By: Lindsay Young
In the past few months, we’ve seen some cool projects built with ARKit and our Unity Maps SDK. We’ve been experimenting ourselves with new Unity and ARKit libraries that make it easier for mobile developers to build Mapbox services into their AR apps, whether they are developing in Unity or natively.
With the launch date of iOS 11 announced, we thought it’d be fun to pull together our favorite demos and hacks as of late. Here’s some inspiration for what’s possible with Mapbox and ARKit:
Our Unity team made a timelapse of the fog rolling over Twin Peaks in San Francisco. Using ARKit, we displayed that same model over a coffee table in our office.
Our engineer Jesse Bounds prepared for the latest season of Game of Thrones by building this directions-following dragon with ARKit and our Directions API.
Jesse also made this tutorial for visualizing extruded terrain combining our map imagery with Unity and ARKit.
Adam Debreczeni shared his bike route visualized with a combination of our Maps Unity SDK, Strava, and ARKit. This is probably the coolest way to brag to your friends about your outdoor activities.
My bike ride in AR. (Unity + ARKit + Mapbox + Strava) https://t.co/g2uVwVlM3h
— @heyadam
Aaron Ng built a 3D map of Downtown LA to visualize his FourSquare check-ins on the Fourth of July with ARKit + Unity + Mapbox + Swarm.
Downtown LA. My July 4th weekend FourSquare checkins visualized in AR. (ARKit + Unity + Mapbox + Swarm) https://t.co/1Gddt3i6kP
Here’s another gem from our Unity team toying with each other’s weekend hacks. Crabs just aren’t meant to be pets.
@davidrhodester @Mapbox @davidrhodester put your crab in #ARKit ! Now you can walk around to control your own Kaiju. #madewithunity #mapbox #madewithARKit https://t.co/u30kOCJMJF
— @isiyu
GPSEngine shared a commercial demo that communicates with the company’s existing platform to retrieve live locations of vehicles and historical journeys for replay.
Our very own David Rhodes is always conducting backyard experiments with ARKit and Unity. In the first video, he used our Directions API to route AR cars on a neighborhood street. In the second video, he hacked together a portal-style demo where you can step into a separate dimension based on real world objects.
Using @Mapbox Directions API to route AR cars. #BuiltWithMapbox #ARKit #MadeWithUnity #unity3d https://t.co/R52qiY1l0J
David’s also been working on using real-world building data (footprint geometry + height data) to occlude virtual objects. Typically these objects would appear in front of anything from the video feed because virtual objects have no concept of depth. This approach enables developers to hide virtual objects behind real buildings, for example.
Using @Mapbox building data to occlude AR objects. #BuiltWithMapbox #ARKit #MadeWithUnity #unity3d https://t.co/x1yMYC6Yrw
We can’t wait to see more creativity with ARKit following the iOS 11 announcement. Share what you’re building with us on Twitter with #BuiltWithMapbox.
Keep the ARKit hacks coming was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.