What is Google AR Core? | What are its uses? | How it works

What is ARCore?

ARCore, also known as Google Play Services for AR, is a software development kit developed by Google that allows for augmented reality applications to be built.

ARCore — Google’s AR developer platform — provides simple yet powerful tools to developers for creating AR experiences. ARCore’s features include:

Cloud Anchors

Multi-user, cross-platform experiences across both Android and iOS.

Augmented Faces

Facial tracking with: a 468 point 3D face mesh on devices without a depth sensor.

Environmental HDR

Lighting extension from the real world onto virtual objects to make digital objects appear like they’re actually part of a real-world scene.

What is ARCore and which phones support it?

To use Google Play Services for AR, you need an Android device with:

A Google Account
ARCore-certification
At least 1 GB of free space
At least one AR app installed
An unmetered mobile network

ARCore uses three key technologies to integrate virtual content with the real world as seen through your phone's camera:

Six degrees of freedom allows the phone to understand and track its position relative to the world.
Environmental understanding allows the phone to detect the size and location of flat horizontal surfaces like the ground or a coffee table.
Light estimation allows the phone to estimate the environment's current lighting conditions.

ARCore has been integrated into a multitude of devices.

How to build with ARCore

Understand

In order to augment reality, our devices need to understand it. ARCore provides a variety of tools for understanding objects in the real world. These tools include environmental understanding, which allows devices to detect horizontal and vertical surfaces and planes. They also include motion tracking, which lets phones understand and track their positions relative to the world. As ARCore continues to improve and expand, it will add more contextual and semantic understanding about people, places and things.

Display

Technology such as ARCore’s Light Estimation API lets your digital objects appear realistically — as if they’re actually part of the physical world. And with ARCore Elements — a set of common AR UI components that have been validated with user testing — you can insert AR interactive patterns in your apps without having to reinvent the wheel.

To ensure that you can reach as many users as possible, our Cloud Anchors API allows users to experience AR together — on both Android and iOS.