SnapAR: Storing snapshots for quick viewpoint switching in hand-held augmented reality

Abstract

Many tasks require a user to move between various locations within an environment to get different perspectives. This can take significant time and effort, especially when the user must switch among those viewpoints repeatedly. We explore augmented reality interaction techniques that involve taking still pictures of a physical scene using a tracked hand-held magic lens and seamlessly switching between augmenting either the live view or one of the still views, without needing to physically revisit the snapshot locations. We describe our optical-marker-tracking-based implementation and how we represent and switch among snapshots. To determine the effectiveness of our techniques, we developed a test application that lets its user view physical and virtual objects from different viewpoints.