Getting and using Vuforia
Now that you have Unity up and running on your development machine, the next step is to get the AR SDK imported into your Unity project. This section describes the Vuforia toolkit. If you do not want to use Vuforia, you can skip to the next section on getting and using ARToolkit.
Vuforia with Unity supports building AR applications for various platforms, including:
- Android smartphones and tablets, using Windows or macOS
- iOS iPhones and iPads, using macOS only
- Windows 10 devices, including HoloLens, via UWP-Universal Windows Platform
The current list of devices supported can be found at https://www.vuforia.com/Devices.
In deciding to use Vuforia, please be aware of its licensing terms and pricing policy. This is commercial software. It is free to download and develop in your projects, but there are usage and distribution limitations in the free version (for example, up to 1,000 cloud recognition images per month), and your app will display a Vuforia logo watermark in the corner of the screen. For larger volume distribution of your app, you will need to pay a license fee. At the time of writing this, this is $499 one-time fee per app, or $99 monthly for apps that use cloud-based storage and recognition.
To begin, open a project in Unity. As described in detail earlier in this chapter, if you want to start a new project, take the following steps:
- Open Unity and click New on the startup dialog box.
- Give the project a name and location.
- Ensure 3D is selected and click Create Project.
Or, if you already have Unity open, you can add a new scene to an existing project by going to the Main Menu, and clicking File | New Scene (or pressing Ctrl + N on Windows or Command + N on macOS).