ARKE

ARKe is an open-source augmented reality framework designed to facilitate the creation of AR applications across mobile, desktop, and embedded platforms. It provides a modular stack that includes a computer-vision core, a scene graph, and a rendering pipeline, with cross-language bindings for C++, C#, and JavaScript.

The architecture consists of a core engine that runs on multiple backends, a set of platform adapters (for iOS, Android, Windows, and Web), and optional plugins for tracking, mapping, and networking. ARKe supports marker-based and markerless tracking, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), plane detection, object recognition, lighting estimation, and anchor-based content placement. It can be extended with physics, shaders, and custom rendering pipelines, and can interoperate with native AR toolkits via adapters.

ARKe is designed for collaboration and education, with tooling for debugging, profiling, and testing AR scenes. It has an active community with contributions from researchers and developers, and is distributed under a permissive open-source license. The project emphasizes cross-platform portability, performance tuning across devices, and clear API design to facilitate rapid prototyping and production deployment.

Reception has noted its modularity and vendor-agnostic approach, while users sometimes report variability in performance and the need for device-specific optimizations. ARKe remains part of ongoing efforts to standardize cross-platform AR development and to enable interoperable AR experiences across devices.