ARCore vs. ARKit: Which Is Better for Building Augmented Reality Apps?

Apple and Google are squaring off in the race to make augmented reality a truly mainstream feature of mobile app development. Both tech giants have launched augmented reality development platforms in the hopes of cornering what could become a very lucrative market. But what does this mean to your enterprise if you are getting in on the AR act?

At the very least, you will surely be keen to learn how the two platforms compare. Is there a clear leader in the ARCore vs. ARKit competition, or is it purely a question of which mobile OS you plan to target with your app?

With all these tech leaders getting involved, it’s clear that augmented reality is moving from the hype stage into an era of practical application. Google and Apple are both taking it seriously, which likely sets the scene for further AR invention, innovation, and competition going forward. That alone should be sufficient cause for excitement about AR in general, and about ARCore/ARKit in particular.

If you are looking forward to creating your own mobile AR apps or adding AR elements to existing software, the SDKs released by Apple and Google are the ones likely to capture your attention at this point, making the ARCore vs. ARKit debate one worth diving into.

The fundamentals of the two SDKs are very similar, based on the three main requisites for useful augmented reality software: environmental understanding, motion tracking, and light estimation. Both ARKit and ARCore have them implemented, although their approaches differ slightly.

AR requires a device to be capable of tracking its position and orientation in its real-world surroundings. ARKit and ARCore both achieve this through a technology known as visual inertial odometry (VIO). VIO relies on data from a device’s motion sensor and camera to identify spatial movement across six axes. This allows virtual objects to remain accurately positioned in the real world, which is essential for an authentic AR experience.

As well as knowing how to keep virtual objects in place, an augmented reality app must know what it’s placing them on. That’s where plane detection comes in. ARKit and ARCore apps can recognize the difference between horizontal and vertical planes in the device-camera’s field of view, so virtual items can be placed onto surfaces in a realistic way.

In ARCore, this capability is known as environmental understanding, while Apple prefers to call it scene understanding. Beyond the semantic variations though, there is little difference in the principles employed by the two SDKs.

In order for an augmented reality experience to seem authentic, virtual objects should appear subject to the same lighting dynamics as the real-world scene in which they are placed. ARKit and ARCore solve this challenge through a process called lighting estimation, which analyses the ambient light sensed by a device’s camera to apply photorealistic rendering of virtual objects.

Aside from these fundamentals, each of the new AR development platforms has features that make use of proprietary technology. On the iPhone X, it’s the TrueDepth camera, and on Android devices, it’s the technology carried over from Google’s now-defunct Project Tango. It’s too early though to say how much of a difference these features will make in terms of setting one platform apart from the other.

In addition to lighting estimation, motion tracking, and plane detection, any good augmented-reality SDK should have a few additional features integrated. As you might expect, neither ARKit nor ARCore disappoint in this regard. Both platforms meet the following important AR development criteria:

• They incorporate 2D and 3D object tracking, which means that real-world objects can be used as markers to trigger augmented reality experiences.
• They both make clever use of anchors, which prevent AR content from being lost if the device user wanders away from the area mapped by the app.
• They can integrate with third-party tools, including the immensely popular Unity game platform.
• They will support smart glasses once the hardware comes into the market.
• They both support: world and facial tracking; geolocation and SLAM mapping technology; cloud and on-device marker storage.

Naturally, end-users of AR apps will probably not care too much about which development tool has been used, but this comparison is aimed at developers and companies planning to engineer their own apps. If that includes you, then you’ll possibly want to test some apps created with both platforms to get a feel for the experience.

As ARCore has only been out of beta for a short while at the time of writing, you don’t currently have too many options for your try-out, but here are a few apps and demos you should be able to track down and test:

• Google Maps Virtual Position: Lets you explore Google Maps Street View by walking forward in physical space.
• Mobile AR Tourist Information: Point your camera at a sign or landscape feature and get AR tourist information such as walking or driving directions, details of local accommodation, images, and a wealth of other local data.
• Flight Paths: Turn your tabletop into a real-world airport and see real aircraft flight paths floating around you in blue and purple hues.
• Beer Pong AR: Just for a bit of fun, place virtual red cups on your table (or any flat surface) and enjoy a game of beer pong.

Having been around a while longer, and with a larger base of users, ARKit is behind a broad, fast-growing range of apps. As you can see from the chart above, games greatly outnumber all other types of ARKit app currently available, but if you want to explore a cross-section of ARKit’s creative capabilities, you might like to check out those listed below:

• IKEA Place: This is IKEA’s catalog app, which lets you try items from the retailer’s furniture range before you buy, by placing their virtual representations in the real space of your home.
• Fitness AR: If you are a user of the fitness website Strava, you can use the AR Fitness app to visualize your hikes, runs, or bike rides on virtual 3D maps, which are fully detailed, and include the actual terrain and landmarks that you’ll encounter in the real world.
• Dance Reality: This app will teach you how to dance by placing footprints on your floor. Just step where the footprints are, follow the sequence as it changes and you will be dancing with the stars in no time… apparently.
• The Machines: If Beer Pong is a bit too “real world” for you, then try out The Machines. It’s an AR game that generates a battlefield diorama on your living room floor (or anywhere) in which you can go to war with a squad of robot soldiers.

In reality, you are unlikely to find yourself deciding between one SDK and the other purely on their merits, because you cannot build an app for Android users with ARKit, or for iOS owners with ARCore.

Therefore, your options will probably come down to working with both tools, or substituting one of them with a different SDK altogether. That’s unless of course, you choose to develop your app exclusively for one of the two mobile operating systems.

As time goes by and new updates arrive for each platform, we may start to see more of a performance divide. Both tools are in Version 1.0 right now, so it will be interesting to see if future innovations eventually create a significant AR advantage for one tech giant over the other.