Simply plopping a 3D model into the room isn’t particularly compelling or useful. But that seems to be the bar for “AR apps” today.
So by gimmicky I assume you’re talking specifically about the use case?
If so it’s probably true that majority of ar apps are games that don’t work too well or ar just demos/prototypes.
However there are a few that are pretty functional e.g. the measuring app in iOS. Was your idea to consolidate all such use cases to create a general purpose app?
The AR toolkits tell you about the 3D environment but they don’t do anything to tell you about the context.
When your app understands what it’s looking at it can add relevant functionality (eg solve a paper Sudoku puzzle, give hints, check your work, scan into a playable app, etc).
Happy to talk about it more! Shoot me a DM.
Assuming you do know what’s in the scene semantically most ar applications that aren’t games do intend to use that information. I’d say the primary hurdle there is still general scene understanding.
It’s easy to identify a sudoku puzzle but not so easy to identify and classify all 3D objects with any sense of precision yet. Seems like a large scale data play to me..
I have a bunch of ideas that seem like low hanging fruit, a bunch that seem hard but possible, and a lot that will be possible someday. And hopefully I can help accelerate that timeline.
In doing so I’ll have to build out tools and common code which I hope to eventually release as a platform to help other devs expand the idea out into other verticals.