PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) today announced its ThingWorx® Studio Augmented Reality (AR) technology will be updated with Vuforia® 7 software, bringing with it major advancements in the ability to attach digital content to everyday objects and surfaces, as well as support for Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore.

ThingWorx Studio is a rapid AR authoring environment that enables industrial stakeholders to quickly create and share scalable augmented reality experiences without writing any code. The easy reuse of existing 3D geometries and animated sequences with ThingWorx Studio enables users to reduce the cost and complexity of content creation for compelling AR experiences. Model Targets, available in the upcoming Vuforia 7 release and supported by ThingWorx Studio, will enable the recognition and tracking of objects based on shape from pre-existing 3D models, and will not require a marker. This high-fidelity object recognition provides more accurate positioning so 3D content can be aligned with greater precision for use cases where step-by-step instructions and product data are overlaid onto the physical product.

With support for Vuforia 7, ThingWorx Studio will make use of Vuforia Ground Plane, a new capability for placing content on the ground, floor or tabletop. Because Ground Plane leverages ARKit and ARCore through a technology known as Vuforia Fusion, ThingWorx Studio will enable users to create robust and reliable AR experiences across a broader range of industrial environments. Ground Plane will be an exceptional solution for industrial use cases that do not require a physical product such as a virtual design review or a visualization tool for sales and marketing. ThingWorx Studio enables industrial enterprise users to quickly create scalable AR experiences that improve time to revenue, reduce costs and complexity and provide enterprise scalability.

PTC is offering industrial enterprises a preview of Model Targets and ARKit support within ThingWorx Studio and ThingWorx View as a first step toward broader device and OS coverage. Experiences authored in ThingWorx Studio are accessed via ThingWorx View, a single, enterprise-wide viewer application that delivers rich, 3D user experiences for smart phones, tablets and wearable devices. Available now, content creators can leverage the camera processors and motion sensors in devices running iOS11 to create highly- immersive, spatial AR interactions more quickly and easily. ThingWorx View is free to download and available for Windows, iOS and Android devices.

“PTC is committed to fueling the proliferation of augmented reality applications into the mainstream, and our support for frameworks such as ARKit and ARCore demonstrates this commitment,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO, PTC. “With an ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of AR developers, we believe PTC is well-positioned to be a catalyst for the development of content needed to leverage ARKit and ARCore, especially for the industrial market.”

In addition to the new Model Targets and Ground Plane functionality to be incorporated, ThingWorx Studio and ThingWorx View will soon incorporate remote presence capabilities that provide greater efficiency for a variety of mission-critical industrial use cases. The result is an innovative communication experience enabled by the Vuforia Chalk™ application. It allows people in different locations to share a live view of the same environment, and draw simple annotations, which appear anchored to objects and surfaces in the environment, as if drawn on the objects and surfaces themselves. These capabilities will be available with ThingWorx View later this year.

Additional Resources

• ThingWorx Studio Free Trial Program
• ThingWorx Studio

About PTC (NASDAQ: PTC)
PTC has the most robust Internet of Things technology in the world. In 1986 we revolutionized digital 3D design, and in 1998 were first to market with Internet-based PLM. Now our leading IoT and AR platform and field-proven solutions bring together the physical and digital worlds to reinvent the way you create, operate, and service products. With PTC, global manufacturers and an ecosystem of partners and developers can capitalize on the promise of the IoT today and drive the future of innovation.

The timing of any product release, including any features or functionality, is subject to change at PTC’s discretion.

PTC, ThingWorx, Vuforia, Chalk, and the PTC logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.