AR.js maintainers needed

[nickw1]

There are a number of outstanding issues with AR.js. I, along with others, am one of the more recent maintainers but unfortunately have little or no available time for AR.js at the moment. I may be able to check and merge small PRs but I'm unlikely to have the time to do major bug fixes. Apologies for this but life, and other projects, have got in the way.

It would be great to see the project move forwards so would be good to get some volunteers to help out maintaining the project. Contributors with iOS devices would be particularly welcome.

@kalwalt @nicolocarpignoli Please note the above.

[kalwalt]

This is fundamental for any project. We need more help from the comunity, i have in mind how to proceed with the development but as @nickw1 said i have limited time to dedicate to this project. We need help to answer to the issues, but also developers that may solve issues. Remember: Open source wouldn't exist without someone writing a line of code, testing it, and making it usable.
However apart this i promise to make at least two release in a year.

[nickw1]

To bump this a little, our biggest problem at the moment is a lack of contributors with iOS devices, meaning it's difficult to resolve bugs which may be specific to that environment (see for example issue #639). So once again you're particularly welcome to contribute if you are an iOS web developer! Thanks.

[kalwalt]

To bump this a little, our biggest problem at the moment is a lack of contributors with iOS devices, meaning it's difficult to resolve bugs which may be specific to that environment (see for example issue #639). So once again you're particularly welcome to contribute if you are an iOS web developer! Thanks.

Yes exactly like that!

[sinano1107]

Nice to meet you.
I was previously using this package as a hobby, so I wanted to give back.
I mainly use Mac and iPhone, so I might be able to help you.
Please let me know if there are any issues that need to be addressed as a priority.

[nickw1]

Hi @sinano1107 good to meet you too.

Many thanks for offering to help out with iOS. There have been a number of fixes recently thanks to @ma2yama, though there are a few others (e.g. #639) which do not occur with all iPhone users.

What would be great for now is if you could test out location-based AR in the version in this branch and let us know if it's working well, and if not, what isn't working.

https://github.com/AR-js-org/AR.js/tree/ios-permission-gesture-in-lib-code

This incorporates a number of iOS fixes, including device orientation issues and a permission dialog being required to access the sensors on iOS.

Thanks!

[garthhenning]

Happy to help with iOS and Safari. I'm a Java developer, not a JavaScript developer, but I'm about to have some time to work location-based augmented reality and that includes Java/GWT driving AR.js.

[nickw1]

@garthhenning many thanks.

Note that the focus of development on location-based AR.js is currently with the LocAR.js project (https://github.com/AR-js-org/locar.js) so that is where the help is most needed.

If you have time feel free to look at LocAR.js and in particular the PR16 branch which incorporates a recent PR and some other changes. It works fine on Android but is untested on iOS.

[garthhenning]

I've just seen that, so I'll try to integrate LocAR.js over the next few days to see how it does. I'll have to do some checking to see if my code driving AR.js is compatible with LocAR.js, but I'm excited about the idea of a more dedicated location based library. (I am also going to give a shot at trying your ALVA SLAM code and would love to chat about that separately.)

[nickw1]

@garthhenning great. Fine to chat about the Alva experiments, do note at the moment they are only that - experiments - so don't do anything too impressive just yet. But feel free to open an issue over there.