I'm hoping someone can tell me the tricks of the trade for leveraging simpler markers. For starters, we have put a demo app in iTunes for iPad only.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/appear/id504316954?mt=8
We think we have a pretty good staff of designers and animators. There really isn't anything we can't model or animate for a client. The challenge comes in the marker. Our clients tend to be marquis brands - their logos are iconic. Their logos also can't be obfuscated and must adhere to fairly strict style guides. I get calls almost daily from clients and prospects that want me to leverage their logo as a marker. Sadly this is where Qualcomm fails me. I've uploaded the following logos and get ZERO stars: IBM, Pepsi and FEDEX. Other test logos get only one star like Verizon. Then there are those that get two stars like NASA and Sun Microsystems. Lastly I tested Coca-Cola and it got 3 stars. The majority of my clients logos all score ZERO or 1 star. I've tried uploading them in dozens of sizes as PNG or JPG and get the exact same results. Not satisfied with those results I continued to dig. I then looked at a competing product - a very simple app in the app store called BoostAR.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/boostar-apparel/id486896240?mt=8
That app has one AR experience in particular that intrigued me. It is a rocket launch and the Dubble Bubble Bubble Gum logo is the marker. The experience is solid, locks on and tracks well from all angles. So I uploaded the Dubble Bubble logo into my own Trackables database and it scored a 1 out of 5. I heard from others in the industry that BoostAR is using Qualcomm but I can't understand how they are successful with such a poor scoring marker. We had to design very elaborate markers (as seen in our Appear App) to get 3 or 4 to track and stick well.
I've read many threads here about markers and adding contrast, etc. My issue is that my clients aren't interested in losing their brand identity is some obscure marker. Clearly I'm missing something and invite feedback.
Need simpler marker recognition
My advice is to actually test the logo targets that you're generating, even if these have low ratings. Often low rated targets will be detectable, though their tracking performance won't match that of a highly rated target. The rating is an estimate, so it's worth experimenting.