Device Setup for AR
Setting up an Android device for building an AR app with unity isn’t bad at all. There are only a few simple easy steps.
First steps are on the actual android device itself. It needs to be put into developer mode and USB debugging needs to be allowed. To do this access your device settings and click on the build number for your device over and over until it says you are in developer mode. I know it sounds stupid, but this is how to do it.
To enable the USB debugging you need to open the new developer options menu and it will be a tab in there that just needs to be set to enabled.
With that done now Unity needs to be configured. Go ahead and plug in your device to your computer. In the run device tab select refresh and then select your device you connected.
Get Devan Morgan’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Next open the player settings menu. Here a few things need to be changed. Firstly the only graphics api that can be used is OpenGLES3. Vulkan isn’t compatible with the AR components so that means get rid of Vulkan.
Now scroll down until you find the Scripting Backend options. Here it is set to mono by default. Change it to IL2CPP. Below that there is Minimum and Target API Level options. Make sure that Minimum API Level is set to Android 7.0. Anything less than that doesn’t support AR. Below that there are options for Target Architectures. Uncheck ARMv7 and instead check ARM64.
Now with that done return to the build menu and either build it to just your computer or build and run it to the device. I would recommend building it straight to the device to test it. You will still have an APK for the app on your computer, but it will go ahead and also put it on the phone for you saving you a step.
