ARDK 2.3.0 Release Notes 2022-09-27

What’s New

  • [Experimental Features] In order to speed up our feedback loop ARDK provides experimental features. These features are available for testing and feedback but are in early stages of development, subject to change, and may not reflect final designs or APIs. Experimental features should not be used in production products and are unsupported. We want interested developers to use these experimental features and provide feedback. If you have feedback on an experimental feature, post your feedback in the Lightship Developer Community

  • [Contextual Awareness - Experimental] ARDK now supports returning semantic confidence data. Semantic confidence is provided as a non-thresholded semantic mask that will return the per pixel confidence for a given channel. This can be used to produce better alpha-blending/feathering of the edges on semantic masks. See Semantic Confidence for more information.

  • [Contextual Awareness - Experimental] Advanced meshing settings have been added that allow setting the meshing range and the voxel size of the meshing feature. See Advanced Meshing Settings for more information.

  • [Contextual Awareness - Experimental] A depth blending mode has been added to ARDepthManager for depth-based occlusions. Depth blending improves depth-based occlusions by using both depth-buffer and mesh-based occlusions to produce stable occlusions that work well for both dynamic and static objects. See Depth Blending for more information.

  • [Contextual Awareness - Experimental] 10 new experimental semantic channels have been added: flower_experimental, pet_experimental, tree_trunk_experimental, sand_experimental, dirt_experimental, tv_experimental, vehicle_experimental, loungable_experimental, food_experimental, snow_experimental. See Experimental Semantic Channels for descriptions of the new channels.

Improvements

  • [Developer Platform] When importing ARDK for the first time in Unity 2020 or 2021 Intel version running on M1 Macs using Assets -> Import Package, Unity no longer crashes requiring a Unity restart.

  • [Developer Platform] Added support for linear color space on device.

  • [VPS] LocationService now defaults to desired accuracy of 0.01 meters and an update distance of 0.01 meters.

Bug Fixes

  • [Contextual Awareness] Fixed issue with bilinear texture when Prefer Smooth Edges is enabled on ARDepthManager.

  • [Developer Tools] Fixed bug with Unity null reference exception when target was set to a texture on the ARRenderingManager.

  • [Developer Tools] Fixed screen width/height issue when running in Unity Play mode which would cause output to be rotated 90 degrees.

  • [VPS] Fixed issue where duplicate target IDs are returned by VPS Coverage API in some circumstances.

  • [VPS] Fixed issue where newly created anchor status sometimes gets set as Success before the initial anchor transform is updated.

Deprecations

  • [Developer Platform] Deprecating the following ArdkGlobalConfig APIs: SetDBowUrl, GetDbowUrl, SetAuthenticationUrl, GetAuthenticationUrl, GetContextAwarenessUrl.

  • [Contextual Awareness] IARWorldTrackingConfiguration.MeshingRadius has been deprecated, use MeshDecimationThreshold instead.

Known Issues

  • [Contextual Awareness] The “Prefer Smooth Edges” option on ARDepthManager uses an incorrectly scaled texture. Avoid using this option. A fix is planned for the next release.

  • [Contextual Awareness - Experimental] If depth blending is enabled, the current mesh chunks shader is overridden which can make the mesh result invisible.

  • [Contextual Awareness - Experimental] When depth blending is enabled the depth stream used by the feature can sometimes be uninitialized for the first few frames, which results in errors.

  • [Developer Tools - Experimental] In some cases creating Wayspot Anchors in Playback mode returns an empty anchor identifier.

  • [Developer Tools] When dragging ARDK into a Unity 2020 or 2021 Intel version project on an M1 Mac, Unity may crash and need to be restarted. We recommend always importing ARDK using Assets -> Import Package.

  • [Developer Tools] When building for Android, ARDK 2.3 enables OpenCL in the app manifest which requires gradle 6.7.1 or better to build. The default version of gradle that comes with Unity 2021 is 6.1.1, so you need to install a newer gradle to build. See Building ARDK Apps for Android for more details.

  • [VPS] IWayspotAnchor.TrackingStateUpdated event not being invoked. Use TransformUpdated instead. This issue also impacts the VPS feature of the Voyage sample app.