Apple’s ARKit framework is slowly but surely emerging as one of the best new features in iOS 11. Many developers have built everything from virtual tape measures and Minecraft to ballerinas made out of wood dancing on floors. It’s remarkable that most of the ARKit demos we’ve seen so far were built in a matter of hours or days, not weeks or months.
Today, we want to highlight a few additional ARKit demos that we’ve curated. These videos highlight ARKit’s incredibly reliable and accurate tracking features that don’t require any special hardware beyond the sensors and the camera already present in your iPhone or iPad.
First up, we have this demo showing jumping between different planes.
ARKit automatically detects horizontal surfaces, called planes, such as tables and floors, and can track and place objects on smaller feature points as well. This is all handled automatically, with uncanny precision, using only data from your iOS device’s camera and sensors.
The following pair of videos demonstrate a virtual character interacting with the environment by autonomously jumping a flight of stairs and between different surfaces of the real world.
Interactions between virtual objects and real people are easy as a pie with ARKit.
The Tracking Monster demo, seen below, uses ARKit and the Unity engine to track a monster with the dynamically updated shadows based on changing lighting conditions in the real world.
Maze games will never be the same!
Speaking of games, here’s Tic-Tac-Tio in augmented reality, developed By Bjarne Lundgren.
And last but not least, Mixed Reality Design posted the following example of an augmented reality app depicting an alien vessel hovering ominously above a construction site.
Hollywood will soon invade your smartglasses airspace → fact https://t.co/jLYm1YcBW2 pic.twitter.com/to2qqfFIVr
— Mixed Reality Design (@MixedrealityD) July 4, 2017
Head over to the Mixed Reality Design’s Twitter account for more AR examples like this.
While it’s not entirely clear that this particular demo uses ARKit, it does highlight the possibilities for AR movie trailers that could be coming soon to your phone.
Be sure to check out other interesting ARKit apps and demos, including an upcoming furniture-ordering app from Ikea, a measuring tape that blew up on the web, an ARKit-powered VR mode in Maps, an inter-dimensional portal and much more.
“I think there is a gigantic runway that we have here with the iPhone and the iPad,” Apple executive Greg Joswiak said of ARKit in a recent interview with The Australian. “The fact we have a billion of these devices out there is quite an opportunity for developers.”
How do you like these ARKit demos? Which one is your favorite, and why? Chime in with your thoughts and observations in the comments section below.