Oliver Haslam·

ARKit And HTC Vive Bring Mixed Reality To iOS [Video]

Since Apple announced ARKit as part of iOS 11 during the opening keynote of WWDC 2017, developers and users alike have been getting more and more excited for what it could mean moving forward.

Since the initial beta release of iOS 11, those same developers have been hard at work, trying to ascertain just what the boundaries of the technology are, and what can be done with nothing more than an SDK and an iOS device.

As it turns out, lots and lots of cool things can be done, and we have seen plenty of demonstrations and videos in which those things are showcased. The latest of those comes courtesy of New York-based virtual reality developer Normal.

While ARKit is designed to bring augmented reality to iOS devices without the need for additional hardware, Normal has been hard at work trying to discover what can be achieved when a virtual reality headset is thrown into the mix as well. Just as you might have expected, the results are pretty spectacular. By using an HTC Vive and a 10.5-inch iPad Pro, the developer has been able to put out a video in which the Unity game engine is able to capture the physical movements of a virtual reality artist and project her virtual painting onto the real world via the actions of her digital avatar.

It isn’t made clear what machine the HTC Vive is connected to in order to make any of this work, but that really isn’t the point here. The potential for mixed reality on iOS which could be achieved with such a configuration is huge, and the fact that this appears to be working with beta builds of iOS and ARKit tools should not be underesitmated, either.

If this is the kind of thing developers are capable of building now, what will we be seeing in a year’s time?

(Source: Made with ARKit [YouTube])

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