osgART - Augmented Reality Toolkit for OpenSceneGraph

osgART is a cross platform toolkit for developing AR applications with the OpenSceneGraph API. osgART was invented by Julian Looser and then made by Raphael Grasset and Hartmut Seichter into a robust software framework with hundreds of useful features. The current working version is 2.x and is available from the osgART Website. osgART is been used in hundreds if not thousands of AR applications in research, education and commercial applications. It is most likely the most used open source AR application framework.

Technology

osgART is heavily based on abstracting methods such as visual and spatial registration from the AR software developer. It uses the scenegraph for modeling real-virtual world connections. Furthermore, it uses the plugin mechanism of OpenSceneGraph in order to allow the user to mix and match video capture and tracking algorithm. osgART does not introduce new nodes rather than mapping tracking data onto exsiting scenegraph structures. Using a scenegraph for AR allows to use all the optimization techniques a scenegraph is using. For instance view-frustum culling allows an osgART AR application to load and unload only the tracked objects on the fly. Another example is using scenegraph LOD for proximity based interactions with the virtual content. All this comes at virtually no extra computational cost.

Showcase

There are numerous applications, games and in-house development tools using osgART, to name just a few:

• BuildAR - an AR Desktop authoring tool
• ARmedia tools by Inglobe Technologies - AR for SketchUp and 3DS max
• Merlin AR experience - BBC Merlin series
• AR Mirai
• levelhead by Julian Oliver
• Toyota iQ AR campaign

Availability

Though originally developed at the HITLab NZ the software is now under proprietary governance of the original authors. To get the GPL licensed WIP version of osgART visit the osgART website. For commercial licenses for osgART 1.x contact ARToolworks.