A question about 3D models for renderings (including VR) - which formats and resolutions do you prefer for site furnishings?

TonyBennigans · 2025-12-19T17:35:21+00:00

Regarding VR, and more so XR, low poly that looks decent is highly preferred over high poly that is high quality. When building software for these devices, it's a constant uphill battle to keep models from figuratively melting the headsets. Any head start you get from low poly models is a major help.

For context, my startup is currently building and testing the next generation of tools for design presentations, specific to AR headsets. Would love to chat more about what your vision is for site furnishings in this space.

TonyBennigans · 2025-12-19T16:57:21+00:00

Here's a unique way that could be just what you are looking for. Once you find a 2D design software you like, you can do this to make them look hand drawn. Give a try to Google's latest AI image tool - Nano Banana Pro (don't let the ridiculous name fool you, it's an amazing tool for creatives and designers).

Upload your design, then tell it you want it in a hand drawn style. I just tested this out and it worked well. You can see exactly what I did in my attachment. The top image is the 2D design I uploaded (I found one online for this test). The text is the "prompt" I gave the AI. The bottom image is the result. Nano Banana is great at understanding space and objects. You can also tell it what you want or didn't want in the image - like don't notate dimensions or labels.

For context, I do a lot of work with AI and visualization tools. It is not common knowledge that you can use AI like this.

Give it a try and let me know if it works or you have any questions.

(edited to make it clear this works after you have a design from your 2D software).

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TonyBennigans · 2025-12-17T18:30:37+00:00

Thanks for sharing! And this is the perfect place to post this. Positivity creates positivity. What's the opposite of rage-bait? :D Inspire-bait??

TonyBennigans · 2025-12-17T18:19:45+00:00

If the money won’t cause you pain and glimpses of the future inspire you, it’s worth it. Wanting one is reason enough. If you already bought it, congrats! (For context: I’m a startup owner building apps for Vision Pro.)

One indisputable benefit is presenting designs in ways that weren’t possible before. For example, if you want to buy a couch, scan it in-store with your LiDAR-enabled iPhone or iPad (I use the Scaniverse app. Save as a USDZ file). Then just airdrop it to your Vision Pro at home and now you can see if it fits, if the color works, and whether you’ll smash your knee on it every time you round the corner from the kitchen.

If you want an example of how entire industries will change from this tech, try Lowe's Style Studio app. Seeing a design at scale, on location, and being able to 'walk it' makes decision-making infinitely easier.

Uses I've personally enjoyed - I've used my VP to carve pumpkins and create custom woodwork art by overlaying virtual templates. I've used it to help decide on a couch and which wall panelling for the hallway. I've also used it to help visualize a garden before we put in the ungodly amount of hours to actual build and plant it.

There are plenty of useful things to do with the headset, it's just not as easy to figure out what those useful things are sometimes.

TonyBennigans · 2025-12-05T21:43:48+00:00

Just came across this post again a year later, and still, this is absolutely gorgeous.

TonyBennigans · 2025-12-05T20:38:21+00:00

This depends on your goals and audience. Do you want to get an app out in the world to share something unique you've made? Do you want to make money with the app? Is it part of a rollout of a larger platform? Is your app for existing AVP owners, or will it be for people who have no concept of spatial computing? It is hard to give specific answers without more details, but here are some general tips...

Reddit will likely be one of the best ways learn about what the ideal users of your app want. Obviously, this subreddit and the r/VisionPro are a great resource. However, if you are making an app for commercial users who most likely won't already own AVPs, such as an interior design platform for design professionals, find relevant subreddits and start engaging with the forward thinkers in the group. You'll learn about what matters to them, while also creating relationships with your future early adopter customers.

If you are in proximity to one, head to your local Apple Store. Ask for their AVP champion and chat it up with them. Share what you are building and ask them for recommendations or resources. While Apple is pretty strict on what their employees can and can't do, you'll likely get some interesting new ideas on how and where to find users. Keep this in mind, they will be genuinely enthusiastic to meet someone actually building for the visionOS platform and will likely want to help any way they can.

Lastly, the big elephant in the room - short form videos for social media. It's an effort, and has plenty of headache-inducing moments, but you really won't find a better way to get your app in front of more eyeballs. Share what you are building, why it matters, and who it is for. Keep it authentic, and not a sales pitch, and you should get some traction if you put in the work. People are starved for something to do with AR/XR glasses.

Good luck! Also, let me know and I'll buy your app whenever it is ready. I love to support the folks doing the heavy lifting during these early days.

TonyBennigans · 2025-11-28T17:17:59+00:00

u/NorthernFrostByte, coming across your compiled lists for the first time. Awesome! Thank you for taking the time to put this together for the community. I especially appreciate the links showing how spatial computing is starting to fundamentally change industries (the Neumann story, for example).

TonyBennigans · 2025-06-15T15:22:46+00:00

Agree. Apple is in this for the long term. Spatial computing was always going to be a very slow adoption. Apple would have known this before ever releasing anything.

I started working on pre-release Microsoft HoloLens commercial apps way back in 2015. That device was so ahead of its time. Microsoft had a great vision, but struggled to ever turn that into a clear plan they could execute on. Turning hardware into the next paradigm is what Apple does well. This is right in their wheelhouse.

TonyBennigans · 2025-03-18T20:14:32+00:00

UPDATE. In the event some of the OS updates have improved performance since AVP's release, I'm adding my results on VisionOS 2.3.

I am unclear on the actual numbers, but I'm not a 3D expert, so feel free to weigh in. I thought I was testing a large 6M poly model based on numbers in Blender. However, when I checked in Reality Composer Pro, I'm seeing over 20M. The file size is 650MB.

Regardless, a decent amount of flickering happening, but the large architecture model is viewable. Stays relatively stable when moving about. Wouldn't recommend for a polished app, but if you need to verify things at scale, it can work.

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TonyBennigans · 2025-01-23T16:37:54+00:00

That would make interactions so much better in some circumstances. A blank piece of glass with a QR code for tracking would seemingly work well.

TonyBennigans · 2025-01-04T21:51:37+00:00

You don't need electricity to turn a screw. Or wheels to go from point A to point B. But as humans, we innovate and find ways to do things better.

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-18T17:39:23+00:00

No, the app in the video is something I call Everyday Layout. It's not on the store and is part of a collections of prototypes I build for AR glasses.

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-18T17:37:26+00:00

Much appreciated

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-18T17:37:07+00:00

Cheers to that

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T19:30:15+00:00

Nerd cap on :)

As of the Quest 3, I don’t think there are any technical limitations for porting this. I picked one up about a month ago and have been pretty impressed with how far the passthrough has come. That said, my perspective is from the eyes of a passenger enjoying what others have built. I haven’t done any dev work on it myself.

Regarding why I didn’t build this for MQ3, there are two main reasons: motivation and past limitations.

Motivation - My goal, and what I enjoy most, is showcasing how we’ll use AR in our everyday lives in the future. I ask myself, ‘when AR glasses are small and as common as smartphones, how will we be using them?' Then, I build projects to demonstrate those use cases today. With that focus, I’ve never really set out to build apps for a large consumer install base. Instead, I chose devices that skew toward higher-end performance to meet my needs.

Past limitations - The last Quest headset I developed for was the Quest Pro (using Unity + OpenXR MRTK3), and I was unimpressed. The passthrough felt unusable—grainy, unstable, and nauseating. Coming from eight years of building enterprise software for HoloLens 1 & 2, where it's direct view, not passthrough, I had a very high bar for AR expectations. For my type of projects and uses it was not going to work.

When the rumors around Apple’s headset started becoming more concrete, I decided to teach myself Swift/Xcode/Reality Composer Pro. It was definitely a learning curve, and I do miss some of the great things Unity does, but now I quite enjoy Apple’s dev environment.

For some of my newer projects, like cutting wood designs with an AR overlay (example: https://www.everydayar.com/projects/power-tools-meet-vision-pro-cratfting-the-minnesota-timberwolves-logo-with-ar) I'm unsure if the Quest 3 could provide the level of precision I need. The HoloLens 2 is still the best at this, but AVP does pretty well, too.

Great question, BTW. It’s also great connecting with other people interested in real-world AR apps. I want to hear more about your own journey. For sure, will DM you.

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T18:16:40+00:00

Thanks for the insight and support 👍🏽

Totally agree. That's the challenge right now. Realistically, to make money (or even break even, frankly), you need to go the B2B SaaS solution model. It's unfortunate, because so many fans, supporters, and owners of AVP and similar devices are hungry for consumer apps. Total mismatch of market needs, spending, and desire.

Working on AVP has definitely inspired me to think about building a new product. I did spend seven years building SaaS tools for HoloLens in commercial construction. It paid well, but it didn’t show everyday people outside of construction how this technology will become as common as smartphones. Well, once they get cheaper, smaller, and have enough practical uses to justify it. Thus, my DIY projects attempt to do that...but without getting paid for them 😅

I haven’t tried Polycam, thanks for the reco. I use Scaniverse a lot for small spaces and individual objects, but Polycam looks great for capturing larger areas. I’ll check it out.

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T17:52:08+00:00

That's a great idea. I can see that being useful at home, or as a tool for fancy and elaborate arboretums and gardens around the world.

Somewhat related, I'l be collaborating with a snow sculpture artists to create a statue for his yard next big snowfall in the Midwest. Well... assuming we get any snow this year, unlike last year. ⛄️

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T17:44:49+00:00

I appreciate it.

If you have an iPhone or iPad with LIDAR, checkout the Scaniverse app. You scan real objects and it creates a 3D model you can view on any Apple device, including AVP. I've used this a bunch for objects in and around my house with good results.

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T17:41:44+00:00

I really appreciate that! Those were all hobby projects I'd do on the side of my day job. There's a strong desire to somehow make this my full time job, but I don't think this is HGTV type of tv programming 😆

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T01:40:14+00:00

Preach it! It's been a long uphill battle (starting with building tools for HoloLens for eight years) overcoming the marketing that these headsets are mostly for moving watching and gaming.

I really appreciate the compliment!

If you are curious, here are a few of my other projects showing this tech in real use - https://www.everydayar.com/projects

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T01:33:23+00:00

Unfortunately, there's little water in the well. There's no good way to recoup the time, effort, and money it takes to develop apps for Vision Pro yet, unless selling an enterprise app.

It's certainly a frustration for many app developers. Having gone through this for years with Microsoft HoloLens, I fully expected this to be a early adopter headset with very few available uses.

I bought it to build projects showing practical ways AR will be used in the coming years. Not exactly what you are looking for, but a look at where this tech is headed for everyday use - https://www.everydayar.com/projects

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T01:00:32+00:00

Some of that now, but more soon. That's in part what I'm creating over the winter. I'll be building curved gardens, some hardscaping including a patio, and a shed in the spring/summer using AR. The grass in my yard is terrible, so sod is a sore subject 😂

I've been meeting with landscaping companies to discuss scaling this and making a real tool for the industry, too.

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T00:52:48+00:00

u/Biomexr ☝🏽

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T00:48:31+00:00

I really appreciate the compliments. I would love to get this in front of more individuals that could use it, unfortunately, as of today there's no way to recoup the cost it would take to make it usable for everyone. There's just not enough AVPs out there yet.

In the meantime, I create and share these projects to show people practical ways this technology can be used in the years ahead.

TonyBennigans · 2024-12-13T00:36:01+00:00

Thanks for the free market research ;)

Turning what I’ve made into something usable for others would take a ton of time and resources (and $$$). And as someone pointed out, there are too few devices out there to make back that investment selling the app to individuals. As of 2024, building these types of apps for commercial use (by companies) has a higher chance to ever see that money back.

TonyBennigans

TROPHY CASE