This page concerns the Vuforia Engine API version 9.8 and earlier. It has been deprecated and will no longer be actively updated.
The External Camera feature is a part of the Vuforia Engine Driver Framework. The External Camera defines all the specifics required for Vuforia Engine to access external image sources.
Prior to the introduction of the External Camera feature, Vuforia Engine internally handled camera frame data acquisition. With External Camera, developers can define how Vuforia Engine acquires frame data. The External Camera must implement several APIs which Vuforia Engine uses to access the external system. For more information on how to create your own External Camera, refer to Creating a Custom Driver.
Only vision-based features are currently supported through the External Camera feature. These are all Vuforia features, but DeviceTracker only works using FUSION_PROVIDER_VUFORIA_VISION_ONLY. As a result, Ground Plane ceases to work and ModelTargets operate less robustly.
Vuforia Engine provides two samples which demonstrate how to access image data from external systems. The File Driver loads a sequence of images from device storage. The UVC Camera Driver allows developers to access USB cameras from within Android.