Anyone with a phone and a computer can augment the world with Stardust SDK
Everyone can get value from visual positioning technology and its applications, ranging from AR navigation to spatial information, from persistent to world-scale AR, from single to multiplayer shared AR.
Ok let’s start with the geeky basics: SDK stands for software development kit, a tool that developers use to code new software such as apps, websites, games, etc. But if none of those terms are familiar, no worry, we’ve got you covered with 2 other platforms: a native iOS or Android app and a website. To access them, you’ll need to create a free account here. That will allow you to experience hyper-accurate, shared, persistent and world-scale AR — quite an adventure!
The phone part: iOS and Android native apps
The public demo app is available on iOS & Android and consists of2 main functions: mapping and relocating to experience world-scale AR. Most mid to high-range phones are supported, but we can’t go through the entire list. If your device supported ARkit or ARcore, it should work. We’re not yet supporting web-AR (plans for 2022).
Mapping
Stating the obvious of the human eye, if you’ve never been to a place, you can’t recognize it. Mapping plays a similar role, the camera captures frames and sends them to our cloud. THIS STEP IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE as a bad mapping will affect the quality of both relocation and 3D reconstruction. We’ve detailed mapping strategies according to different environments in this document (highly recommended to be read before mapping). Mapping is also the moment you can augment your physical space with content that will be anchored a the precise location you’ve created it. Lastly, adding navigation targets is also doable while mapping. This means you can step up an AR navigation project within few minutes.
Relocating, ultra-accurately
We all know the GPS limitations in terms of accuracy (~5m in best cases). Camera-based visual positioning brings down the accuracy to few centimeters, based on the environment and quality of mapping. We’ve listed in another article some of the possible applications, but for now we just want to evaluate the precision of StardustSDK’s relocation functions. If enough viewpoints have been covered during the mapping, StardustSDK will extrapolate any attempt to relocate within that mapped space. The tech works like an eye-blink: “locate me” button sends a frame to the cloud which will return to the phone its ultra-precise position and orientation. In other words, the phone “knows” exactly where it is. You’ll get an email notification when the map is ready to be used in the relocation scene. It usually takes only a few minutes to proceed. If you haven’t named your map, we’ll assign a random name.
Enjoy content or update your map
Relocating is always the first step before enjoying AR content. Indeed, 3D content anchored while mapping is only displayed after relocating. The same goes for navigation, destinations are inaccessible if you haven’t relocated yet. Lastly, map updates can be done after relocation - they are necessary for changing environments such as crowded places or simply when the light or weather drastically changed. A map update simply takes more frames (pictures) of a mapped place to feed the model with more data, retains the new dataset and offers better accuracy.
The computer part: a website to start with 3D
Available on desktop and laptop, the dashboard and online editor (or studio) are key elements of the platform, especially for remote teams. 3D content is synchronised between the app and the website, making it a great tool for remote and on-site collaboration. We’ve even played with real-time multi-user support :)
Dashboard & CMS
The dashboard brings together information about your maps & their status but is also the tool to create new content can. At this stage, it’s still a bit geeky, for example in terms of supported formats for 3D content. We’ll integrate 3D content databases such as Sketchfab in the future to make it easier, for now you’ll have to manually update content (you can already visualize it). By default, there is always a few public 3D models. You can also check from here if you have maps or pictures left within your pricing tier, eventually upgrading it when necessary. Analytics will definitely come too, just keeping a bit of work for 2022!
Studio
This is a lot of fun! In parallel to the first map training (relocation), we’re also launching another machine learning model that extracts a 3D structure, represented by dense point clouds. From the dashboard, click on the magnifying glass icon to open the editor. You’ll recognize your mapped space and content added while mapping. If you’ve uploaded new content, you can also add it to your scene, scale it, position it, oriente it. You can also add new navigation targets as long as they are in a navigable area. The studio (or editor) is constantly evolving to allow non-technical teams to augment the world, eventually we’ll try to make it as easy to use as a PPT or Wix website.
The app, dashboard and studio are parts of the whole platform as they interact to offer new creative tools. If you describe yourself as a creator, we hope to see you on board soon and augment the world with us :)
Our first objective is to support our developer community that has been very helpful to get us where we are. Yet we know not everyone has the skills to build a 3D/AR project from scratch on Unity3D, so we’re pushing hard to make hard things simple for everyone. Welcome to the Digital Twin!
Thanks
The Neogoma team
