ARToolkit Commercial Version?

Are there major differences between the GPL version of ARToolkit (2.72) 
and the version released under a commercial license?  While waiting on a 
licensing agreement from ARToolWorks, we had started developing our 
museum interactive with ARTk+.  We chose ARTk+ because of the enhanced 
(RPP) pose estimator and support for the easier Matlab camera 
calibration toolbox.  Searching through the list archives though, I came 
across this comment from Daniel Wagner:

"ARToolKit is still actively developed too, but in a different direction 
... I don't think that changes to the vision core itself can
be expected anymore since there haven't been any such changes for years
and then this is where the commercial ARToolKit version 4 is placed."

This makes me think that the commercial version is (4-2.72)/2.72 = 47% 
ahead of the GPL version ;-)  Is this even a partially correct 
interpretation?

Cheers,
Darran.

-- 
Darran Edmundson [darran@e ............]
Interactive visualization for museums and industry
http://www.edmstudio.com

From:	Darran Edmundson <darran@e ............>	Received:	Mar 13, 2007
To	artoolkit <artoolkit@h ..................>
Subject:	ARToolkit Commercial Version?
Are there major differences between the GPL version of ARToolkit (2.72) and the version released under a commercial license? While waiting on a licensing agreement from ARToolWorks, we had started developing our museum interactive with ARTk+. We chose ARTk+ because of the enhanced (RPP) pose estimator and support for the easier Matlab camera calibration toolbox. Searching through the list archives though, I came across this comment from Daniel Wagner: "ARToolKit is still actively developed too, but in a different direction ... I don't think that changes to the vision core itself can be expected anymore since there haven't been any such changes for years and then this is where the commercial ARToolKit version 4 is placed." This makes me think that the commercial version is (4-2.72)/2.72 = 47% ahead of the GPL version ;-) Is this even a partially correct interpretation? Cheers, Darran. -- Darran Edmundson [darran@e ............] Interactive visualization for museums and industry http://www.edmstudio.com

From:	Philip Lamb <phil@e ..........>	Received:	Mar 15, 2007
To	artoolkit <artoolkit@h ..................>
Subject:	Re: ARToolkit Commercial Version?
On 14/03/2007, at 2:24 PM, Darran Edmundson wrote: > > Are there major differences between the GPL version of ARToolkit > (2.72) and the version released under a commercial license? Yes, there are major differences. Some of the enhancements in the commercial version are summarised here: http://www.artoolworks.com/ products/artoolkit/ > Searching through the list archives though, I came across this > comment from Daniel Wagner: > > "ARToolKit is still actively developed too, but in a different > direction ... I don't think that changes to the vision core itself can > be expected anymore since there haven't been any such changes for > years > and then this is where the commercial ARToolKit version 4 is placed." > > This makes me think that the commercial version is (4-2.72)/2.72 = > 47% ahead of the GPL version ;-) Is this even a partially correct > interpretation? Yes, this is correct. ARToolKit version 4 represents a continuation of the development of the core ARToolKit which was released under various version numbers from 1.x to 2.x. The fiducial tracking which is at the core of ARToolKit and derivatives (and which has also been replicated by various other libraries) is relatively stable. Development efforts at the University of Osaka and the HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury since ARToolKit was first released under the GPL have focussed on other interesting areas of research in AR. These include the planar natural feature tracking which is available as ARToolKit NFT, and the osgART framework. osgART is focussed on the wider coding problems in AR - integration of tracking into higher- level graphics programming, flexible architectures for tracking, and photometric registration (e.g. shadows, HDR lighting, reflection and refraction). I should point out that it is our intention (speaking for ARToolworks and HIT Lab NZ) to continue to release code which is currently licensed under proprietary models under open source models, when we can reasonably make such a release. The release of the osgART Standard Edition under the GPL is one such recent release. Regards, Phil.