside the pattern and letting the system search only for that region. This usally also increases chances of a correct tracking.
Click “create Patch” or “edit Patch” (the two buttons next ro the quality check-button) and then click “Edit regions”(only possible if an image has been defined in advance). Then draw a rectangular region into your pattern that you’d like to limit the tracking to.
Then check the tracking-quality again. Either with the quality-check or directly in metaio Design.
We currently support the two major platforms iOS & Android. For each Platform the metaio Mobile SDK offers the same functionality and behavior. This makes it easy to develop on one platform and later one port your application to a different platform.
metaio Mobile SDK support OBJ and MD2 file formats.
