3D Model will not open on iOS iPad or iPhone

The 3D models will not open on iPad Air or iPhone 6 plus. The OS is up to date 10.3.1… It opens fine on my PC. I opened on my PC and went to Sketchfab, copied link, emailed to self, opened email on iPad & iPhone, clicked link to sketchfab but still would not open that way. It tries to open and gets up to almost a full bar then crashes. I’ve had this problem for at least 6 to 8 months. Before that it worked fine. I haven’t really needed to use 3d model view on my iOS devices until recently. Anyone else having this problem?

Hi Johnson,

The problem your devices are having is that the size of the 3D model is too great for the browser to load into memory, and unfortunately iOS automatically closes the browser before it finishes loading.

One think we are considering to remedy this is to generate a much lower quality 3D model that works on mobile, but will not have such accurate edges or textures. If we made this happen would that be acceptable, or is the full quality model very important for your use case?

Follow up question - what are you hoping to use 3D models on your mobile device for?

James
(Product Manager @ DroneDeploy)

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Hi James, The main reason for using the models on mobile devices is for show and tell. It is a great marketing tool to show potential and existing clients. Especially when you’re in the field walking around discussing ideas. I think the quality would need to stay high because we don’t want clients to see low res poor quality products. I can use my surface pro as long as we are indoors or its cloudy but it’s really bad in sunlight. The truth is you need a device that’s reliable, fits all situations and iPads are the best tool for field use. I did try it by opening google on my device and loading that way since Safari wouldn’t do it but no luck that way either. So do you think its a ram issue?

Exactly right -> we think it’s a ram issue. Apple has been relatively frugal with the amount of ram they fit in their devices. When any app (or safari browser window) begins to consume too much memory, or simply grows memory usage very rapidly, iOS will shut it down to protect the general device experience - one of the reasons iOS often feels slicker than Android even with lower powered devices. (https://docs.fabric.io/apple/crashlytics/OOMs.html)

I entirely agree that the Model is a super slick demo. I wonder if we can pre-create a video or something similar that would play in the app instead. Based on the awesome games that are available on these devices, it’s also possible that showing the model inside some native iOS game engine might be more reliable, but unfortunately both of those options are a little far off for us right now.

Allow me to chime in and say that as a Director of IT for 30 years, when it comes to Ram and Ram taking the heat for this, I have to take a step back and look at other issues. I have seen the issues with the IPAD and the IPHONES since these are all I use. I have also researched many free third party apps that can simply read the file as it is imported to the phone. While the initial data file is rather large, there are software solutions that make the 3D model very easy to use and show. I have developed a web page and incorporated my 3D Models into it and from there I am able to show anyone even over the LTE connection. If you want to help with this let me know. I cannot promise to fix it all, but I can tell you that it has provided me with a better solution.

Is it a common issue on all iPad generations or just some model? I guess this has something to do with the iOS version?

I’m on an iPad Pro 10.5, iOS 11.4 and albeit its definition only loads up at LD, 3D works well. If I increase the resolution to SP it crashes out.

My missions are generally 500-1000 images however and over a large area. It could well be that if I were to concentrate the process over a small area or single building I might be able to push its resolution up a notch or two.