Dear AR developer,
we are happy to announce the release of ARToolKitPlus version 2.0.0, which can be downloaded from the ARToolKitPlus webpage at http://studierstube.org/handheld_ar/artoolkitplus.php (if the page still shows old content, please refresh you browser cache).
There are many changes since version 1.3.1, including:
- Support for Visual Studio 2005 (WinXP, WM2003, WM2005)
- Support for Linux
- A new, more stable pose estimator
- A new (CRC-based) id-encoded marker system (up to 4096 markers)
- Support for MATLAB camera calibration toolbox files
Of course all previous changes over the original ARToolKit are still there, including:
- C++ class-based API
- Simple id-based markers (up to 512 markers)
- More pixel formats
- Variable marker border width
- Many speedups for mobile devices (fixed-point, lookup tables)
- Automatic thresholding (no measureable performance loss)
- Vignetting compensation (almost no performance loss)
- Installable custom memory manager
- Support for eVC4, VC6, VS.NET 2003
Several videos showing ARToolKitPlus using automatic thresholding and comparing the new pose estimator against the original one can be found on the webpage.
PLEASE NOTE: ARToolKitPlus was developed internally as part of the Handheld AR project and released to public due to many requests. This version of ARToolKit is only targeted to experienced C++ programmers. It does not have integrated support for reading camera images or rendering geometry of any kind (especially no VRML!) nor is it an out-of-the box solution. In contrast to the original ARToolKit, this library is not meant for starters in developing AR software. No binary executables are provided and no help in setting up your IDE is given.
A big thanks goes to everybody who reported bugs and suggestions for the previous versions. Another thanks goes to Thomas Pintaric who implemented many of the new features.
ARToolKitPlus is not a successor to the original ARToolKit, which is still further developed and supported.
For more details on ARToolKitPlus please refer to the webpage.
Daniel Wagner,
Graz University of Technology
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