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    AR Foundation

    AR Foundation enables you to create multi-platform augmented reality (AR) apps with Unity. In an AR Foundation project, you choose which AR features to enable by adding the corresponding manager components to your scene. When you build and run your app on an AR device, AR Foundation enables these features using the platform's native AR SDK, so you can create once and deploy to the world's leading AR platforms.

    A screenshot from a mobile device shows an interior office environment. Yellow polygons indicate that planes have been detected on the floor, seats, and other surfaces. The user has placed a magenta cube on one of the planes via raycasting.
    The Simple AR sample scene shows you how to get started with plane detection and raycasting

    Tip

    AR Foundation is an important tool for building an AR app with Unity, but your app may require other tools as well. For more information about Unity's AR tools and support, refer to the Augmented reality homepage.

    Required packages

    The AR Foundation package contains interfaces for AR features, but doesn't implement any features itself. To use AR Foundation on a target platform, you also need a separate provider plug-in package for that platform.

    Unity officially supports the following provider plug-ins:

    • Google ARCore XR Plug-in on Android
    • Apple ARKit XR Plug-in on iOS
    • Apple visionOS XR Plug-in on visionOS
    • OpenXR Plug-in on HoloLens 2
    • Unity OpenXR: Meta on Meta Quest
    Important

    AR Foundation will not work on a target platform unless you also install the provider plug-in package for that platform. Refer to Install AR Foundation for detailed setup instructions.

    Features

    AR Foundation supports the following features:

    Feature Description
    Session Enable, disable, and configure AR on the target platform.
    Device tracking Track the device's position and rotation in physical space.
    Camera Render images from device cameras and perform light estimation.
    Plane detection Detect and track flat surfaces.
    Image tracking Detect and track 2D images.
    Object tracking Detect and track 3D objects.
    Face tracking Detect and track human faces.
    Body tracking Detect and track a human body.
    Point clouds Detect and track feature points.
    Raycasts Cast rays against tracked items.
    Anchors Track arbitrary points in space.
    Meshing Generate meshes of the environment.
    Environment probes Generate cubemaps of the environment.
    Occlusion Occlude AR content with physical objects and perform human segmentation.
    Participants Track other devices in a shared AR session.

    Platform support

    AR Foundation provider plug-ins rely on platform implementations of AR features, such as Google's ARCore on Android and Apple's ARKit on iOS. Not all features are available on all platforms.

    The following table lists the available features in each Unity-supported provider plug-in:

    Feature ARCore ARKit OpenXR XR Simulation
    Android iOS visionOS Microsoft HoloLens Meta Quest Unity Editor
    Session Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Device tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Camera Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Plane detection Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Image tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Object tracking Yes
    Face tracking Yes Yes
    Body tracking Yes
    Point clouds Yes Yes Yes
    Ray casts Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Anchors Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Meshing Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Environment probes Yes Yes Yes Yes
    Occlusion Yes Yes
    Participants Yes
    Tip

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

    Samples

    For pre-configured sample scenes that demonstrate how to use each feature, check out the AR Foundation Samples GitHub repository.


    Apple and ARKit are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions.

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