Camera

On Android XR devices, AR Foundation's Camera subsystem controls passthrough.

This page supplements the AR Foundation Camera manual. The following sections only contain information about APIs where Google's Android XR runtime exhibits platform-specific behavior.

Tip

When developing an AR app, refer to both the AR Foundation documentation as well as the required packages for each platform you support.

Optional feature support

Android XR implements the following optional features of AR Foundation's XRCameraSubsystem:

Feature	Descriptor Property	Supported
Brightness	supportsAverageBrightness	Yes
Color temperature	supportsAverageColorTemperature	Yes
Color correction	supportsColorCorrection	Yes
Display matrix	supportsDisplayMatrix
Projection matrix	supportsProjectionMatrix
Timestamp	supportsTimestamp
Camera configuration	supportsCameraConfigurations
Camera image	supportsCameraImage
Average intensity in lumens	supportsAverageIntensityInLumens	Yes
Focus modes	supportsFocusModes
Face tracking ambient intensity light estimation	supportsFaceTrackingAmbientIntensityLightEstimation
Face tracking HDR light estimation	supportsFaceTrackingHDRLightEstimation
World tracking ambient intensity light estimation	supportsWorldTrackingAmbientIntensityLightEstimation	Yes
World tracking HDR light estimation	supportsWorldTrackingHDRLightEstimation	Yes
Camera grain	supportsCameraGrain
Image stabilization	supportsImageStabilization
Exif data	supportsExifData

Note

Refer to AR Foundation Camera platform support for more information on the optional features of the camera subsystem.

Passthrough

The passthrough camera captures real-time images of the external environment to provide the user with a view of their surroundings while wearing a headset. You can use passthrough to implement immersive mixed-reality experiences, by layering virtual content on top of passthrough images of the surrounding environment.

Enable passthrough

Enable the AR Camera Manager component to enable passthrough, and disable it to disable passthrough.

AR Camera Background component

Android XR passthrough doesn't require the AR Camera Background component. If ARCameraBackground is in your scene, it has no effect on Android XR devices. If your scene only targets Android XR devices, you can safely delete the AR Camera Background component from your XR Origin's Main Camera GameObject.

Configure camera background

Android XR passthrough requires that your Camera has a transparent background. To do this, set your Background Color (Universal Render Pipeline) or Clear Flags (Built-In Render Pipeline) to Solid Color, with the Background alpha channel value set to 0.

Refer to Configure camera background for passthrough to understand how to set your camera background.

Image capture

This package does not support AR Foundation image capture.

Light estimation permissions

AR Foundation's light estimation feature requires an Android system permission on the Android XR runtime. Your user must grant your app the android.permission.SCENE_UNDERSTANDING_COARSE permission before it can track scene data.

To avoid permission-related errors at runtime, set up your scene with the AR Camera Manager component disabled, then enable it only after the required permission is granted.

The following example code demonstrates how to handle required permissions and enable the AR Camera Manager component:

        const string k_Permission = "android.permission.SCENE_UNDERSTANDING_COARSE";

        [SerializeField]
        ARCameraManager m_ARCameraManager;

#if UNITY_ANDROID
        void Start()
        {
            if (!Permission.HasUserAuthorizedPermission(k_Permission))
            {
                var callbacks = new PermissionCallbacks();
                callbacks.PermissionDenied += OnPermissionDenied;
                callbacks.PermissionGranted += OnPermissionGranted;

                Permission.RequestUserPermission(k_Permission, callbacks);
            }
            else
            {
                // enable the AR Camera Manager component if permission is already granted
                m_ARCameraManager.enabled = true;
            }
        }

        void OnPermissionDenied(string permission)
        {
            // handle denied permission
        }

        void OnPermissionGranted(string permission)
        {
            // enable the AR Camera Manager component if permission is already granted
            m_ARCameraManager.enabled = true;
            m_ARCameraManager.subsystem.Stop();
            m_ARCameraManager.subsystem.Start();
        }
#endif // UNITY_ANDROID

For a code sample that involves multiple permissions in a single request, refer to the Permissions page.