3D augmented reality on mobile: AIR versus Unity3D

hi,

I am doing some research on choosing the right technology to build a 3D augmented reality app for tablets, could be iOS as well as Android.

A 3D model of say 100.000 polygons should be projected on a marker and also be manipulated with a configurator, meaning animating and changing textures/materials.

Let me describe the technologies that I am thinking of and the pros and cons that I see. Hopefully you can reflect on my thoughts.

The platforms I’ve seen:

- Adobe AIR with a 3D lib like Away3D and FlarToolkit

- Unity with Vuforia

- HTML5/JS, for instance with PhoneGap and Wikitude

For now I only looked at Unity and AIR.

The list is based on an initial quick search, my gut feeling and and my - sometimes somewhat outdated - experience with these aspects. This especially goes for the items with asterisks*** behind it.

-Pros Unity with Vuforia:

Good technical support

Good performance

Out of the box development , drag and drop

-Cons Unity and Vuforia

Costs software

Limited 2D UI possibilities compared to AIR***

Back end integration*

-Pros AIR

Easy back end integration

Fast and flexible development of user interfaces

-Cons AIR

Performance***

Minimal technical support AIR with FlarToolkit

My specific questions:

-How easy is it at the moment to build slick, fluid 2D user interface screens in Unity?

-How easy is it to integrate back end into Unity mobile, like saving and collecting data to/form a web server?

-How good is AIR mobile on performance when projecting 3D on video?

Please feel free to shoot at this short list of pros and cons, I’m not sure at all they are correct and I’m not trying to take sides for any of the technologies above or misinform other forum visitors

And any other ideas are of course very welcome (I also posted this on the Unity forum).

Thanks,

Jeff.