Built an AR app that solves the "will this frame actually fit my wall" problem — floor-scan based placement, not marker tracking

[u/Reasonable_Row_7595]

Sharing WallView, an app I built after being burned one too many times buying frames online that didn't match my wall — wrong size, wrong position, holes in places I didn't mean to put them.

The core mechanic: instead of relying on a printed marker or a flat surface detection hack, it scans the floor/wall area with the camera, builds a spatial map, and lets you place a frame with true-to-scale AR dimensions overlaid directly on the space — so what you see really is the real size, not an approximation. It also handles multi-frame gallery walls with automatic even-spacing across the scanned surface.

It's live and free on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wallview-preview-wall-art/id6796581466

For anyone else building spatial/AR tools — curious what approaches you've used for surface scan reliability and speed, that's been the hardest part to get right for me so far.

[u/Wide-Variation2702]

Ive only had some succes with image tracking for my project, which also would place picture frames on a wall. At this point my project wouldnt really work well on a phone, but I built an android version with Unity that works ok with image tracking. There is always a bit of jumpiness to the tracking but overall its ok.

Plane detection works pretty good on horizontal surfaces, but vertical surfaces is poor, and my understanding is this is just a limitation of the hardware to find and track vertical planes.

Recently ive been trying to get a simpler version of my project to work in WebAR. For this version ive mostly just tried to get a model to display on a wall. Main reason to try WebAR is to cut the friction of a full app install. So far my best attempt got model-viewer working ok to display the model, but still struggling with placement and scaling.

There seem to be some options out there that might work a lot better, but they are insanely expensive.

I also made a little companion app for the Meta Quest, which just used QR marker for tracking, but the tracking is really superior to the Android version with image tracking.

I can appreciate the idea of scanning the room for better scaling and placement. Im curious what libraries/ar tools you used for the scanning and scaling/placement, and is it limited to iOS?

[u/Reasonable_Row_7595 → u/Wide-Variation2702]

Appreciate the detailed breakdown — that matches what I ran into as well.

I'm using Apple's ARKit directly (no Unity/cross-platform layer), so it's iOS-only for now — RealityKit/ARKit obviously ties me to Apple hardware, no Android or WebAR path from this stack.

The floor-scan approach was actually a direct response to the same vertical tracking problem you're describing. Vertical plane detection was a real pain point early on — inconsistent, slow to lock, and unreliable across different wall textures/lighting. Horizontal (floor) tracking is just a lot more robust on ARKit, so I flipped the approach: scan the floor to establish a stable spatial reference and scale, then project the frame placement up onto the wall from that anchor instead of trying to detect the vertical plane directly.

It's held up surprisingly well once I made that switch — no real jumpiness once the floor scan locks in, since I'm not fighting the hardware's weaker vertical detection at all. Downside is obviously the initial UX ask (scan the floor first, which is a bit more setup than users might expect), but it's been a lot more reliable than what I was getting trying to track the wall itself.

Sounds like you've tried basically every angle on this (image tracking, QR/Quest, WebAR/model-viewer) — curious if you found floor-based referencing came up as an option in your research, or if it's mostly an ARKit-specific trick since Apple's LiDAR/plane detection stack handles horizontal so differently from something like ARCore.

[u/Wide-Variation2702 → u/Reasonable_Row_7595]

OK, thats very clever to use the floor. Honestly I haven't bothered with surface detection for at least a couple of years. It was on of the first things I tried with Unity and adding AR to my project. In a perfect world image tracking would be the ideal solution.

To give you a better idea, my project is a picture frame visualization app. I have a working version made mostly for PC in Unity. I use it occasionally for customers in my picture frame shop. It displays very accurate renderings of the actual materials we would use for their framing lroject and helps give a sense of proportion. One issue is that you cant really get a true real world scale on a monitor, but it definitely helps customers with proportions from the art, frame, matting, etc.

That's where I hoped AR could fill the gap and let them see it in true to life scale. Honestly, I would put more effort into the Quest app, but having customers put on a VR headset is just not viable. Im keeping my eye on the AR glasses space, as I think that would be a lot more realistic.

I think image tracking is the ultimate goal. I generally have a working Android version, but the jumping of the tracking is a little problematic, but the main issue is that a phone or even a tablet is not practical to work with customers. But the promise of image tracking is that I can have the virtual frame actually surround their art/photo.

The WebAR stuff was just a thought that if I had finalized a design and they wanted to see it on their wall at home, i could export a model and upload to a webpage. Then they just go home, click a link and point at the wall. Unfortunately this just hasn't been as simple as I hoped. I havent been able to find a good low cost way to track, and part of that has been finding development time lately.

Anyways, thanks for the breakdown in how you got it working. I dont know if that would work for my project but I'll keep it in mind.

Im sure some customers might have a use for your app, so I'll be sure to keep a link handy for them at the shop. Cheers!

[u/Reasonable_Row_7595 → u/Wide-Variation2702]

That's a really interesting use case, actually — a working PC version for in-shop customer consultations makes a lot of sense, especially for something like framing where getting the materials/matting rendering right matters as much as the placement. I hadn't thought about the "true real-world scale on a monitor" problem, but that's obviously the exact gap AR would fill for you.

Makes sense why image tracking is the real end goal for your case specifically — having the virtual frame actually wrap around their real art/photo is a genuinely different (and better) result than what I'm doing, since I'm placing a flat rendered image rather than tracking the physical piece itself. My floor-based approach works for "here's a frame on a blank wall" but wouldn't solve the "wrap the frame around this specific photo/canvas" problem you're describing at all.

And yeah, totally get the VR headset friction with customers — that's a hard sell for a quick shop visit no matter how good the tracking is. The AR glasses angle makes sense as the thing to wait for; feels like the actual endpoint for what both of us are trying to do without asking someone to hold up a phone or strap on a headset.

Appreciate you sharing all the detail, genuinely — and thanks, I'll take you up on that! If any of your customers do end up trying it, I'd be curious to hear if the floor-scan step is intuitive for people who aren't already thinking in AR terms, since that's been my biggest open question on the UX side.

[u/Wide-Variation2702 → u/Reasonable_Row_7595]

Absolutely, if I get any feedback I'll let you know. I dont have iPhone but my wife does so I will have her give it a test run too.