Augmented web

Last updated January 13, 2022

The Augmented Web is a combination of HTML5, Web Audio, WebGL, and WebRTC that improves the experience of users on existing pages on the web.^[1] From 2020s more known as web-based Augmented Reality or WebAR, which is about the use of augmented reality elements in browsers.

Features

Browser augmented reality for smartphones has a number of features that distinguish it from similar content in special apps.

No special applications are needed for Web AR. A regular browser is enough. And it can run to a certain extent on most browsers.
It is easy to set up marketing analytics. By connecting the website to services that collect statistics, it is convenient to receive geographic coordinates, demographic characteristics and other information about users.
Ability to add a CTA button. It is extremely important for marketing websites to place it so that the user can add contact information or place an order after considering the offer.
Rich content. Browser augmented reality for tablets and smartphones supports 2D and 3D graphics, animation and other formats.
Image marker tracking. If a QR code is selected as an activator for an AR element or just a picture on a flat surface, the device can easily read it.
Various activation ways. Web AR can be marker and markerless, attached to geolocation, it can also be hidden in a direct link.
Game content. Even simple games with simple mechanics, transferred into augmented reality, can delight the website visitor.
Cross-platform. You can view content that complements our usual reality using any modern smartphone model.^[3]

Limitations

Performance is simply better on an app, where there's capacity for more memory and therefore better visuals, better animations and better interactivity will be not in WebAR experience.
One of WebAR's challenges is the limit of your operating system's web browser – there's only so much memory a web page can have, which has a knock-on effect on the visual and performance quality.
A web page can only have access to certain parts of the device you're using, whereas a native app can access all of a device's capabilities. Meaning if you want the convenience of WebAR, you need to be thinking of simple but effective experiences instead.
Compatibility. Not every mobile device has special sensors. And some browsers on smartphones do not have Sensors API. It is also difficult to control compatibility since users have a special platform to leave feedback.
Limited access to AR-enabled cameras. Due to the features of such cameras, calculations are performed over the operating system. This can lead to slow down when loading content.

Implementation

Browser support is evolving quickly and can best be monitored using services like Can I Use.^[4]
Since this is a web application, there are platforms that support the creation of WebAR that are similar to normal web development platforms. Something which enables the creation of 3D assets and environments using a web framework that looks similar to HTML. Applications (like for example – A-Frame) are supported by 8th Wall, which is by the end of 2021 the leading SLAM tracking SDK for WebAR on the market.
WebAR is currently limited mostly by the browser – so how much the technology will develop rather depends on what the big players like Google and Apple develop. For the iOS devices users, Apple developed AR Quick Look, an extension that enables users to use ARKit on the web. For Android devices your browser should support WebXR, an API that allows users to view AR/VR content without installing extra plugins or software, and have AR Core installed.
There are many tools and frameworks that help developers in expanding the immersive web with WebAR. For example, AR.js is an open-source library for Augmented Reality on the Web for improved WebAR performance on smartphones that includes marker-based technology (simplified QR-codes) and location-based AR. Apple at the WWDC Conference 2018, announced that it has developed a new file format, working together with Pixar, called USDZ Universal. This file will allow developers to create 3d models for augmented reality. USDZ format was created by Apple together with Pixar Animation Studio and allowed developers to create 3D models for AR.^[5]

Industries

Where WebAR can be used from virtual guides, which can help students navigate through campus to virtual film posters:

E-commerce and Advertising.
Education.
Entertainment.
Business.
Fashion.

Examples

Promotion of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for which 8th Wall developed the AR platform that made this interactive WebAR promoting the Sony animated smash hit. Everyone can invite teenage Spiderman/Miles Morales into their homes for some one-on-one interaction, take pictures and share the experience with friends. Sony Pictures included the QR code to launch this WebAR site in print promotions for the movie. Also in 2017 the advertising of Jumanji: The Next Level gave us the world's first WebAR activation with usage of Amazon Lex to power voice interaction (the same tool that powers Amazon Alexa), the experience sends users on a wild 3D adventure into the world of Jumanji! This was a collaboration between Sony Pictures and Trigger - The Mixed Reality Agency. The WebAR technology is powered by 8th Wall. And you can check it via the link^[6] to the official YouTube recording of the experience.
RPR & Microsoft's Holographic Retail Platform, where Web AR brings a new twist to online shopping by allowing users to interact with 3D holographic images of models right from their smartphones’ browsers. This experience is designed to increase buyer confidence and reduce clothing returns, which are two of the greatest challenges to purchasing clothing online.
Digital Porsche Brand Academy was developed by the Team of svarmony Technologies GmbH and it is the first-to-market training tool that uses augmented reality to provide Porsche employees an immersive experience learning about the company's history and values. The star of this WebAR experience is an animated avatar that serves as a tour guide for Porsche's past, present, and future. Employees can explore realistically animated Porsche-locations, take a ride in a virtual Porsche, help assemble a car, and test Porsche knowledge via a quiz. The Digital Porsche Brand Academy is a great starter kit for employees to establish a relationship with the brand and align with the company's plans.

Future

Taking AR to the web may be the best option to grant this technology a future. By freeing smartphone users from having to install numerous apps, WebAR can make Augmented Reality far more accessible for them and more beneficial for business. The further development of the WebAR can be accelerated by the widespread social acceptance of the headsets that can give the whole other level of AR experience. This means instant access to the information when the contextually relevant content is appearing as the person's real background is changing.^[5]

Related Research Articles

Augmented reality View of the real world with computer-generated supplementary features

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive, or destructive. This experience is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. In this way, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user's real-world environment with a simulated one. Augmented reality is related to two largely synonymous terms: mixed reality and computer-mediated reality.

Proximity marketing is the localized wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place. Transmissions can be received by individuals in that location who wish to receive them and have the necessary equipment to do so.

Augmented learning is an on-demand learning technique where the environment adapts to the learner. By providing remediation on-demand, learners can gain greater understanding of a topic while stimulating discovery and learning.

Wikitude is a mobile augmented reality (AR) technology provider based in Salzburg, Austria. Founded in 2008, Wikitude initially focused on providing location-based augmented reality experiences through the Wikitude World Browser App. In 2012, the company restructured its proposition by launching the Wikitude SDK, a development framework utilizing image recognition and tracking, and geolocation technologies.

Nokia Point & Find is a mobile application, which lets you point your Nokia smartphone camera at objects and images you want to know more about, to find more information. It is a visual search technology that uses the phone's camera to obtain information by using image recognition to identify objects, images and places in the physical world in real-time. For example, one can use the application to find information on movies by pointing the camera at movie posters and then view reviews, or find tickets at nearby theaters. Its uses include city landmark tagging, barcode scanning for comparison shopping and 2D barcode scanning and finding information related to products and services based on content provided by third party publishers.

Layar was a Dutch company based in Amsterdam, founded in 2009 by Raimo van der Klein, Claire Boonstra and Maarten Lens-FitzGerald. They created a mobile browser app called Layar. The browser allowed users to find various items based upon augmented reality technology.

Junaio was an Augmented Reality browser designed for 3G and 4G mobile devices. It was developed by Munich-based company Metaio GmbH. It provided a Creator application and an API for developers and content providers to generate mobile Augmented Reality experiences for end-users. The smartphone app, for Android and iPhone platforms, and API were free to use.

Mobile Business Intelligence is defined as “Mobile BI is a system comprising both technical and organizational elements that present historical and/or real-time information to its users for analysis on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, to enable effective decision-making and management support, for the overall purpose of increasing firm performance.”. Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments or associated costs and incomes.

Aurasma was Autonomy's augmented reality platform. It was available as a software development kit or as a free app for iOS- and Android-based mobile devices. Aurasma's image recognition technology used a smartphone's or tablet's camera to recognize real world images, augmenting physical content with animations, videos, 3D models and/or web pages.

An app store is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the computer itself. Complex software designed for use on a personal computer, for example, may have a related app designed for use on a mobile device. Today apps are normally designed to run on a specific operating system—such as the contemporary iOS, macOS, Windows or Android—but in the past mobile carriers had their own portals for apps and related media content.

Metaio was a privately held Augmented Reality (AR) company that developed software technology and provided augmented reality solutions. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, with subsidiaries in San Francisco, California, New York City, New York and Dallas, Texas, metaio provided a software development kit (SDK) for programming PC, web, mobile and custom offline augmented reality applications. Additionally, Metaio was the creator of Junaio, a free mobile AR browser available for Android and iOS devices. On 28 May 2015 it was reported that Metaio GmbH was acquired by Apple Inc for an undisclosed sum.

Screen-Smart Device Interaction (SSI) is fairly new technology developed as a sub-branch of Digital Signage.

Sketchfab is a platform to publish, share, discover, buy and sell 3D, VR and AR content. It provides a viewer based on the WebGL and WebXR technologies that allows users to display 3D models on the web, to be viewed on any mobile browser, desktop browser or Virtual Reality headset.

Far-Play is a software platform developed at the University of Alberta, for creating location-based, scavenger-hunt style games which use the GPS and web-connectivity features of a player's smartphone. According to the development team, "our long-term objective is to develop a general framework that supports the implementation of AARGs that are fun to play and also educational". It utilizes Layar, an augmented reality smartphone application, QR codes located at particular real-world sites, or a phone's web browser, to facilitate games which require players to be in close physical proximity to predefined "nodes". A node, referred to by the developers as a Virtual Point of Interest (vPOI), is a point in space defined by a set of map coordinates; fAR-Play uses the GPS function of a player's smartphone—or, for indoor games, which are not easily tracked by GPS satellites, specially-created QR codes—to confirm that they are adequately near a given node. Once a player is within a node's proximity, Layar's various augmented reality features can be utilized to display a range of extra content overlaid upon the physical play-space or launch another application for extra functionality.

Tango was an augmented reality computing platform, developed and authored by the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP), a skunkworks division of Google. It used computer vision to enable mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to detect their position relative to the world around them without using GPS or other external signals. This allowed application developers to create user experiences that include indoor navigation, 3D mapping, physical space measurement, environmental recognition, augmented reality, and windows into a virtual world.

Kubity Cloud-based 3D communication tool

Kubity is a cloud-based 3D communication tool that works on desktop computers, the web, smartphones, tablets, augmented reality gear, and virtual reality glasses. Kubity is powered by several proprietary 3D processing engines including "Paragone" and "Etna" that prepare the 3D file for transfer over mobile devices.

A progressive web application (PWA), commonly known as a progressive web app, is a type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and WebAssembly. It is intended to work on any platform that uses a standards-compliant browser, including both desktop and mobile devices.

GoMeta is an American software company headquartered in San Diego. The company was founded by Dmitry Shapiro, Sean Thielen, and Jonathan Miller in September 2016. GoMeta's Koji platform lets non-technical individuals create and publish mini apps, progressive web applications that run on all devices and operating systems, and embed inside of social networks and messengers.

Commercial augmented reality (CAR) describes augmented reality (AR) applications that support various B2B (Business-to-Business) and B2C (Business-to-Consumer) commercial activities, particularly for the retail industry. The use of CAR started in 2010 with virtual dressing rooms for E-commerce.

References

↑ . "Augmented Web Related Standards". W3C. Retrieved Dec 15, 2012.
↑ . "Augmented Web Demos". W3C. Retrieved Dec 15, 2012.
↑ . "WebAR – augmented reality in browser". Look in VR. Retrieved Oct 19, 2020.
↑ . "caniuse.com". caniuse.com. Retrieved Dec 15, 2012.
1 2 . "WebAR: How It's Changing the Future of Augmented Reality". Perfectial.
↑ "Jumanji: The Next Level - WebAR Experience!". 8th Wall.

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Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
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[Related_Standards-1] . "Augmented Web Related Standards". W3C. Retrieved Dec 15, 2012.

[W3C_Community_Group-2] . "Augmented Web Demos". W3C. Retrieved Dec 15, 2012.

[WebAR_–_augmented_reality_in_browser-3] . "WebAR – augmented reality in browser". Look in VR. Retrieved Oct 19, 2020.

[caniuse.com-4] . "caniuse.com". caniuse.com. Retrieved Dec 15, 2012.

[WebAR:_How_It’s_Changing_the_Future_of_Augmented_Reality-5] 1 2 . "WebAR: How It's Changing the Future of Augmented Reality". Perfectial.

[Jumanji:_The_Next_Level_-_WebAR_Experience!-6] "Jumanji: The Next Level - WebAR Experience!". 8th Wall.

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