The members of the AR Community seek to advance open and interoperable content and experiences. 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 refered to as "AR browsers." A survey of current AR browsers is available here. 

The lack of interoperability between AR browsers is comparable to the era prior to interoperability between e-mail clients and before the Web was viewable from any W3C-standard compliant browser.

A group of community members proposes that, similar to Web browsers, there could be interoperability between AR browsers and AR content management systems without jeapordizing differentiation and innovation.

AR browser interoperability will benefit 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 (speccialize) 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.

Purpose

A series of teleconferences is underway and a face-to-face meeting has been held in order for AR authoring/content management system providers to collaborate on:

• defining one or more levels of interoperability and
• reaching agreement on steps towards achieving interoperability

between AR browsers (and other AR "player" applications) that are published to deliver AR experiences authored in proprietary AR content management platforms.

The approach to interoperability agreed upon during the October 18 meeting is documented in this document. During the public comment period (ended November 15, 2013) there were no objections. 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.

Participation

Participation in this activity is limited to those who serve in a senior engineering capacity in any private or public institution currently providing a native application running on Android, iOS or Windows 8 and that also defines and/or publishes an AR authoring/content management platform, those who provide multi-browser publishing portals, and invited experts.

Meeting Venue

There will be teleconferences (virtual meetings) conducted between face-to-face meetings. The first face-to-face meeting was held October 18, 2013 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Dates

Teleconference schedule is:

• PAST: 5 PM to 6 PM CET Wednesday June 26, 2013
• PAST: 5 PM to 6 PM CET Tuesday July 23, 2013
• PAST: 5 PM to 6 PM CET Thursday August 8, 2013
• PAST: 4 PM to 5:30 PM CET Wednesday August 28, 2013
• PAST: 4 PM to 5 PM CET Thursday September 26, 2013
• PAST: 4 PM to 5 PM CET Friday November 1, 2013
• PAST: 4 PM to 5 PM CET Thursday November 21, 2013
• PAST: 4 PM to 5 PM CET Tuesday December 10, 2013
• PAST: 2 PM to 3 PM CET Friday January 10, 2014
• PAST: 2 PM to 3 PM CET Friday January 24, 2014
• PAST: 2 PM to 3 PM Friday February 7, 2014

The face-to-face meeting was conducted on October 17-18, 2013. For participation in future meetings, please send an e-mail to Christine Perey.

Mailing List and Meeting Archives

There is an archived mailing list for AR Browser Interoperability discussion on the ARStandards.org domain and other collaborative tools (GitHub, wiki and Dropbox for files). If you feel you can contribute to this initiative and seek access to these archives, please send an e-mail to Christine Perey.

Agenda

The final agenda for the face-to-face meeting is ready.

Organizing Committee

This activity began in response to a committee including:

• Borislava Krasteva, Seac02
• Andrea Carignano, President, Seac02
• Martin Lechner, CTO, Wikitude
• Christine Perey, PEREY Research & Consulting