ARKit and AVCamera simultaneously - arkit

Question

As there is no autofocus in ARKit, I wanted to load ARKit in a view that is half the screen and second half will have AVFoundation -> AVCamera.
Is it possible to load AVCamera and ARKit simultaneously in same app?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Nope.
ARKit uses AVCapture internally (as explained in the WWDC talk introducing ARKit). Only one AVCaptureSession can be running at a time, so if you run your own capture session it’ll suspend ARKit’s session (and break tracking).
Update: However, in iOS 11.3 (aka "ARKit 1.5"), ARKit enables autofocus by default, and you can choose to disable it with the isAutoFocusEnabled option.

Answer 2

Changing the camera focus would disrupt the tracking - so this is definitely not possible (right now at least).
Update: See #rickster answer above.

Answer 3

I managed to use AVFoundation with ARKit by calling self.sceneView.session.run(self.sceneView.session.configuration!) right after taking the photo.
Use self.captureSession?.stopRunning() right after taking photo to make the session resume faster.
self.takePhoto()
self.sceneView.session.run(self.sceneView.session.configuration!)
func startCamera() {
captureSession = AVCaptureSession()
captureSession.sessionPreset = AVCaptureSession.Preset.photo
cameraOutput = AVCapturePhotoOutput()
if let device = AVCaptureDevice.default(for: .video),
let input = try? AVCaptureDeviceInput(device: device) {
if (captureSession.canAddInput(input)) {
captureSession.addInput(input)
if (captureSession.canAddOutput(cameraOutput)) {
captureSession.addOutput(cameraOutput)
captureSession.startRunning()
}
} else {
print("issue here : captureSesssion.canAddInput")
}
} else {
print("some problem here")
}
}
func takePhoto() {
startCamera()
let settings = AVCapturePhotoSettings()
cameraOutput.capturePhoto(with: settings, delegate: self)
self.captureSession?.stopRunning()
}