The new iPad Pro’s LIDAR scanner can turn a living room into an augmented reality version of Hot Lava, a video game based on the childhood pastime where you jump on furniture to avoid imaginary lava on the floor. The announcement was included as part of today’s iPad Pro announcement.

Hot Lava is available on Steam, but its mobile version is currently an Apple Arcade exclusive. According to Apple, “The LiDAR Scanner on the new iPad Pro will enable Hot Lava’s new AR mode, available later this year.”

The game is a clever way to show off the capabilities of the LIDAR scanner. A player scans a living room with an iPad, and the app generates hot lava on the floor and platforms for the game’s character to jump on in AR. Here’s a GIF of the app in action:

Alongside the AR version of Hot Lava, Apple also showed some other impressive uses of the LIDAR scanner to journalists over a briefing earlier today. One, for the CAD app Shapr3D, scans a room and makes a 3D model of the room in the app. Users can then edit that model to add new objects into the room and look at those additions in the real room using AR.

Another demo, for the anatomy app Complete Anatomy, uses the LIDAR scanner to measure the range of motion of someone’s arm in real time in real time. And a demo for the IKEA Place app scans a room and recommends matching furniture that you can view in the room in AR.

All of the demos shown will become available as features in their respective apps later this year, according to Apple.

Grid View





The new iPad Pros also have two cameras, a regular wide-angle and an ultrawide, an A12Z Bionic chip, and are compatible with the new Magic Keyboard cover, which has a trackpad. The new iPad Pros will be available starting March 25th.