Table 3.

Best practices for placement and viewing of augmented reality images.

Problem	Description	Solution(s)
Image placement	Difficulty for the app in locking an image into place on a surface	Use a surface with some variation or texture (eg, woodgrain) rather than glossy or uniformly white or black. When choosing where to place the image, try to have the edge of the surface (eg, table) in the screen. Do not have the smartphone camera lens close to and perpendicular to the plane onto which the image is to be placed. Do not place the object with the camera lens facing directly down (phone looking directly down on the object). If there are other objects on the table, do not attempt to place the augmented reality object too near the real object or the app may have difficulty identifying the correct plane and the augmented reality object may “jump on” the item.
Image stability	Shaking, moving, floating away	Do not have the smartphone camera lens close to and perpendicular to the plane onto which the image has been placed. Do not move the smartphone lens too close to the image (ie, so that it appears one is millimeters away from the object).
Light and shadow	Light reflection looking unnatural or static Lack of shadow or shadow that does not move naturally as the object is viewed from different angles.	Lighting conditions in the room in which the image was viewed appeared to affect the realism of the light and shadow on the object. Very bright rooms highlighted any deficiencies in shadowing of the object. Items that often reflect light (eg, metal pen) were more likely to have pixilation problems in the areas that were meant to reflect light.
Sizing	Image, once placed, is either much too large or small.	Scale appears to be affected by identifying the size of the plane through edges, intersecting walls, etc. Sizing problems were more common on large uniform surfaces where edges or walls were not in the screen view.