Hi Guys,
Could anyone point me in the right direction on how to start with putting together a multi device AR experience please?
What I'm trying to do is build an ARKit app using two different IOS devices that can see the same AR object, at the same point and that they can both interact with it.
Is this possible at all? stumped at the moment 😟
Many thanks in advance.
Paul
Anyone?
You could have the exact same object, doing the same thing on two devices. e.g two player Jenga
The devices could communicate with iOS game comms apis.
Before ArKit - you could have a 3d jenga game
shows the blocks on a 3d table in a 3d room.
On first device, user taps on block, block is highlighted.
device 1 sends event to other device over wifi/bluetooth "Block 3 tapped"
on other device Block 3 gets highlighted.
and so on. Its just two virtual jengas in two 3d rooms on two devices.
Arkit just lets you replace the 3d table with an invisible floor plane and the 3d room background is replaced with a live camera feed.
The clever thing in arkit is as you move the device. it moves the view in 3d space.
our brains make it look like the 3d object isnt moving on the table in front of us.
Two users could point to the same kitchen table in the real world both get the same 3d plane.
You could then build your 3d jenga on that invisible plane.
Both devices are classed as cameras so would have x,y,z in 3d space.
You could send the x,y,z to the other device and show them a spheres on each others devices.
So as one user moves behind the blocks they appear on the other device
but theres no guarantee user 1 will get the same orientation as user 2 when they point at a plane.
look at the demos on youtube and you seen the floor plane appear and disappear.
You could point at the table in front of you or the floor 6feet away.
user 2 could even be pointing at a completely different table in same room, house or anywhere on the planet.
you cant link the table to gps location yet. gps is still too inaccurate for that. iphones cheat and use wifi locations to guess lat,lng
thats why those pokemon were so hard to find!
You may be able to go to a street corner, point at the center, arkit finds a plane, drop a 3d pokemon.
send the lat, lng to another device, other user goes to the lat, lng and points at the center and maybe see something.
but they could also point on the pavement and the pokemon could appear over that.
I've put together a framework for creating software-based game controllers that can do some of what you're describing - providing on-screen controls that send input both locally and remotely between two devices:
https://github.com/robreuss/VirtualGameController
Although primarily designed to enable one iOS device (the controller) to control another (the game), it can also operate in "peer mode", so both devices get input both locally and from the remote device. I've included a couple of sample apps, one SpriteKit and one SceneKit, that demonstrate the peer mode, and provide proof-of-concept for doing the same thing in the ARKit context. The idea would be to run the game on each device and keep them in sync on the basis of controller input. You still need to get the game plane setup as clarsoncloud describes - that's a problem I think a lot of folks are working on.
