How can support consumers on both iOS and Google platforms? And what happens if they utilize non-ARKit/ARCore devices?
The recommended solution would be to leverage Google’s free Model-Viewer web component which runs responsively on all browsers on smartphones, tablets, and desktop. Per a Google developer announcement in February 2019⁴ which succinctly captures the goal:
The viewer should support progressive enhancement for performance, rendering quality and use cases on all devices ranging from older, lower-powered smartphones to newer devices that support augmented reality. It should stay up to date with current technologies. It should be performant and accessible. However, building such a viewer requires specialty 3D programming skills, and can be a challenge for web developers that want to host their own models instead of using a third-party hosting service…
To help with that, we’re introducing the
<model-viewer>web component which lets you declaratively add a 3D model to a web page, while hosting the model on your own site. The web component supports responsive design and use cases like augmented reality on some devices, and we’re adding features for accessibility, rendering quality, and interactivity. The goal of the component is making it easy to add 3D models to your website without being on top of the latest changes in the underlying technology and platforms.
Breaking down what happens behind-the-scenes once you include Model-Viewer on your website:
1. Validating the user’s device meet the minimum AR viewing requirements.
As previously mentioned, AR viewing is available on Apple devices with ARKit enabled iOS 11 + (full device list support here) and Android mobile devices running Android 7.0 and above.
If the device doesn’t meet these specifications, you can implement a fallback which triggers a non-AR view where the object displays as a 3D model. In this way, users can still engage with the virtual product thru zoom and rotation while on desktop. You can play around a sandbox experience of the fallback trigger on https://modelviewer.dev/.
Model-Viewer Sandbox
2. Performing a check on the user’s OS and serve the respective iOS or Android experience.
If AR viewing is enabled on the device, you need to have 2 file formats of the SAME asset — a .usdz for iOS devices and either .glb or .gltf for Android. If their source device category is iPhone, the 3D asset will launch ARKit’s QuickLook or if they’re on a Samsung S9, the asset will launch in Google Play Services for AR.
