Your phone not only displays the data but also transforms reality into an interactive game or educational environment. AR, known as augmented reality, is a booming technology that is revolutionizing sectors including but not limited to the gaming sector, education, and healthcare. At the core of this rapid development is the concept of frameworks—the set of technologies that powers those cool AR/VR developments in applications and interactions that we know and use.
- These frameworks help fill the gap between real and virtual reality, from improving mobile games like Pokémon GO to changing how we shop or study.
- And it’s no surprise that AR is becoming increasingly popular.
- Currently, the size of the market in the mobile sector of AR is $13.8 billion in 2025,
- and it will reach $21 billion in 2028 due to applications, Web AR, and the search by image application.
1. Kundan
Since its founding in 2014, Kudan has quickly become a must-have for AR developers because of its key differentiation in the AR industry. Among the many novelties, self-introduced artificial perception can be considered one of Kudan’s most significant developments that go beyond traditional AR/VR possibilities.
While people create perceptions of the world with the help of the 5 senses, the application of such senses used to be out of reach for traditional machines. This limitation is solved in Kudan by providing AI as part of its AR environment so that machines can actually ‘touch’ what they see with a good degree of precision.
The key enabler of technical advantage in Kudan is SLAM or Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. This feature allows devices to locate and navigate within a specific environment and produce accurate, real-time spatial images.
GrandSLAM from Kudan goes even a level deeper than the discussed SLAM approach, as it refines the system as a Sensor Fusion Framework that takes each of the sensors involved and integrates them in an extremely precise way to map an environment.
This innovation provides developers with the capacity to develop applications with stable spatial awareness and discover the true potential of AR.
Key Features of Kudan:
- SLAM & GrandSLAM Integration: These technologies enable Kudan to lay out the environment and navigate, giving the required touch feedback for decision-making in the context of AR/VR apps.
- Cross-Platform Compatibility: One of the beneficial features of Kudan is that it automatically works on both iOS and Android platforms, requiring very little modification in terms of coding, which means developers can bring their products to users who use either of the two platforms seamlessly.
- Cloud and 5G Integration: That is why, with Kudan, it is easy to incorporate cloud capacities and perform map updates in real-time and take on the advantages of 5G networks for creating easily and synthesizing the improved and dynamic environment.
- Cost-Effective Performance: It also ensures the depletion of system resources and the overall low cost of development, hence making Kudan create great-performing AR apps at staggeringly low costs.
2. Apple’s ARKit & RealityKit: Enabling Continuous AR Applications on iOS
The basics of Augmented Reality on the iOS platform cannot be discussed without referencing Apple’s ARKit and RealityKit, which give developers the means to generate real-world, engaging experiences.
Whereas ARKit is a base framework that combines the strength of iPhone cameras, device motion, and scene capturing and understanding. RealityKit is a new level of AR/VR experience building and rendering.
This module is aimed to assist developers who want to work with real-world features of AR applications such as camera capture, motion tracking, and display processing at the developer’s app. It also enshrines the components to construct the AR experiences, allowing the users to engage with both the 2- dimensional and the three-dimensional features in a realistic way.
Key Features of ARKit & RealityKit:
- Multithreaded Rendering: RealityKit supports optimized and high-quality rendering, making it easy to achieve good performance and minimal frame rate drops even in complex scenes and situations like AR.
- Customization & Scene Control: In RealityKit, developers can alter scenes and objects and include more animated models and audio sources in the accommodating virtual environment.
- Multi-User Support: RealityKit makes it quite easy to create group Augmented Reality experiences where people can share one scene and all interact with it.
- Cross-Device Synchronization: RealityKit offers features that allow for the AR content to be synchronized across multiple devices and are ideal for work on multiple devices or even installations.
- LiDAR and Photogrammetry Support: Connected to real-world scanning instruments, RealityKit extends possibilities, allowing for making even more realistic and detailed AR spaces.
3. Google’s ARCore: The Adoption of a Strong Framework to Android App
ARCore is one of the major platforms for developing architectural AR applications on Android, providing the necessary tools for creating complex mobile interactions. The core productive feature of ARCore is strong APIs that fit AR extensions to apps already created by developers.
Motion tracking, environmental understanding, and light estimation are the basic features of a smartphone upon which ARCore successfully merges the real and the augmented world.
Key Features of ARCore:
- Motion Tracking: ARCore is able to monitor the motion of your mobile device, tracking it with camera and inertial motion sensors to give real-time position and orientation information. It enables precise alignment of virtual items in the real environment.
- Environmental Understanding: This feature enables ARCore to see and understand both the environment and the positions of the different surfaces it comes across, including flat surfaces, ceilings, walls, or even inclined surfaces, to enable it to place the virtual objects correctly.
- Light Estimation: ARCore is able to capture the level of lighting in the environment and then make the virtual objects corresponding to the lighting conditions of the environment for a better experience.
Unlike some of the augmented reality development platforms out there, ARCore is quite simple to use, with clear tutorials for beginners and professionals as well. Google even offers a 15-hour tutorial to enable anyone who is new to AR app development to get into it easily and get started; anyone can build AR apps using this framework.
4. Unreal Engine: A Convenient AR Framework for Interactive Development
One of the most popular game engines preferred by AR game developers, Unreal Engine, is the master of creating first-class, close-to-life augmented reality applications facilitated for cross-platform development for both iOS and Android.
Key Features of Unreal Engine:
- Cross-Platform Development: The most striking thing about Unreal Engine is that it allows for the development of applications for both iOS and Android at once. This makes it very effective for developers who wish to reach out to a large populace of the world without having to repost the same game on different platforms.
- Cost-Effective for Developers: Unreal Engine is free for development, meaning that the tool can be used by developers regardless of their level of expertise. So, if an app begins to generate more than $1 million in monthly revenue, an owner has to pay only 5%, which makes it possible for startups, indie developers, etc.
- All-in-One Framework: This is a flexible toolkit that covers almost all the issues that a developer may face when working on an AR app. The UE holds all the features like 3D modeling and texturing, VFX, coding, animating and testing, and so on in a single space.
- High-Quality Content Creation: Unreal engine is specifically famous for presenting augmented reality models that look real in most instances. It can allow developers to create various forms and shapes of content for AR applications with high visual components that are needed for applications in certain areas.
Frameworks make the difference
Choosing a framework – the subtlety in 2025 between creating an application that offers mediocre augmented reality-related experiences and an application that provides exceptional, smooth experiences, is the choice of the framework. In choosing a tool that fits your project perfectly, you are setting the stage for developing meaningful, tailored experiences that enhance client needs.
While the landscape of AR continues to progress, the unprecedented level of attention devoted to each framework will put you in a position to effectively apprehend, correctly employ, and progress toward your marketing and advertising goals while simultaneously maintaining the integrity, the necessary realism, and interactivity that the notion of augmented reality entails in its innovative development.
So if you are planning to learn or upgrade your skills, MAGES Institute offers a range of advanced AR/VR courses for aspirants like you. Get in touch with us.