Edmunds uses AR to show how a new car will fit in your garage
You'll know if you can buy that giant SUV.
As tempting as it may be to buy a massive SUV, there is such a thing as too big. The last thing you want is to find out that a car won't fit in your garage, or that you'll have no room to open the door when you park at work. But how do you gauge that fit without busting out the tape measure? Edmunds thinks it has the answer: it just added an augmented reality "Can it Fit?" feature to its car shopping app for iOS. If you're running iOS 11, you can use your iPhone or iPad to map your parking space and gauge whether or not your dream ride is small enough. You only get a rough outline of the car in question, but that's enough to tell whether you can spring for a minivan or have to 'settle' for a sedan.
We've asked Edmunds about the possibility of an Android version now that ARCore exists, and there is some hope: it says it'd like to make one. There's no roadmap for that yet, though, as the focus is on refining the iOS experience first.
The concept of using augmented reality to gauge the size of objects certainly isn't new. We've seen plenty of home decor apps that do it. This is still a relatively fresh concept for vehicles, though, and it underscores an advantage of Apple's ARKIt: it's very, very good at scaling virtual objects. Don't be surprised if you see sizing features like this pop up in other apps, even in categories where you wouldn't expect them.
