In Unity Vuforia is blocked when Firebase is installed and build on Android

[ofir-b-HDEG]

Summarize the bug:
In Unity, when installing Firebase and building for Android, Vuforia is blocked (and probably ARCore). This is happening only when running on Android devices. Not in editor or iOS.

Observed problem
Checkout this repo. In the repo there are two interesting branches vuforia-working and vuforia-not-working.
When you checkout to vuforia-working and building for Android, Vuforia should work, and you could see the camera feed when running on an Android device.
And you probably already guess, when checking-out vuforia-not-working and building for Android, Vuforia will not work and you'll experience a very black screen.
If Vuforia is still working when building from vuforia-not-working, try a clean build instead of a regular build. You might be building on fumes :)
The only difference between the two branches is that on vuforia-not-working I installed Firebase App (Core) package, and on vuforia-working only External Dependency Manager for Unity is installed.
You can also download the builds from here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qQx9uuLZd4EMfi0pUv8nQXZKG4P_DB-3?usp=sharing

Expected result
Vuforia should work and a live camera feed should fill the screen, instead of a black screen.

Other observations
Share any other observations that you made while experiencing the bug.

Reproducible steps
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create a Unity project. I used Unity 2022.3.43f1 with Universal 3D Core preset project.
2. Install Vuforia from https://developer.vuforia.com. You may need to create an account in order to download. I used version 10.28.4.
3. Install External Dependency Manager for Unity. I used version 1.2.183.
4. Install Firebase App (Core). I used version 12.5.0.
5. Enable auto-resolution and gradleTemplate.properties in the dialogs that popup, and make sure External Dependency Manager is properly resolved.
6. Build a clean build for Android.
7. Install and run the build on an Android device and allow camera permissions.

Affected Vuforia Engine version:
Tested on v10.25.4 and v10.28.4.

Affected platform:

• Tested Workstation OS: Windows
• Platform: Unity (Tested on v2022.3.43f1)

Tested device:

• Name: Samsung Galaxy A53
• Model: SM-A536E/DS
• OS: [Android 13]

Thanks in advance 🙏

[ptc-emaggio]

Thanks for the report. If ARCore is blocked it is quite possible Vuforia will try to fall back to Android native Camera API and there is a known issue (#149) on some devices when ARCore is not in use which will get fixed with 10.29 release. Is the problem reproducible on a different Android device?

[ofir-b-HDEG]

Thank you for your response!

And thank you for explaining about the known issue.

I have tested now on the three Android devices at my disposal, and the results are:

• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G, model SM-A536E: Vuforia blocked - Black screen
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S9, model SM-X710: Vuforia working - Camera feed
• Asus Zenfone 9, model ASUS-AI2202: Vuforia working - Camera feed

If you have more devices on your end, you can test it using the build I made here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1noUhxvBxG_OTtZlriXuPbSbKwB4eJSQI/view?usp=drive_link

Do you know when will 10.29 version be released?

[ptc-thesbyro]

Hi,

The 10.29 release should arrive in the January time frame. We'll post here once it is live.

[ptc-emaggio]

Thanks @ofir-b-HDEG for testing. It is very likely the problem is the same as #149. Beside the eventual fix to the fallback (non-ARCore) mode, it is concerning that ARCore does not work with firebase. ARCore is required by some Vuforia Engine features (e.g., Area Targets) and it is in general beneficial to tracking stability. We will have a look at the issue but this might be related to ARCore also using Firebase and causing a conflict with Firebase App core.