Do people have strong opinions on building ARKit apps with XCode vs using a Unity plugin? Does it matter if I'm coming mostly from a JavaScript / web dev background?
Not sure what you are asking because XCode is an IDE and Unity is a 3D engine. You would be using both on an iOS project. You'd export your unity project to an XCode project then publish the .ipa from XCode.
Are you wondering if it's better to use OpenGL/Metal instead of Unity? I'd say stick with Unity unless you've written a shader before. You're not going to build an optimized 3D/AR app without quite a bit of experience.
Well the Example ARKit app is based off of scenekit, which is a wrapper for Metal. Scenekit is a more natural choice to people who have background with Three.js or want to develop more with code.
Ive been developing ARKit stuff solely with scenekit, and I enjoy it. I would like to learn unity, but I dont see a point now cause of the high learning curve to learn unity and since ARKit is iOS only, no point in using something thats cross platform. But would love to hear of any feedback on using Scenekit vs Unity!
Ive been using Xcode so far instead of unity, but only cause I have more experience with Scenekit and Xcode rather than unity. If you have experience using three.js, then xcode should be fun.
The only thing is finding good resources to learn scenekit. Ping me if you are interested and I can send you some links that helped me learn Scenekit!
Are you wondering if it's better to use OpenGL/Metal instead of Unity? I'd say stick with Unity unless you've written a shader before. You're not going to build an optimized 3D/AR app without quite a bit of experience.