canActivateAR incorrectly returning false on iOS 16 chrome/firefox

[CameronCrane]

Description

It seems that with the release of iOS 16, the canActivateAr method incorrectly returns false on iOS 16/chrome and iOS 16/Firefox, even if manually setting arModes="webxr scene-viewer quick-look". On the same device (using an iPhone 13 Pro in this case), it returns true only when using Safari.

Live Demo

Here are some snippets of our implementation.

public get canActivateAR() {
      return this[$modelViewer].value
        ? this[$modelViewer].value.canActivateAR
        : false;
  }

 private [$onArButtonClick]() {
      if (this.canActivateAR) {
        alert('can activate AR')
        return this[$modelViewer].value?.activateAR();
      }
      alert('cannot activate AR');
  }

Version

• model-viewer: v1.10.1 (currently unsure if this also applies to the newest version)

Browser Affected

• Chrome
• Edge
• Firefox
• IE
• Safari

OS

• Android
• iOS
• Linux
• MacOS
• Windows

AR

• WebXR
• SceneViewer
• QuickLook

[jediskej]

I'm having the same problem on Android. Any solutions?

[milesgreen]

Any more details @jediskej? The iOS16 change shouldn't have affected Android. Might be worth filing a separate issue.

[jediskej]

for the past 2 days the model viewer AR hasnt been working for me. models that I could view before in AR now have very long load times, and when they finish loading, the "view in your space" button disappears. I just tried using the basic astronaut model and had the same issue.

[elalish]

@jediskej Can you file an issue on this with the detail requested in the template? Also, was this a due to change in model-viewer version or OS/browser version update? And what AR mode? There was a recent bug that rolled out to Scene Viewer, but it doesn't affect WebXR mode.

[elalish]

#3849

[elalish]

Indeed, this is an iOS regression and was worked-around in v2.0: #3784

[milesgreen]

@CameronCrane - I'd be keen to know if upgrading to v2.0+ doesn't fix this for you.

If you're not ready to upgrade to v2.0+, you could fork your current version and apply the changes made in the PR mentioned above.

[milesgreen]

I should say, there's a lot of good stuff in v2.0+, so you should probably be heading in that direction.