Available AR packages 

Unity3D has several options readily available via plugins for creating AR applications and games:

• Vuforia AR Starter Kit
• ARCore (Tango)
• ARToolKit
• ARKit

 It should be noted that Vuforia Starter Kit has been fully integrated into Unity3D and is quite easy to jump right into creating projects with. ARKit and ARCore, however, are slightly different. Because they are still in the experimental and early developmental phases, Apple and Google have not released full and proper SDKs for Unity Technologies to incorporate into the engine.

There is a plugin that exists for both of them that you will have to compile to get it to work with your project for Apple and Android devices, and we will go into how to compile and integrate into Unity3D to get it to work appropriately later in this chapter. For now, it is good to know that there is a little bit more setup involved with getting AR to work with iOS and Android.

With the introduction out of the way, we can finally begin to really talk about AR, what it is exactly, and how to set up Unity3D to take advantage of the SDKs available to create your own AR games and applications. Without further ado, let's define what AR actually is.