Page best practices

How to choose a target object

When you choose the target object to augment, consider these tips:

• Choose an object that is planar (flat), such as posters, billboards, flyers, book covers, CD covers, paintings, etc.
• DO NOT choose an object that is dynamic in nature. Things like news tickers and cats should be avoided.
• The system recognizes your object based on its defining characteristics.  Be sure that the defining characteristics of your object are NOT:
  • Transparency
  • Shiny surfaces
  • Repetitive patterns
  • Only text

Poor object choices

• Repetitive pattern

The pattern of this table will not be trackable.  Equally poor:  brick walls.

• Indistinguishable Characteristics (including AR markers and QR codes)

There are not enough distinguishing characteristics in this logo to properly track. Please NOTE that AR markers and QR codes will not be recognized in Layar Vision.

• Animate objects

Cats move. We cannot account for that with our algorithm. Besides, why mess with nature?

Creating/Taking a picture of your target object

Once you choose your target object, you will want to submit the best page possible.  You can follow these tips:

• No reflections or transparency
• No motion blur
• Image contains the complete object, so no occlusions or crops unless it is a dynamic part of the object (such as text).
• Sufficiently high resolution of the object (i.e. not too small in taken image)
• Sufficient and consistent lighting (Be sure that object is not shadowed)
• The image is a frontal view of the object

Good & Bad examples

Good Example:

This Page has characteristics that will give the best results: clear lines, variety of features, excellent image quality, text that is not going to change.

Bad Examples:

• Transparency

We should start over with this picture.  The angle is slightly off.  Our flyer is behind glass, resulting in some glare.  Also, we should crop out the background room.

• Blurry 

We should hold our hand steady when taking our page.  The motion blur in each of these images is too high (some to the extreme) to be considered a good page.

• Flash

This one was taken at the right angle, but the glare from the flash will yield poor results when the user tries to track it in real life.

• Poor angle

Finally, be sure to take the picture from the front of the object if possible.  Our system accounts for some variation of angle by the user, but it is best to start with a page from the front.

• Lack of enough details

Please make sure to add enough visuals to the image you are going to use as Page. The picture below shows a bad example of such Page.

                  Bad example

Sometimes you might want to create a set of pages which will have similar look and feel. Please try to minimize the similar part as much as possible. For instance, there are two pages and half part of the pages is the same. The tracking performance will be pretty bad when the camera is pointing at that similar part since Layar Vision is confused as what to render.

                   Bad example - too similar content

• Print with lots of text

When augmenting an article with lots of text, instead of making the entire page a page in the Creator or publishing site, it is better to only use the part with lots of colors and features. For instance, it is better to only use the upper part of the article below as a page to upload in the Creator or publishing site instead of the entire page.

                    Suggest only using the topper part of the page with graphics.

                                     Bad example: mainly contain texts

We also hosted a webinar where our product and R&D departments provided a few more examples of good vs. bad pages. For additional tips, please see our FAQ page for Layar Vision.