LiDAR

Apple put a LiDAR Scanner on the iPad Pro and the Pro iPhones, from the iPhone 12 Pro in 2020 through the current iPhone 17 Pro, and only on those Pro models. It fires invisible light and times the return at the photon level, building a fast depth map of everything up to about five metres away, indoors or out. For AR this means near-instant plane detection, better occlusion so virtual objects can be hidden behind real ones, and accurate measurement, which is exactly what powers Apple’s RoomPlan room scanning and a wave of 3D-scanning apps. Under the hood it feeds ARKit.

Important for the web: Web AR does not require LiDAR. Apple Quick Look and Google Scene Viewer run on the vast majority of phones with no depth sensor; LiDAR just makes placement on Pro devices a touch faster and steadier. Your customers do not need a Pro iPhone to view your product in AR, and PausAR Viewer serves the same GLB and USDZ to every device, with or without LiDAR. Where LiDAR does help is capture: a Pro device with a scanning app, or Apple’s RoomPlan, can turn a real object or room into a 3D model that you then refine and publish.