Vuforia AR Starter Kit Hits the Unity Asset Store for Free

In mid-November, Vuforia officially released Vuforia 6.1, which has full support for the Microsoft HoloLens. They also released their AR Starter Kit to the Unity Asset Store, which contains scenes that show you how to use Vuforia features. While I have yet to find any confirmation, I believe it is safe to assume that the AR Starter Kit will work with the HoloLens. I already had a Vuforia tutorial planned for this week, so as soon as I know for sure, I will begin working on it.

PTC, who acquired Vuforia in late-2015, and Unity announced a collaboration at Unite '16 Los Angeles to integrate the Vurforia augmented reality platform into Unity. In a recent blog post, Unity announced that along with the new AR Starter Kit, users would also get a free Vuforia Development license.

For those unfamiliar, Vuforia is a way to use a head-mounted computer like the HoloLens, or even a smartphone, to view virtual objects in the real world using an "Image Target" to map 3D models on top of. A great example of this is the Caterpillar hologram demo from Microsoft Build '16 earlier this year.

I suspect we will be seeing a great many Vuforia-enabled applications coming soon. Make sure to keep a look out here on NextReality for that Vuforia how-to coming soon so you can use it in your own apps.