Apple's Clips App Adds Immersive AR Spaces Enabled With LiDAR Scanner

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Apple today updated its Clips video creation app to version 3.1, introducing support for the LiDAR Scanner on the iPhone 12 Pro and the 2020 and 2021 iPad Pro models.

apple app clips
With the new AR Spaces feature, users can scan a room and then transform their space with immersive visual effects that map to the contours of the room.

With AR Spaces in Clips 3.1, users can easily scan a room and see a live preview of effects that bring dynamic lighting, falling objects, and immersive scenes to life. Using the rear camera on a supported iPhone or iPad, users will see effects appear on walls, floors, surfaces, furniture, and objects.

There are seven AR Spaces effects that are available with the update:

  • Prism: Ribbons of rainbow light scan the walls, floors, and objects in a room.
  • Confetti: Celebratory bursts of confetti fall and accumulate on flat surfaces.
  • Disco: Shining lights reflect off the disco ball that hangs from the ceiling of the space.
  • Dance Floor: Colorful tiles of light dance in patterns across the floor.
  • Sparkles: Golden sparkle emoji and white glitter fill the space.
  • Stardust: Magical trails of starlight encircle and follow a person in the video.
  • Hearts: Floating heart balloons bubble up within the space.

Clips has all of Apple's most advanced AR tools and is able to recognize people in the video, projecting an AR Space effect both in front of and behind the person, so the effects look like they're applied all around the space.

AR Spaces can be augmented with animated stickers, text labels, and emoji overlays, and the resulting videos can be recorded in all aspect ratios and transferred to social media sites.

Apple says that going forward, Clips will get monthly updates to introduce new filters, Live Titles, text, stickers, and posters "related to seasonal events and cultural trends." With the release of version 3.1, users can choose to opt in to notifications to get an alert when new content is available.

Tag: Clips

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Top Rated Comments

btrach144 Avatar
btrach144
63 months ago

Finally Lidar has a purpose!
But for real, Lidar is actually really neat but man, the implementations so far have been underwhelming.

While Clips might be a fun way, I hope we see other implementations in other apps.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
AngerDanger
63 months ago

Clips has so much potential, I wish Apple invested more into it. I am about to try this new version.

I learned here on MacRumors that this app was actually a side work, an unintended product or something developed by an intern, I find it to be entertaining for young people and quite able to produce nice videos.
I agree 100%. Clips is an app that shows one of the very few applications of AR: realtime previews of visual effects. Between the gyro and LiDAR, you can track 3D objects into a scene as you're recording it, and subjects in the shot can walk in front of them.

This would've been insane a decade ago, but it's just an afterthought in one of Apple's least-marketed apps.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
U
Unregistered 4U
63 months ago

I thought this looked pretty neat in the M1 iPad Pro announcement. Now that I’ve had a chance to play around with it, it actually works better than I thought. I think Prism, Disco, and Dance Floor look the coolest.
I wish Dance Floor had some sort of beat detection in it. :)
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GeoStructural Avatar
GeoStructural
63 months ago
Clips has so much potential, I wish Apple invested more into it. I am about to try this new version.

I learned here on MacRumors that this app was actually a side work, an unintended product or something developed by an intern, I find it to be entertaining for young people and quite able to produce nice videos.


I hope we see other implementations in other apps.
I agree with you. I can recommend "HELLO", "ARvid", and "in3D", but all of them are on the fun side of the spectrum, I haven't yet found that special app that makes good use of the LiDAR for precise measurement, realistic scanning and even professional use.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
J
jimbobb24
63 months ago
Finally Lidar has a purpose!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
U
Unregistered 4U
63 months ago

But for real, Lidar is actually really neat but man, the implementations so far have been underwhelming.

While Clips might be a fun way, I hope we see other implementations in other apps.
Lidar is not very whelming to start with. I’ve seen some nice room capture apps and “place the furniture” apps, but, in most cases, the fact that they’re underwhelming is a part of working well. If the couch against the wall looks like… well, a couch against a wall… YOU DID IT YAAAY! :) If you’re a plane or car mechanic, maybe that could show something cool, but 1) Cool in this case would be just to highlight the part and 2) You’d have to be a mechanic to really see it as cool, I guess.

Most of the impressive displays of AR in the near term is almost guaranteed to be lighthearted/frivolous. Like in the mechanic thing above, a lighthearted yet impression version of that would be showing you all the parts of the engine, how it connects to the transmission and back out through the exhaust, etc.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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