ARKit vs ARCore

Today almost everyone heard about virtual reality (VR)and augmented reality (AR). While these words remind many people of entertainments and video games, the terms start to gain popularity in the spheres of business, marketing, etc. Not so long ago Apple and Google presented their AR frameworks ARKit and ARCore for creating augmented reality applications. So, now let’s figure out which one is better.

To begin with, it should be noticed that both of these frameworks are very strong. It goes without saying that it’s very early to say about a leader but, nevertheless, there are some advantages of each framework. For example, ARKit is better at identifying the position of a person’s phone in 3D space, while ARCore has more reliable tracking recovery and succeeds in mapping.

Talking about hardware and accessibility, here come several difficulties. Apple delivered iOS 11 to all iPhone users, which made ARKit support available for every user, whereas Google may have some problems with spreading ARCore due to the fact that it will take much time for Google to create an update for using ARCore since it should cooperate with devices manufacturers to integrate. Moreover, Apple introduced its new iPhone X with a depth-sensing front camera which makes the spreading of AR on iOS platform easier and quicker.

What concerns software requirements, ARKit and ARCore are mostly the same. They both work with Java/OpenGL, Unity and Unreal. Besides they are based on environmental understanding, motion sensors and light detection.

To make a conclusion, it should be said one more time that for today there’s no obvious winner as far as both ARKit and ARCore have some advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, the sphere of AR is pretty young, so it has some particularities with its embedding and spreading. So, only time will show us the winner of this battle!