Fundamentals of AR-driven Unity applications

The EasyAR Sense Unity plugin package provides fundamental functionalities for developing AR applications in Unity. This article introduces the basic knowledge and components required for AR application development in Unity.

Before you begin

• Understand AR-driven 3D rendering.

Unity AR application development fundamentals

First, you need to understand which Unity versions and platforms are compatible with EasyAR:

• Unity compatibility

In Unity, the typical workflow of AR applications is similar to general AR applications, but uses the AR Session component to manage camera data acquisition, tracker operation, and virtual content rendering.

flowchart TD
  subgraph AR
    CameraDevice[Camera Device]
    Tracker[Tracker]
    Renderer[Renderer]

    CameraDevice -->|Image Frame| Tracker
    Tracker -->|Image Frame + Tracked Pose| Renderer
  end
  
  subgraph unity["Unity AR"]
    B[Session]
    C([Camera])
    O([Origin])
    T([Target])
    B -- transform --> C
    B -- transform --> O
    B -- transform --> T
    
    classDef Unity fill:#6e6ce6,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    class B Unity
    class C Unity
    class O Unity
    class T Unity
  end
  
  CameraDevice -..- B
  Tracker -..- B
  Renderer -..- C
  Renderer -..- O
  Renderer -..- T

You'll start with these fundamental components to gradually understand the basics of AR applications in Unity:

• AR Session
• Camera
• XR Origin
• Target

Then you need to understand center mode, which is a key concept for understanding how EasyAR controls Unity component behaviors:

• Center mode

If you have experience with Unity XR frameworks (such as AR Foundation), you might want to learn how to use these features when developing EasyAR applications:

• Unity XR framework
• AR Foundation

If you've completed AR development in the Unity Editor, you might want to understand how to configure the Unity project before building for target devices:

• Player configuration
• EasyAR configuration

Combining these fundamentals, you can refer to the following workflow example to practice what you've learned:

• Workflow_ARSession sample

Next steps

After mastering the fundamentals of Unity AR application development, you still need to continue learning more features and components required for AR development:

• Understand frame source
• Understand Unity AR simulation and utilize it during development
• Understand diagnostic features and utilize them during development

If you need to run EasyAR applications on head-mounted devices, you also need to:

• Understand XR headset usage