Running multiple ARKitSessions in the same app?

Question

Created Sep ’24

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I would like to implement the following but I am not sure if this is a supported use case based on the current documentation:

Run one ARKitSession with a WorldTrackingProvider in Swift for mixed immersion Metal rendering (to get the device anchor for the layer renderer drawable & view matrix)
Run another ARKitSession with a WorldTrackingProvider and a CameraFrameProvider in a different library (that is part of the same app) using the ARKit C API and using the transforms from the anchors in that session to render objects in the Swift application part.

In general, is this a supported use case or is it necessary to have one shared ARKitSession?
Assuming this is supported, will the (device) anchors from both WorldTrackingProviders reference the same world coordinate system?
Are there any performance downsides to having multiple ARKitSessions?

Thanks

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Engineer OP

Apple

Sep ’24

Accepted Answer

It's okay to run multiple ARKitSession's in a single app. Further, they will share the coordinate system of the running app. There is a bit of a cost for additional running DataProvider's, as they all have their own connections to receive data. But in most cases that shouldn't have a big impact on your app's performance.

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