Blog · Native mobile apps
Shipping ARKit Without a LiDAR Requirement
CodeLoop Studio ·
Requiring LiDAR is the comfortable choice when you build an AR app. Depth data arrives clean, occlusion looks impressive, and your demo never embarrasses you. It also tells a large share of iPhone owners that the app is not for them.
RoomFit runs on ARKit plane detection. Scene reconstruction is used when the device supports it, mostly to make wall placement behave — it is an upgrade, not a gate.
What LiDAR actually buys you here
LiDAR helps with three things: fast plane discovery, occlusion (real objects hiding virtual ones), and depth-based measurement of unknown geometry. The third one matters if your app measures the world.
RoomFit does not measure the object. The user types the dimensions, so the app already knows the size to the millimetre it was given — dimensions in, geometry out. What remains is anchoring that volume to a floor or a wall, and plane detection does that on any AR-capable iPhone.
Where the accuracy really goes
Bad input beats bad hardware. A depth typed as 40 instead of 90 ruins the answer on the best sensor on the market.
Lighting and texture. A flat, dark, glossy floor is hard for feature tracking with or without LiDAR. The fix is an onboarding hint to move the phone slowly, not a hardware requirement.
Walls are the hard surface. Vertical planes need a bit more patience from the user. Where reconstruction exists we lean on it; where it does not, the wall art and TV flows still work.
Occlusion is cosmetic for this job. A sofa that visually overlaps a real armchair still tells you the width does not work.
So the app states plainly that AR is a planning aid and that critical measurements belong to a tape measure. That honesty is cheaper than a support queue.
Test on the phone people own
We QA on older AR-capable devices, not only the newest Pro. It is the same release discipline as shipping to the App Store: the build has to behave on the hardware in your users' pockets, and the review notes have to describe what the app really does.
Broader mobile work is custom mobile app development. If your AR idea depends on real dimensions rather than a 3D catalogue, the RoomFit approach probably transfers — read the case study or get in touch.