I’ve been working on an augmented reality (AR) tour game for our Fall library orientation. Basically, you wander around the library with your phone camera turned on, and you’ll find some shapes floating in the virtual space, by the reference desk, the circulation desk, and so on. When you collect all the shapes you get to claim a prize from the librarians.

Anyhow, I haven’t got it entirely working yet. It works great on my iPhone, but not so much on my co-worker’s Google Pixel. I think the problem has to do with the multiple cameras that modern phones have, and the AR is not always defaulting to the correct camera. This gets a bit into the JavaScripty weeds, but I’m going to work on it this weekend, and I’ll see if I can make any progress.

This project has been a balancing act of managing expectations. I’ve kept my co-workers up to speed on my progress, but I’ve made clear that I can’t promise that it will be working by September. I know better than to make hard promises when building with technologies I’ve never used before. The library I’m using, AR.js, is a bit rough around the edges, and I lean on it with a good dose of caution and trepidation. We’ll see how this goes. September is not that far away.

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