Augmented Reality and Unity without tracking

Hi there,

I have a question about the many augmented reality plugins and how they work in Unity.

I am trying to develop a augmented reality app on android without a tracking point by using some sort of positioning algorithms. While I'm still working on the positional algorithm, I am trying to set the project up for Augmented reality.

As a first attempt, I tried to use the google carboard sdk project with a close approximation of the room layout I am in built into the scene. I then applied the camera image onto a cube texture and placed in front of the camera position and made it a child so you always saw the camera image. Not surprisingly all I saw was the camera footage, no overlays of my virtual room onto the real room.

So my questions is do the AR plugins (Vuforia etc) allow you place the camera footage into the background and allow the virtual room (the unity scene) to be ontop?

I am aware that this is going to be really fiddly to do as differing fovs will make it complicated and it just being really complicated but any ideas and thoughts would be most appreciated.

Many Thanks

James