Android Studio is a development environment for coding and deploying Android applications. As such, it contains the core set of tools we will need for building and deploying our applications to an Android device. After all, ARCore needs to be installed to a physical device in order to test. Follow the given instructions to install Android Studio for your development environment:

1. Open a browser on your development computer to https://developer.android.com/studio.
2. Click on the green DOWNLOAD ANDROID STUDIO button.
3. Agree to the Terms and Conditions and follow the instructions to download.
4. After the file has finished downloading, run the installer for your system.
5. Follow the instructions on the installation dialog to proceed. If you are installing on Windows, ensure that you set a memorable installation path that you can easily find later, as shown...

Of course, in order to work with or build any ARCore applications, we will need to install the SDK for our chosen platform. Follow the given instructions to install the ARCore SDK:

1. Open Command Prompt or Windows shell and navigate to the Android (C:\Android on Windows) installation folder.
2. Enter the following command:

git clone https://github.com/google-ar/arcore-android-sdk.git

3. This will download and install the ARCore SDK into a new folder called arcore-android...

Now that we have all the tedious installation stuff out of the way, it's time to build and deploy a sample app to your Android device. Let's begin by jumping back to Android Studio and following the given steps:

1. Select the Open an existing Android Studio project option from the Welcome to Android Studio window. If you accidentally closed Android Studio, just launch it again.
2. Navigate and select the Android\arcore-android-sdk\samples\java_arcore_hello_ar folder, as follows:

3. Click on OK. If this is your first time running this project, you will encounter some dependency errors, such as the one here:

4. In order to resolve the errors, just click on the link at the bottom of the error message. This will open a dialog, and you will be prompted to accept and then download the required...

Now, let's take a closer look at the main pieces of the app by digging into the source code. Follow the given steps to open the app's code in Android Studio:

1. From the Project window, find and double-click on the HelloArActivity, as shown:

2. After the source is loaded, scroll through the code to the following section:

private void showLoadingMessage() {
 runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
  @Override
  public void run() {
   mLoadingMessageSnackbar = Snackbar.make(
    HelloArActivity.this.findViewById(android.R.id.content),
    "Searching for surfaces...",
    Snackbar.LENGTH_INDEFINITE);
   mLoadingMessageSnackbar.getView().setBackgroundColor(0xbf323232);
   mLoadingMessageSnackbar.show();
  }
 });
}

3. Note the highlighted text—"Searching for surfaces..". Select this text and change it to &quot...

In this chapter, we started our exploration of ARCore by building and deploying an AR app for the Android platform. We did this by first installing Android Studio, which will be our go-to Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Android development. Then, we installed the ARCore SDK and ARCore service onto our test mobile device. Next, we loaded up the sample ARCore app and patiently installed the various required build and deploy dependencies. After a successful build, we deployed the app to our device and tested. Finally, we tested making a minor code change and then deployed another version of the app. Doing this assured us that our Android development environment was fully functional, and we are now ready to proceed to the rest of the book.

Our journey continues in the next chapter, where we will build and deploy an ARCore app with the Unity platform. Unity...