A SOFTWARE house is celebrating a "breakthrough" in its proprietary technology – 4K resolution in browser-based augmented reality.

Aircards, based in Newcastle but with a virtual office in Teesside, has developed software to allow adaptive streaming of high-resolution video content – 4K – in web-based augmented reality (AR).

Augmented reality is an overlay of information or animations to real-world environments.

This often relies on phone applications but Aircards delivers it through browsers like Google Chrome, making AR more accessible and user-friendly.

The proprietary software, now called 4K-AR, uses a similar approach to buffering video on platforms such as Youtube and Netflix, effectively eliminating the limit of video duration for content and significantly reducing experience load times.

Content delivery has previously restricted 4K in AR as the large file size would slow it down.

The breakthrough, which took the team six months, unlocks higher-quality WebAR experiences and boost awareness for the wider industry, attracting enterprises that hadn’t heard of Web AR, or who were put off by video quality constraints.

Matt Watson, head of growth marketing at Aircards, said: "This is an important development for Aircards.

"Our research and development focus for 2020 has been expanding upon our proprietary technology so that our current and future clients be on the cutting-edge. We’re constantly innovating and we think that’s what makes us stand out in the industry.

"Its development was pretty special. 4K video content within WebAR was something that, in theory, should be possible, so it’s awesome to watch our dev team do their magic and bring this technology to life.

"Your mind certainly starts running at the possibilities and the creative direction that this technology can be taken. I’m extremely excited to see what brands do with 4K-AR within their own experiences."

The firm's chief operating officer, Michael Watson, reiterated the importance of the development.

He said: "We’re proud to continually lead the charge on innovation within the Web AR space. Our team has developed an approach to enable adaptive streaming of high-resolution video content up to 4K in AR.”

“Our proprietary software uses a similar approach to buffering video on platforms such as Youtube and Netflix, effectively eliminating the limit of video duration for content in AR and reducing initial page load times by over 10 times.”

Aircards' 4K-AR uses adaptive bitrate streaming, meaning it downloads video segments during playback and can adjust video quality in the middle of a stream as network conditions change during the experience.

Connectivity plays a key role in the delivery of bandwidth-heavy technology.

The marketing boss added: "While the advent of 5G will doubtless improve loading times and network capacity, we’ve developed this 4K-AR offering specifically to deliver outstanding performance in the current 3G and 4G environment.

"This technology is compatible across iOS and Android devices and does not require 5G broadband to function. 4K-AR utilises adaptive streaming, allowing for Web AR experiences to be viewed on connections as low as 3G.

"It recognises if the connection isn’t capable of streaming 4K, and dynamically adjusts the video quality in real-time as network conditions change while viewing the Web AR experience."