Announcing Release 1.5 of the Qualcomm AR SDK and Extension for Unity

We are pleased to announce the release of Qualcomm's Vuforia AR SDK 1.5 for Android and iOS. This release, from Qualcomm's Austria Research Center GmbH, marks the successful completion of the 1.5 beta program and now allows developers to distribute and promote AR applications to the Android Market and Apple App Store. Android and iOS developers can use the Unity 3 cross-platform game engine and Apple's XCode to build high-performance, interactive 3D AR experiences. The Vuforia SDK 1.5 supports Android devices running on Android 2.2 and above, and the following iOS devices - iPad 2, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch (4th Generation). This 1.5 commercial release includes the following features: • Ability to swap datasets at runtime: If your app needs to augment more than 60 images, you can now create multiple datasets -using the web-based Target Management System (My Trackables tool) - and load the appropriate dataset at runtime. You no longer have to upgrade your app to change the target dataset, and you can now build AR experiences that work on a large number of images. • Video background texture access: The SDK now provides a simple and streamlined way of accessing the video background texture. Developers can now write custom special effects using powerful shaders resulting in far more exciting application experiences. • Improved tracking performance: The new SDK features several enhancements that reduce jitter in the augmentations, speed up recovery from tracking failures, detect targets at steeper angles and track over longer distances. FrameMarkers can now be partially occluded – allowing them to be picked up and used as game pieces during the AR experience. Qualcomm's AR platform, Vuforia™, includes an award–winning SDK, complete with support for image targets, frame markers, multi targets and virtual buttons; an Extension for Unity; and an online target management system. Download links for the Vuforia SDK and Extension for Unity may be found at [URL=http://developer.qualcomm.com/vuforia]developer.qualcomm.com/vuforia[/URL]