Get Ready to Launch Your ARKit App on iOS11

Today Apple announced that iOS 11 will launch on September 19, and with it the official release version of the ARKit framework. Soon developers will be able to publish Unity ARKit apps to the App Store, unlocking hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Since the original announcement of ARKit at WWDC and the launch of our Unity ARKit plugin back in June, we’ve seen an incredible response from the community. We have worked side-by-side with developers, listening and making constant improvements to our plugin based on their feedback. We have been inspired by the apps and experiences that you have started to create. In fact, some apps made with Unity were shown at the Apple Event today, such as Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade by Pixel Toys, an action-packed sci-fi game rendered in the real world.

We’ve also seen hundreds, if not thousands, of Made with Unity ARKit experiments and demos -- here are some of our favorites:

• IKEA’s new AR app -- superimposes furniture into a room, allowing the user to visualize what a new purchase may look like in a user’s home
• TRIXI’s AR version of A-Ha’s “Take on Me” -- sketched music video
• Anki’s Cozmo 4th of July celebration -- created by Weiden + Kennedy with Unity

This is just the beginning. We know there is a lot more amazing content coming -- here’s a sneak preview of a few Made with Unity ARKit apps, which we expect to launch this fall:

• ARQUA by Cabbibo -- an AR aquarium creation tool produced by Viacom Next
• Walking Dead: Our World by Next Games - location-based AR zombies
• Splitter Critters by RAC7 Games - a puzzle game with some AR-exclusive levels
• Mammoth Mini Golf from Ezone.com -- a game made with ARKit which brings a wacky caveman-themed world of mini-golf right into your home
• GNOG by KO_OP -- a 3D puzzle game set in a world of toys and secrets which transforms your tabletop into a magical toy box, bringing a new level of tactile, physical interaction to its captivating world

ARQUA by Cabbibo

GNOG by KO_OP

 Mammoth Mini Golf by Ezone.com

The Unity ARKit plugin provides developers with friendly access to ARKit’s features: motion tracking, live video rendering, plane finding and hit-testing, ambient light estimation, raw point cloud data, and more. There are also convenient Unity components to simplify the creation of new AR apps, or easy integration of AR features in existing Unity projects.

Unity’s ARKit Plugin has an exclusive capability that will save developers hours of development time: the Unity ARKit Remote. This tool speeds up iteration by allowing you to make changes to the scene and debug scripts in the Unity Editor, in real-time, without having to build to the device.

Our plugin now supports access to the following new functionalities:

• Light estimation for ambient color temperature, in addition to the ambient intensity
• Specifying your own User Anchors
• Receiving events when the tracking state has changed
• Event notifications for when an AR session is interrupted or resumes

We have included many new examples to help you get up and running on your AR project fast, including:

• Scaled content (imagine a city in your living room)
• Focus Square (a UI element to show where to place objects)
  
• Occlusion (shader and material that will hide virtual objects behind real ones) 
• Shadow (shader and material to ground your virtual object in the real world)

The Unity ARKit Plugin is available now as a package from the Asset Store. It is also available as an open-source repository on BitBucket, where you can join us in making it even better! Head over to the forums to learn how to get started or if you have any questions.

System Requirements

Please see the README.md file in the bitbucket repository for complete details. Note that the ARKit Plugin requires:

• Unity 5.6.2 or later (Unity 2017.1 or later recommended)
• iOS 11 or later (You can sign up for the iOS 11 beta through Apple's website)
• Xcode 9 or later, with iOS SDK that includes the ARKit framework
• iOS device that is supported by the ARKit framework

We can’t wait to see your brand new ARKit apps up on the App Store!