We’re very happy to announce that buildAR, the world’s first Augmented Reality Content Management System, has announced an “exciting new direction” by adding support for HTML5 and junaio to their platform. Please find the full story below, from Rob Manson of buildAR.
At buildAR HQ we’re really excited and we want to share our news with you!
Over the next few months we will be:
- Extending our support for AR publishing with Junaio
- Adding HTML5 support in your AR content
- Ending our support for publishing to Layar as of August 1, 2012
Nearly 3 years ago buildAR launched as the world’s first Augmented Reality Content Management System and over the last 12 months we have seen rapid growth across the globe as AR is really starting to grab people’s imaginations. Within the buildAR community there is a growing demand for more interactivity and even richer AR content. Our aim has always been to provide the quickest and easiest platform for you to do this, making it simple for you to create all the stories and experiences you can imagine. We want to let you focus on the really fun stuff!
Over the coming weeks and months we are releasing many new features within the buildAR platform to support the functionality you’ve been asking for. One of the biggest changes is that we will be supporting publishing to the Junaio AR browser. The Junaio team have been busy adding support for HTML5 within your AR content and this has opened a whole new level of interactivity and rich user experiences. This is a perfect fit for buildAR’s long term vision and will allow us to focus on making it easy to create this type of augmented web content.
Also, to make sure we deliver the best visual search experience buildAR will also be implementing Catchoom’s visual search engine. This makes it easy for your end users to find your AR content by simply scanning an image.
On top of this we are also creating a standalone buildAR app for iPhone, iPad and Android so you can use it to preview and manage your buildAR project. If you’d like your own custom branded AR application like this then we can quickly and easily help you create one.
All of these changes have been designed to make the process of creating AR content as quick and easy as possible. We are streamlining the process of getting started and you will no longer need to have 2 accounts or log in to multiple systems. All you will need is your buildAR account.
The publishing process will also be streamlined with a lot of content able to be published straight away!
As part of moving to support these new features and functionality, as of August 1, 2012 buildAR will no longer be providing support for publishing to Layar.
(buildAR will most likely have to update this video)
So why are we moving away from Layar?
1. Layar have focused their business on the print publishing industry and on using “Layar Vision” to add basic buttons to magazines. The constant changes in their business model and developer ecosystem have created uncertainty about their longer term plans and whether they will continue to support location based AR at all. We know that many of you create geo-locative AR content alongside your image based AR content and we firmly believe that location-based content will continue to play an important role in the ongoing AR story.
2. As of August 1, 2012 Layar will be charging their customers 15 Euro per reference image. For many of you, especially in the education and arts communities, this cost is prohibitive.
3. Layar are also introducing additional costs to buildAR for access to their publishing system API. This would mean we would need to pass these costs on to you, so instead we have found better solutions to keep our prices as low as possible.
Working with Layar has been a great journey. Now we have re-focused on our new development and partnerships and we are really excited by what the future will bring for buildAR and for you!
So what do you have to do?
At this stage nothing…it’s business as usual. As of August 1, 2012 if your layer is published it will generally continue to run and operate as it always has. You can continue to update projections and locations, however you will no longer be able to add or update reference images or any of the content that you currently update via the DESIGN section in buildAR. And we will keep this version of buildAR running to ensure your existing layers are alive and being served correctly. Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee what other changes Layar will make in the future that may impact this.
Toward the end of August we will be releasing the next version of buildAR!
Once the new version of buildAR has been released you can choose to migrate your existing buildAR project to Junaio and we are working to make this process as simple as possible for you. If your project is currently published, you will be able to re-publish it as a Junaio channel. So instead of people using Layar to access your content they will now use Junaio for the iPhone, iPad or Android. You can then also take advantage of all the new features available and we think you’ll be really impressed by this great new user experience.
For all our existing customers – and that means you – there will be no monthly fees from August 1, 2012 until we release the new version of buildAR. As part of our new release we will also be making changes to our current pricing and products and we’re confident you’ll be pleasantly surprised! 
So get ready for the next phase of the AR journey and start dreaming of all the amazing experiences you’ll be able to create with all this new dynamic interactivity.
If you currently publish layers using the buildAR platform, make sure you sign up for a junaio developer account at the junaio website so you can continue publishing great mobile augmented reality content after August 1st.
Great news that BuidAR is expanding and further professionalizing its services to the Junaio platform. I am looking forward to many more fantastic creative concepts will be added to the Junaio platform.