The members of the AR Community seek to advance open and interoperable AR content and experiences through the introduction of standards, open interfaces or open source projects. The task force dedicated to the work on interoperability has pages on this web portal and a mailing list. 

Problem Statement

Today a user equipped with an AR-ready device, including sensors and appropriate output/display support, must download a proprietary application to experience content published using an AR experience authoring platform. A subset of these applications are referred to as "AR browsers."

Benefits of Interoperability

AR browser interoperability benefits at least these four stakeholders: 

• Content Publishers will be able to offer AR experiences with their content to larger potential audiences (e.g., all users of AR browsers that support interoperability) with equal or lower effort (costs) of preparing/producing AR browser-based experiences with their digital assets,
• Developers of AR experiences will be able to choose the AR experience authoring environment they prefer or is best suited to a project without sacrificing the "basic" experience they can offer their clients' target audiences and also be able to invest in innovation (specialize) in preparation of highly engaging and interactive experiences,
• Attracted by larger total audience size and lower barrier to entry, there will be more content publishers willing to invest in and greater number of developers learning/perfecting AR experience design, generating higher revenues for AR authoring and content management system providers, and
• End users will be able to discover and select AR experiences from a larger catalog while also choosing the AR browser they prefer.

On January 21, 2014  the AR Browser Interoperability Architecture document 1.2 was agreed upon by the AR Browser publishers participating in this process. Implementations of the architecture began in the second phase of the process: AR Browser Interoperability Proof of Concept. The most current version of the Architecture document reflects a few bugs that were fixed in mid-February during development of the test browsers. 

For further background on the AR Browser Interoperability development, please visit this page. 

Test content 

In this section we provide the paths to assets that can be used for testing interoperability. The URLs for launching the experience in one of the browsers should all have the same format: If the AR browser supports the ar:// scheme, you should actually use a normal web browser (Chrome, Safari, or any other web browser on the device) to launch the experience. If the AR browser does not support the ar:// scheme (Wikitude for the demo), then you should use the http:// URL and enter it directly in the AR browser's content selection field.

Opening Files with junaio AR Browser

junaio://channel/switchChannel/?id=232001&filter_arlink=[URL-encoded AR link]

• Hotels
• Webcams
• Events

• Eating and Drinking

Channels Created using metaio SDK 

To try these junaio channels using the Wikitude test browser or Layar Interop (on iOS), copy and paste any of the following URLs into the browser's content selection field.

• Wikipedia:  ar://interop.junaio.com/wikipedia/?requestedParams=pos
• Mountains:  ar://interop.junaio.com/mountains/?requestedParams=pos
• Photos:  ar://interop.junaio.com/photos/?requestedParams=pos

​Layar app for interop demo

You can begin by going directly to this page (optimized for mobile device access). 

To test the AR interoperability using the Layar AR browser, you must first download Layar v8.2 special interoperability demo app

NOTE 1: To download Layar, make sure you click the download link while viewing this page on your iPhone/iPad. Layar cannot be downloaded using a PC or Mac. 

NOTE 2: iPhone 3GS or iPad 2 and higher and iOS 6.0 and higher required.

How to use the app

This app will open the ar:// and sar:// URL schemes that are defined by the AR Browser Interoperability Architecture document. The steps to try out the interoperability demo are the following:

1. Download the app from the above link. When prompted to allow the download, click Allow.
2. Open the app, follow the welcome sequence of screens and hit Start now! to start using Layar
3. You can check that this is the normal Layar AR Browser by going to the side menu (click the 'hamburger' button), selecting Geo Layers, then Recommended Layers and pick a layer to display
4. Now, close Layar, open Safari (or any web browser) on your iOS device and open this page (http://www.layar.com/download/layar-interop) 
5. Scroll down to the example links of AR Experiences created using Wikitude and Junaio.
6. Click on any of the links.
7. Layar will be automatically launched and the AR Experience you chose will be opened inside Layar.