How to Fix Real Objects Not Occluding Virtual Content in Unity AR Foundation

Occlusion makes a virtual character correctly disappear behind a real couch. It requires the environment depth texture from ARCore/ARKit and a render setup that tests virtual fragments against that depth. Without the occlusion manager and depth-aware shader, virtual content floats in front of everything.

How to fix it

1. Enable environment depth

Add an AROcclusionManager and set Environment Depth Mode so the device provides a per-frame depth texture (on supported hardware).

2. Use the occlusion-aware background

Use the AR Foundation background renderer/material that samples the depth texture so virtual pixels are depth-tested against the real world.

3. Handle unsupported devices

Check that depth is supported at runtime and fall back gracefully, since older phones without depth cannot occlude.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every mobile error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.