Biggest struggles were centered around browser compatibility. Which is still an issue to date with web based AR experiences.
Not every mobile browser has support for the Sensors API or devices are missing certain sensors, which was a huge issue we saw with Android devices, particularly. When releasing an app through a store its possible to control which devices the app can be installed on, but with the web you don’t have that control. Yes its possible add checks within the web-page but then you serve a screen that says “Sorry your device is not supported” it feels like a punch in the gut.
Native apps also have the ability to tap into ARCamera and use that to do the heavy lifting at the OS level instead of competing. What I mean is there are many ways to apply computer vision and SLAM tracking, but with ARKit and ARCore, the native integrations are bundled together and optimized with the OS.⁹
How can WebAR become more competitive?
Currently web browsers don’t have enough access in terms of the AR camera. The AR camera differs from the traditional camera as it handles the augmentation at the OS level and not on-top of it. Current implementations of web based AR requires the calculations to be done on top of the OS causing computational lag, limiting rendering, and sometimes even causing visible lag.
A huge step towards making AR even more accessible through the web would be for the Web Standards to adopt an API for direct access to the ARCamera object.
If that abstraction could exist as a standard web API, any browser app could leverage ARkit/ARCore or whatever underlying platform exists. Once a web API exists many different frameworks will emerge. There are a few experimental browsers that leverage ARKit/ARCore but they require a specific JS framework.
USDZ is a good start but its missing a vital component, a layer that adds support for interaction. Google’s efforts are still only available in the canary version of Chrome, so until its included within the production build it will lag Apple’s.
References:
https://medium.com/agora-io/web-vs-app-ar-edition-d9aafe988ba2
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