HoloLens Continues to Make the World Your Canvas with Inclusion of SketchAR

The app SketchAR is an easy, innovative way to trace what you want to draw onto the canvas of your choice. It was first released on iOS and Android Tango phones, but now, finally, it has been released on Microsoft's HoloLens.

SketchAR uses computer vision to scan the environment and place a virtual image on a real surface. Once the image is placed, it sticks so that when you move around, the image does not move with you. The app is great for those who aren't the strongest drawers or for those who don't know how to draw at all. While it has been pretty successful so far on smartphones, the app isn't ideal for a handset.

To successfully create your drawing in real life using SketchAR, you have to hold your smartphone above the surface you're drawing the whole time. This makes it more difficult to really focus on steadily creating your artwork, and your arm would definitely get tired after a while.

So it seems like SketchAR was made for the HoloLens. The promotional video released announcing the app's debut on the headset shows how differently it works on the HoloLens versus on a smartphone. Hand movements guide the sketch to where it's going to be brought to life and then lock it there. Here, just like in the smartphone version, you can adjust the size, color, orientation and position of the image.

Once the image is placed, thanks to the HoloLens, your hands are freed up to start drawing and painting the sketch that you can view through the screen of your HoloLens. This makes it much easier to create the art you want, as you don't have to focus on holding the smartphone still and steady.

Of course, SketchAR is not the first tracing app to grace the HoloLens. "Muralize" by Sally Slade is a similar app made specifically for the HoloLens that has been out for months. SketchAR was the first to make an app like this for smartphones, which gave it a well-known name, perhaps more than Muralize.

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Cover image via SketchAR/YouTube