Discuss spatial computing on Apple platforms and how to design and build an entirely new universe of apps and games for Apple Vision Pro.

All subtopics
Posts under Spatial Computing topic

Post

Replies

Boosts

Views

Activity

Limited Window Manipulation in Mixed Immersive Style in VisionOS
In VisionOS versions 2.1 and 2.2, I’m encountering a significant limitation when using the .immersionStyle(selection: .constant(.mixed), in: .mixed) mode, specifically in mixed immersive style. Here’s a breakdown of the behavior: In full immersion mode (.immersionStyle(selection: .constant(.full), in: .full)), users can interact with and manipulate system windows while inside a 3D model, allowing typical interactions like moving windows, pinching, or activating UI switches. However, in mixed immersive mode, using the exact same layout “inside” a 3D model (which doesn’t visually obstruct the window), users are unable to interact with window content or move the window. Basic interactions like pinching or toggling switches require users to physically touch these elements in AR space, which is inconsistent with the behavior in full immersion. From a usability perspective, this restriction seems unnecessary, as the software should ideally allow for similar interaction capabilities across both immersive styles. The expected behavior is to enable window manipulation within a 3D model in mixed mode, matching the functionality observed in full immersion. The scene in question is a House in which the user is placed during the immersion that's why I am referring to the user being "Inside" of the scene. Has anyone else experienced this or found a workaround?
2
1
432
Nov ’24
RealityKit Subdivide
In the Discover RealityKit APIs for iOS, macOS, and visionOS presentation, there was a slide at the end highlighting new features not covered in the video. One of them was surface subdivision, but I have not been able to find any documentation or APIs that support this feature. Does anyone have any further details or how this works in RealityKit?
4
1
937
Oct ’24
ARView vs RealityView (iOS, iPadOS)
I have been digging through the docs and the developer videos, and I have noticed a mention to RealityView having som potential limitations with anchors and world tracking. However, I haven’t been able to locate my answers. Does anyone know (or point me to) if RealityView supports everything ARView does, and if not what are the difference? I was fooling around with RealityView today with a simple plane anchor, and the stability of that anchor didn’t seem to be as steady as I recall ARView being In the past on iPhone. I’m trying to determine if I should be rolling over into RealityView or stay with ARView on this little educational project. I would imagine the answer is to go RealityView, but I want to make sure I’m not setting myself up for failure based on any current limitations For anchors and world data.
2
1
855
Jan ’25
AVAudioSession gets interrupted when closing a window
I have a visionOS app that plays audio using AVAudioEngine and presents both a window and an immersive space. If I close the window, the audio session gets interrupted and attempting to restart the session and audio engine has no effect. I need to dismiss the app, then reopen it, which reopens the main window, in order for audio to start playing again. This is in all visionOS 2 betas. Note that I have background audio enabled for my app.
3
1
825
Nov ’24
AudioPlaybackController stop playing when .plain window is closed
Suppose there was an immersiveSpace, and an Entity() being added to the space as child entity of the content. This entity is responsible for playing background music by calling prepareAudio, gaining a controller and play the music. (check the basic code below) When it was playing music, a .plain window and an immersiveSpace are both presented. I believe this immersiveSpace is holding the handle of the controller so as long as immersiveSpace is open, the music won't stop. However if I close the .plain window (by closing system-level close button), the music just stopped. But the immersiveSpace is still open. If right now I check the value of controller.isPlaying, it was still true. But you just cannot hear the music anymore. To reproduce, simply open an visionOS template App project, selecting volume and full immersive, and replace some code inImmersiveView.swift with the code below. Also simply drag any .mp3 file and replace the AudioFileResource's name. And you could reproduce this bug. RealityView { content in // Add the initial RealityKit content if let immersiveContentEntity = try? await Entity(named: "Immersive", in: realityKitContentBundle) { content.add(immersiveContentEntity) // Put skybox here. See example in World project available at // https://developer.apple.com/ if let audioResource = try? await AudioFileResource(named: "anyMP3file.mp3") { let ent = Entity() immersiveContentEntity.addChild(ent) let controller = ent.prepareAudio(audioResource) controller.play() } } } I wonder why this happen? I mean how should I keep the music playing when I close the .plain window? Thanks!
1
1
503
Jan ’25
Slow Auto Focus on iPhone 16 Pro with ARkit camera
I have recently started testing ARKit on an iPhone 16 Pro and I have noticed that the AutoFocus reaction on this device is much slower than other devices. For example, if I point the camera to a close object AutoFocus takes 4-5 seconds to stabilize, the focal length is adjusted very very slowly. In some cases (although this is rare) AutoFocus seems almost stuck and requires a bit of device movement to trigger. This is quite problematic when using some ARKit features like Image and Object detection as the detection algorithms struggle with out-of-focus images. This problem is limited to ARKit. AutoFocus is significantly more responsive when the standard AVFoundation Camera API is used. This behavior is easy to reproduce with any of the ARKit samples like https://developer.apple.com/documentation/arkit/arkit_in_ios/content_anchors/tracking_and_visualizing_planes Is anybody else experiencing this problem?
4
1
783
Jan ’25
WWDC 25 RemoteImmersiveSpace - Support for Passthrough Mode? RealityKit?
This is related to the WWDC presentation, What's new in Metal rendering for immersive apps.. Specifically, the macOS spatial streaming to visionOS feature: For reference: the page in the docs. The presentation demonstrates it using a full immersive space and Metal rendering using compositor services. I'd like clarity on a few things: Is the remote device wireless, or must the visionOS device be connected via a wired connected? Is there a limit to the number of remote devices, and if not, could macOS render different things per remote device simultaneously? Can I also use mixed mode with passthrough enabled, instead of just a fully-immersive mode? Can I use RealityKit instead of Metal? If so, may I have an example, or would someone point to an example?
5
0
489
6d
Can´t find a DLL in a VisionOS app with Unity
Dear all, I´m using Unity 6.2 beta and Xcode 16.2. I´m creating a simple framework to use the text to speech functionality in VisionOS from unity. The framework is created in Swift. I create an objective-c wrapper with the following declarations: ... void _initTTS(int); ... I create the framework, import it in Unity and call the functions in a c# wrapper class. The code is as follows: public static class TTSPluginManager { [DllImport("TTS_Vision"] private static extern void _initTTS(int val); ... public static void Initialize() { #if UNITY_VISIONOS _initTTS(0); #else Debug.LogWarning("NativeTTS.Initialize called on a non-iOS platform. Ignoring."); #endif } } I have managed to compile and run the program in the Apple Vision Pro, but I keep on getting the following error: DllNotFoundException: TTS_Vision assembly: type: member:(null) TTSPluginManager.Initialize () (at Assets/Plugins/TTSPluginManager.cs:33) LecturePortalManager.OnCreateStory (Ink.Runtime.Story story) (at Assets/AVRLecture/LecturePortalManager.cs:17) InkLoader.StartStory () (at Assets/AVRLecture/InkLoader.cs:24) InkLoader.Start () (at Assets/AVRLecture/InkLoader.cs:18) If I run the generated code from Xcode, I can see the app in the AVP, but I keep getting a loading error: DllNotFoundException: Unable to load DLL 'TTS_Vision'. Tried the load the following dynamic libraries: Unable to load dynamic library '/TTS_Vision' because of 'Failed to open the requested dynamic library (0x06000000) dlerror() = dlopen(/TTS_Vision, 0x0005): tried: '/TTS_Vision' (no such file) at TTSPluginManager.Initialize () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 at LecturePortalManager.OnCreateStory (Ink.Runtime.Story story) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 I can see in the generated code that the framework (TTS_Vision) is there, but the path seems wrong. I've tried to add more options to the searched paths, with no success... Any hints or suggestions are much more appreciated.
1
0
241
6d
Persisting Anchors in RealityView with ARMode on iOS
Platform: iOS18 Tech: RealityView Hi! I was wondering if RealityView now provides ways for their session to persist Anchor data in a world such that the anchor locations in one session can be saved and loaded in a another session that persists the exact same anchor positions. I know that ARWorldMap in ARKit does that, but I was not able to find a way to use it with RealityView. I think it's because RealityView has ARKit under its hood but does not expose the ARKit session info publicly to the client code. So I was wondering if there's a SwiftUI + RealityView approach that can help me to achieve a similar goal: Come back to the same location and see the object in exactly the same place. Thanks!
0
1
513
Jan ’25
What causes »ARSessionDelegate is retaining X ARFrames« console warning?
Hi, since iOS 15 I've repeatedly noticed the console warning »ARSessionDelegate is retaining X ARFrames. This can lead to future camera frames being dropped« even for rather simple projects using RealityKit and ARKit. Could someone from the ARKit team please elaborate what causes this warning and what can be done to avoid it? If I remember correctly I didn't even assign an ARSessionDelegate. Thank you!
4
1
3.3k
Feb ’25
ShaderGraphMaterial with Occlusion Surface Output fails to load on iOS and macOS
A ShaderGraphMaterial with an Occlusion Surface Output generated with RealityComposer 2 fails to load on iOS 18 and macOS 15 with the following error: RealityFoundation.ShaderGraphMaterial.LoadError.invalidTypeFound (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/shadergraphmaterial/loaderror/invalidtypefound) This happens with both https://developer.apple.com/documentation/shadergraph/realitykit/occlusion-surface-(realitykit) and https://developer.apple.com/documentation/shadergraph/realitykit/shadow-receiving-occlusion-surface-(realitykit) RealityView { content in do { let bgEntity = ModelEntity(mesh: .generateCone(height: 0.5, radius: 0.1), materials: [SimpleMaterial(color: .red, isMetallic: true)]) bgEntity.position.z = -0.2 content.add(bgEntity) let occlusionMaterial = try await ShaderGraphMaterial(named: "/Root/OcclusionMaterial", from: "OcclusionMaterial") let testEntity = ModelEntity(mesh: .generateSphere(radius: 0.4), materials: [occlusionMaterial]) content.add(testEntity) content.cameraTarget = testEntity } catch { print("Shader Graph Load Error:") dump(error) } } .realityViewCameraControls(.orbit) .edgesIgnoringSafeArea(.all) Feedback ID: FB15081296
1
1
703
Jan ’25
Blurred Background (RealityKit) Shader Graph Node not working on iOS/macOS
The ShaderGraph Node Blurred Background (RealityKit) – https://developer.apple.com/documentation/shadergraph/realitykit/blurred-background-(realitykit) works fine within the RealityComposer Pro 2 editor but isn't working on iOS 18 or macOS 15. Instead of the blurred content it just renders as opaque in a single color (Screenshot 2). Interestingly it also fails to render within RealityComposer Pro when no other entities are within the scene, e.g only a background skybox set. Expected Behavior: It would be great if this node worked the same way as it does on visionOS since this would allow for really interesting and nice effects for scenes. Feedback ID: FB15081190
1
1
747
Jan ’25
Gesture filtering using .targetedToEntity(where: QueryPredicate<Entity>) is not working
I am trying to only apply a drag gesture to specific entities that has a specific component. My entities has the component on it along with the input target and collision component. The gestures work when I use .targetedToAnyEntity() modifier but .targetedToEntity(where:) modifier fails struct ImmersiveView: View { var body: some View { RealityView { content in // Add the initial RealityKit content if let scene = try? await Entity(named: "Immersive", in: realityKitContentBundle) { content.add(scene) } } .gesture( DragGesture() .targetedToEntity(where: .has(ToyComponent.self)) .onChanged({ value in value.entity.position = value.convert(value.location3D, from: .local, to: value.entity.parent!) }) ) } } What could be wrong here?
5
1
641
Sep ’24
Tracking multiple ImageAnchor simultaneously on VisionOS
Using the example code posted here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/visionOS/tracking-images-in-3d-space I can register multiple ReferenceImage s with a ImageTrackingProvider, but only one updates at a time - to have realtime updating, I can only have one ImageAnchor in my field of view at a time. Is it possible to track multiple imageAnchors at the same time in the same field of view? As in having several ImageAnchor's tracked and entities updated to the transforms of the anchor in the same frame/moment from the Apple Vision Pro?
1
1
123
3w
TextComponent on iOS/macOS pixelated when viewed from short distance
Hello, I've been tinkering a bit with TextComponent. Based on the docs it seems like this component should always render sharp and nice text, no matter how close the user gets: RealityKit dynamically adjusts the backing size to a value that results in high-fidelity text at its current location. And it does on visionOS, but on iOS and macOS the text gets pixelated when I get close to it, as if its just rendering it once as a plain image texture. Can anyone tell me if this is expected behavior or a bug? Here two screenshots for comparison (iPhone and Vision Pro): Thanks!
2
1
85
Aug ’25
How to Achieve Volumetric Lighting (Light Shafts) in RealityKit on visionOS?
Hello everyone, I am currently developing an experience for visionOS using RealityKit and I would like to achieve volumetric light effects, such as visible light rays or shafts through fog or dust. I found this GitHub project: https://github.com/robcupisz/LightShafts, which demonstrates the kind of visual style I am aiming for. I would like to know if there is a way to create similar effects using RealityKit on visionOS. So far, I have experimented with DirectionalLight, SpotLight, ImageBasedLight, and custom materials (e.g., additive blending on translucent meshes), but none of these approaches can replicate the volumetric light shaft look shown in the repository above. Questions: Is there a recommended technique or workaround in RealityKit to simulate light shafts or volumetric lighting? Is creating a custom mesh (e.g., cone or volume geometry with gradient alpha and additive blending) the only feasible method? Are there any examples, best practices, or sample projects from Apple or other developers that showcase a similar visual style? Any advice or hints would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
9
1
784
Aug ’25