3 Augmented Reality Tutorials

The hype surrounding augmented reality has started to die down, but that’s no reason you shouldn’t learn how to build your own AR applications. There are now a variety of tools to give users of varying skill levels the ability to create AR tools of their own. Here are three tutorials with different barriers to entry.

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Layar Tutorial

Layar is a popular augmented reality browser for both Android and iOS, and one of the easiest ways to get started with AR. Layar has a beginner’s tutorial on its wiki.

These are the steps:

1. Sign up to be a developer
2. Define and edit a layer on the publishing site
3. Prepare the database
4. Gather POIs information
5. Build a web service
6. Test the layer
7. Publish the layer

Doesn’t sound so hard, does it?

You can also check out this Layar tutorial, but the link doesn’t seem to be working just now.

Integrating Wikitude with WordPress Tutorial

Looking for something easier? Use WordPress? The plugin WP-Geo enables you to display geotagged WordPress posts in the AR browser Wikitude. And there’s a tutorial on doing just that at ihrwebprofi.at. Here’s what you need:

• A self-hosted WordPress installation
• PHP5 (It might work with PHP4, but hasn’t been tested)
• A Facebook, Twitter, Google or Yahoo! account
• A compatible smartphone for testing and display

If you still prefer Layar, and want something easy, check out Hoppala. Last summer, we called Hoppala the WordPress of augmented reality. It’s designed to give non-technical users an easy way to get started with Layar.

flARToolkit Tutorial

Looks for something more challenging? flARToolkit is a Flash-based augmented reality toolkit based on ARToolKit. It was ported to Flash from C by saqoosha. Using it, you’ll be able to create AR applications with your own graphics and animation.

Here’s a beginner’s guide at ActiveTuts.

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