IDK if this is the proper forum for it… and this isn’t really about OF, but I figured someone here could know something useful about this issue
I’ve got a new Flash project here, that might require tracking a brand logo instead of a conventional marker… and if that wasn’t hard enough, the ‘marker’ (logo) is printed on a curved surface…
I’m quite sure FLARToolkit / Manager, which is kind of the ‘default’ AR solution in Flash, doesn’t really handle such things easily…
IT could be possible to generate a marker from the logo (with the marker generator AIR app that comes with it), but it’s questionable if the app would pick it up, since it’s not contained in a square…
Apart from that, we did some tests and learned that FLAR’s tracking is really poor on curved surfaces… it can’t really decide on the node’s orientation… and the result is shakiness all around…
So, I guess my question is about other solutions for AR that might work under these conditions… be it a commercial solution or not… (I does have to work with Flash though, be it as a ported version, or some kind of compiled swc library a la Alchemy… if people are already using that)
This ARToolWorks thing looks interesting… they have some stuff there that isn’t in the open source version of FLARtoolkit…
Unity is also an interesting idea… the only problem there is that we need massive compatibility for this project… and I think making people download a new web player could turn most of the potential users off…
So, I guess we’re stuck with Flash… which is not so bad since it’s the platform I’m most at home with, we just gotta find a way to make it work.
Hi, I’m working on a large Flash AR project as well and have been playing with a few bits and pieces of the past few months. The solution I ended up going with was FLARManager using FLARToolkit (which is licensed from ARToolworks). This was because I needed robust multi-marker tracking on various boards with markers on.
However after working on the project for a month or so, Total Immersion released their FLARToolkit competitor. It’s fantastic and doesn’t even have to use the regular markers, you can set it to use and photograph. With the demo I was also able to bend and fold the paper that the page was printed on and still get ultra smooth tracking and a high frame-rate.
It doesn’t seem to work well if you want multiple markers but if you want a really good single marker detection I would suggest looking in to it. There’s a licensing cost just like FLARToolkit but you need to email so I’m not exactly sure what it is.