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Simone Amico
Simone Amico

Reputation: 31

How to turn off/on AR in an augmented reality app using ARkit?

I'm starting to learn how to use ARkit and I would like to add a button like the one in the Pokemon go application where you can switch between AR ON (with a model into the real world) and AR OFF (without using a camera, having just the 3D model with a fixed background). Are there any easy way to do it?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1748

Answers (1)

rickster
rickster

Reputation: 126107

Another good example of what you're asking about is the AR Quick Look feature in iOS 12 (see WWDC video or this article): when you quick look a USDZ file you get a generic white-background preview where you can spin the object around with touch gestures, and you can seamlessly switch back and forth between that and a real-world AR camera view.

You've asked about ARKit but not said anything about which renderer you're using. Remember, ARKit itself only tells you about the real world and provides live camera imagery, but it's up to you to display that image and whatever 3D overlay content you want — either by using a 3D graphics framework like SceneKit, Unity, or Unreal, or by creating your own renderer with Metal. So the rest of this answer is renderer-agnostic.

There are two main differences between an AR view and a non-AR 3D view of the same content:

  • An AR view displays the live camera feed in the background; a non-AR view doesn't.

  • 3D graphics frameworks typically involve some notion of a virtual camera that determines your view of the 3D scene — by moving the camera, you change what part of the scene you see and what angle you see it from. In AR, the virtual camera is made to match the movement of the real device.

Hence, to switch between AR and non-AR 3D views of the same content, you just need to manipulate those differences in whatever way your renderer allows:

  1. Hide the live camera feed. If your renderer lets you directly turn it off, do that. Otherwise you can put some foreground content in front of it, like an opaque skybox and/or a plane for your 3D models to rest on.

  2. Directly control the camera yourself and/or provide touch/gesture controls for the user to manipulate the camera. If your renderer supports multiple cameras in the scene and choosing which one is currently used for rendering, you can keep and switch between the ARKit-managed camera and your own.

Upvotes: 1

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