ARKit Point Cloud Mode

This feature is in beta — if you experience errors please report them.

ARKit Point Cloud captures every human figure ARKit can see as a live point-cloud silhouette, using person segmentation cross-referenced against the LiDAR depth. It is a Pro feature and requires an iPhone Pro model with the LiDAR scanner (the same hardware requirement as LiDAR Mode and Mesh Cloud). It is capture-only — there is no NDI or OSC output; the point cloud stays on the phone as a photo or video you save to your library.

How it works

Each scan is transient and world-locked: ARKit’s person segmentation masks out everyone in frame, the LiDAR depth places those masked pixels in 3D space, and the result is rebuilt as a point cloud fixed in the room — not attached to the camera. Every new scan fully replaces the previous one rather than accumulating on top of it, so what you see is always this instant’s figures, not a build-up of every pass.

The live screen and its buttons

The screen shows the point cloud live as ARKit tracks it. Pause freezes the last captured frame in place while the camera feed itself keeps running, so you can physically walk around the frozen cloud and view it from other angles before Resume picks the scan back up. Reset clears the current frame outright. A torch toggle is available for scanning in dark rooms, where the camera image alone would otherwise struggle.

Capturing

The shutter behaves like the other modes: tap for a photo, hold to start a video and tap again to stop — both save straight to Photos.

Settings bar

Swipe up from the bottom of the screen (or tap the Settings chevron) to open the live settings bar — roughly 60 parameters across 13 groups:

  • Scan — capture interval, depth sync, turn-reject + limit, shake-reject + limit.
  • Cloud — points budget, quantize/voxel size, point size, 13 point shapes, wobble, frame blend.
  • Color — Spectrum / Static / RGB camera sampling, hue, speed, gradient, saturation.
  • Clean — Apple depth filter, confidence, smooth, accumulate, fill, stabilize, upsample, grazing, edge, despeckle, de-float, keep-largest.
  • Trail — length, decay, recede, spread.
  • Echo — count, gap, dim, push.
  • Light Paint — amount, band, fade, hardness, motion gate.
  • Motion — velocity glow + rainbow, age fade, edge dim.
  • Sculpt — frames, lock.
  • Riptide — amount, push, respond, reach.
  • Vanish — amount, threshold, hold, reveal.
  • Gravity — rate, force, life, scatter, drift.
  • View — camera passthrough, cam dim, floor grid, torch, steady pause.

Needs

ARKit Point Cloud requires an iPhone Pro model with the LiDAR scanner and is gated behind Pro. It has no streaming output (no NDI, no OSC) — capture only, to Photos.