What you can build here
AR is what AR Clip is known for, and it is not the boundary. The underlying thing is simpler and broader: interactive 3D that opens from a link, on any device, with nothing to install.
Whether a camera is involved is your choice, not a requirement.
Without any AR at all
These are ordinary applications. They run in a browser on a phone, a tablet, a laptop or a headset, and there is no app store anywhere in the story.
Product configurators
Pick a finish, a size, a layout; watch it change; get a link to buy. The commonest commercial build here.
Product and portfolio viewers
One model, orbit controls, good lighting. Opens instantly, embeds in an existing page, and replaces a carousel of photographs.
Games
Physics, characters, multiplayer, an interface. Small enough to open from a link, which is exactly why people finish them.
Training and simulation
A machine you can take apart, a procedure you step through, a space you learn before entering it. Interactivity and a UI layer are the whole requirement, and both are here.
Data and dashboards in 3D
A building with live sensors on it, a floor plan with occupancy, a model with hotspots. Your data arrives through a script; the scene is just how it is shown.
Presentations and installations
Something that runs on a screen at an event, on a kiosk, or in a meeting, driven by a timer or by whoever is presenting.
With AR, when the room matters
Reach for the camera when where the visitor is standing is part of the point.
| You want | Use |
|---|---|
| A printed thing to come alive | an image or QR scene |
| Furniture in someone's actual room | a surface scene |
| A filter or a try-on | a face scene |
| Directions and labels across a whole venue | VPS |
| To be somewhere else entirely | a 360° scene |
Everywhere it runs
One project, and you do not maintain a version per platform:
| Where | How |
|---|---|
| Phone browsers | the published link, or a QR code |
| Desktop browsers | the same link |
| iOS App Clip | opens from a link, a code or NFC, with no install |
| The native app | native rendering, for projects that need the frame budget |
| Headset browsers | the same link again, through WebXR |
| Embedded in your site | a snippet, inside your own page |
When this is the wrong tool
Worth saying plainly, so you do not find out late:
- A conventional 2D app — a form, a list, a settings screen — is faster to build with ordinary web tools. The interface layer here exists to sit over a 3D scene.
- Offline-first work does not suit something that opens from a link.
- Very heavy simulation — thousands of interacting bodies — will fight a browser, though the native app raises that ceiling considerably.
Everything else that is visual, spatial or interactive is fair game.
Next: Quick Start