Project 1

For this project, I have made an AR application that uses Vuforia and AR cards to display objects. The objects that were made are a date widget, time to the minute widget, temperature and humidity widget, wind speed and direction widget, and a condition widget with 9 different modes. To use this application you must build the unity project in your choice of environment and run it. Once the application has started, place on of the 5 AR cards that were used in the project to see them thought the camera. All widgets can be viewed at the same time with proper size taken into account. More information on each widget:

• Date widget - Shows the current date in MM/DD/YYYY

• Time widget - Shows the current time to the seconds

• Temperature and Humidity widget - Shows the current temperature and humidity in text and in a 3D aspect

• Wind widget - Shows the wind speed and direction in text and 3D aspect

• condition widget - Shows the 9 possible condition with animations and other 3D aspects

Screenshots:

Writing Prompt:

When looking into the future, I think it is fair to say that AR technology will grow in popularity and usefulness to the normal consumer. When building this project and its components, I had thought to myself whether I would use any of these things I built, and if they would serve me in my daily life. I think the answer comes to the quickness and success rate of the recognition of each card. For example, I will use the watch vs. the smartphone. Although watches were a popular form factor to tell the time for hundreds of years and people realistically never saw them being phased out, the invention of the cell phone / smartphone put that statement into check. People began to use their phone as the time teller, as they always had their cell phone with them already. This was not due to better time accuracy and/or better-looking style, it truly happened because of the convenience of carrying one thing over two.

Now applying this logic to AR glasses, I can see the same thing happening, but AR glasses must overcome one important step first. The smartphone had a bunch of features packed into one as never seen before, it was something new that made the consumer buy it. AR is mostly offering the same thing as a smartphone, but in a different packet. Issues with this would stem from the true practicality of AR vs. a smartphone, and honestly there is not too much of a core difference. You still will have one device on your body, but now in your field of vision. I guess the one plus is that you do not have to pick up your glasses to view them, like a smartphone, since they will be on your face most of the time. For the most part, I think AR will continue to be a niche market for tech enthusiasts.

Some widget from the project may be useful to people who have AR glasses. In my opinion the ones that can be considered useful to me would be the temperature and humidity widget, clock widget, and current condition widget. For the temperature, I think this would be useful because there is nothing that I can view the temperature with-in my field of vision now. So, having that inside AR glasses would be an extra bonus and would not require me to look up an app in my phone. The next widget would be the clock widget. Although I may have my phone that has it on its display, I can permanently have the time in my view. Lastly, the condition widget would be a nice one to have to be able to view what it is like outside in a 3D environment. This would be a feature that would be “new” compared to the other ones since the other ones can be as useful as using text to explain them. Overall, these select few widgets would be useful to the AR glasses that were made from our project.