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

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Animations exported from Blender does not shoe in Reality Composer Pro
I made an animation in Blender using geometry nodes that I exported to USDC file (then I used Reality Converter to convert to USDZ) and I can see the animation when viewing from the finder but does not play after importing to RCP. Any idea how I can play the animation? Or can the animation be accessed through Xcode? Thanks!
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1.1k
Apr ’25
How to move a camera in immersive space and render its output on 2D window using RealityKit
I'm trying to develop an immersive visionOS app, which you can move an Entity having a PerspectiveCamera as its child in immersive space, and render the camera view on 2D window. According to this thread, this seems to can be achieved using RealityRenderer. But when I added the scene entity loaded from realityKitContentBundle to realityRenderer.entities, I needed to clone all entities of the scene, otherwise all entities in the immersive space will disappear. @Observable @MainActor final class OffscreenRenderModel { private let renderer: RealityRenderer private let colorTexture: MTLTexture init(scene: Entity) throws { renderer = try RealityRenderer() // If not clone entities in the scene, all entities in the immersive space will disappear renderer.entities.append(scene.clone(recursive: true)) let camera = PerspectiveCamera() renderer.activeCamera = camera renderer.entities.append(camera) ... } } Is this the expected behavior? Or is there any other way to do this (move camera in immersive space and render its output on 2D window)? Here is my sample code: https://github.com/TAATHub/RealityKitPerspectiveCamera
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Feb ’25
VisionOS ARKit CameraFrame Sample Parameters Extrinsics
the following documentation tells me that the CameraFrame.Sample.Parameters.extrinsics is of type simd_float4x4, great! https://developer.apple.com/documentation/arkit/cameraframe/sample/parameters/4443449-extrinsics I have read in the answer of another post that this extrinsics represents the pose of the physical camera relative to the device anchor. Did I understand correctly that the device anchor is where the scene is rendered from onto the user's display? What is the coordinate system in which this offset is defined, which axis is left, which one is up, which one is forward? The last column of the extrinsics seems to define a translation of approximately 2 cm along the x axis, -2cm along the y axis and -5 cm along the z axis. I tried to measure the physical distance between the main left and right cameras in order to find out if it's rather 2cm or 5 cm from the "middle", it looks more like 5, so I assume that the z axis is looking towards the right (from the user's perspective). Is that so? For x and y, I assume that the physical camera is approximately 2 cm to the front of the user and 2cm to the bottom, which of x and y is horizontal, which on vertical? How is the camera image indexed, is it row-major and is the origin on the top left? I am looking forward to learning about all the details on these extrinsics in order to make use of it.
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836
Jan ’25
Metal (Compositor Services) or RealityKit on visionOS
I am develop visionOS app. I am now very interested in Metal and Compositor Services, but I have not explored them in depth. I know that Metal has a higher degree of control freedom. I am wondering if using Compositor Services will have fewer functions than RealityKit in AR technology (such as scene reconstruction and understanding, hover effect, etc.).
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216
Jun ’25
RealityKit texture sampling behaviour
Hey there, I am working on an app that displays environmental data using PNG color channels to represent data ranges, which gets overlayed on a map. The sampled values aren't what I'm expecting though... for example an RGB value of 0x7f0000 (R = 0.5, G = 0, B = 0) would be seen as 0.21, 0, 0 in the shader. This basically makes it unusable if I'm trying to show scientific data... I'm half wondering if I am completely misunderstanding how sampling works in RealityKit / RealityComposerPro. Anybody have any idea why it works like this? Actual result (chart labels added in photoshop): Expected: Red > 0.1 Shader Graph
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722
Dec ’24
VisionOS: Detect plane to place objects issue for animated objects
Hi, I have used the template code for Plane Detection and placing models on them from here https://developer.apple.com/documentation/visionos/placing-content-on-detected-planes This source code did not copy the animations in the preview model to the PlacedModel and hence I modified it to do a manual copy of animations and textures. There is a function called materialize() that does this and I was able to modify it to get it working where the placed models are now animating. The issue is when I apply gestures on them like drag or rotate. For those models that go through this logic I'm unable to add gestures even though I'm making sure that Collision and Input Target is set on the Placed Models. Has anyone been able to get this working or is it even a possibility? My materialize function func materialize() -> PlacedObject { let shapes = previewEntity.components[CollisionComponent.self]!.shapes // Clone render content first as we need its materials let clonedRenderContent = renderContent.clone(recursive: true) print("To be finding main model: \(descriptor.displayName)") // Find the main model in preview hierarchy func findMainModel(_ entity: Entity) -> Entity? { if entity.name == descriptor.displayName.replacingOccurrences(of: " ", with: "_") { print("Found main model: \(entity.name)") return entity } for child in entity.children { if child.name == descriptor.displayName.replacingOccurrences(of: " ", with: "_") { print("Found main model in children: \(child.name)") return child } } return nil } // Clone hierarchy preserving structure, names, and materials func cloneHierarchy(_ entity: Entity) -> Entity { print("Cloning: \(entity.name)") let cloned: Entity if let model = entity as? ModelEntity { // Clone with recursive false to handle children manually cloned = model.clone(recursive: false) if let clonedModel = cloned as? ModelEntity, let originalMaterials = model.model?.materials { // Preserve the original model's materials clonedModel.model?.materials = originalMaterials } } else { cloned = Entity() } // Preserve name and transform cloned.name = entity.name cloned.transform = entity.transform // Clone children for child in entity.children { let clonedChild = cloneHierarchy(child) cloned.addChild(clonedChild) } return cloned } print("=== Cloning Preview Structure ===") // Clone the preview hierarchy with proper structure let clonedStructure = cloneHierarchy(previewEntity) // Find and use the main model if let mainModel = findMainModel(clonedStructure) { print("Using main model for PlacedObject") let modelEntity: ModelEntity if let asModel = mainModel as? ModelEntity { print("Using asModel ") modelEntity = asModel } else { modelEntity = ModelEntity() modelEntity.name = mainModel.name // Copy children and transforms for child in mainModel.children { modelEntity.addChild(child) } modelEntity.transform = mainModel.transform } // Add collision component here let collisionComponent = CollisionComponent(shapes: shapes, isStatic: false, filter: CollisionFilter(group: PlacedObject.collisionGroup, mask: .all)) modelEntity.components.set(collisionComponent) // Create the placed object let placedObject = PlacedObject(descriptor: descriptor, renderContentToClone: modelEntity, shapes: shapes) // Set input target on the placed object itself placedObject.components.set(InputTargetComponent(allowedInputTypes: [.direct, .indirect])) return placedObject } else { print("Fallback to original render content") let placedObject = PlacedObject(descriptor: descriptor, renderContentToClone: clonedRenderContent, shapes: shapes) placedObject.components.set(InputTargetComponent(allowedInputTypes: [.direct, .indirect])) return placedObject } } My PlacedObject class where the init has the recursive cloning removed because it is handled in materialize class PlacedObject: Entity { let fileName: String // The 3D model displayed for this object. private let renderContent: ModelEntity static let collisionGroup = CollisionGroup(rawValue: 1 << 29) // The origin of the UI attached to this object. // The UI is gravity aligned and oriented towards the user. let uiOrigin = Entity() var affectedByPhysics = false { didSet { guard affectedByPhysics != oldValue else { return } if affectedByPhysics { components[PhysicsBodyComponent.self]!.mode = .static } else { components[PhysicsBodyComponent.self]!.mode = .static } } } var isBeingDragged = false { didSet { affectedByPhysics = !isBeingDragged } } var positionAtLastReanchoringCheck: SIMD3<Float>? var atRest = false init(descriptor: ModelDescriptor, renderContentToClone: ModelEntity, shapes: [ShapeResource]) { fileName = descriptor.fileName // renderContent = renderContentToClone.clone(recursive: true) renderContent = renderContentToClone super.init() name = renderContent.name // Apply the rendered content’s scale to this parent entity to ensure // that the scale of the collision shape and physics body are correct. scale = renderContent.scale renderContent.scale = .one // Make the object respond to gravity. let physicsMaterial = PhysicsMaterialResource.generate(restitution: 0.0) let physicsBodyComponent = PhysicsBodyComponent(shapes: shapes, mass: 1.0, material: physicsMaterial, mode: .static) components.set(physicsBodyComponent) components.set(CollisionComponent(shapes: shapes, isStatic: false, filter: CollisionFilter(group: PlacedObject.collisionGroup, mask: .all))) addChild(renderContent) addChild(uiOrigin) uiOrigin.position.y = extents.y / 2 // Position the UI origin in the object’s center. // Allow direct and indirect manipulation of placed objects. components.set(InputTargetComponent(allowedInputTypes: [.direct, .indirect])) // Add a grounding shadow to placed objects. renderContent.components.set(GroundingShadowComponent(castsShadow: true)) } required init() { fatalError("`init` is unimplemented.") } } Thanks
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445
Feb ’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?
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Jan ’25
ARKit Body Tracking not detecting ARBodyAnchor on iOS 26.x (FB15128723)
Since updating to iOS 26.0 (and confirmed on 26.1), ARBodyTrackingConfiguration no longer detects a valid ARBodyAnchor on devices with LiDAR (e.g., iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max). This issue reproduces in custom projects and Apple’s official sample “Capturing Body Motion in 3D”. The AR session runs normally, but the delegate call: func session(_ session: ARSession, didUpdate anchors: [ARAnchor]) never yields an ARBodyAnchor with valid joint transforms. All joints return nil when calling: body.skeleton.modelTransform(for: jointName) resulting in 0 valid joints per frame. Environment • Device: iPhone 17 Pro Max (LiDAR) • iOS: 26.0 / 26.1 • Xcode: 16.0 (stable) • Framework: ARKit + RealityKit • Configuration used: config.worldAlignment = .gravityAndHeading config.isAutoFocusEnabled = true config.environmentTexturing = .none session.run(config) Also tested: with and without frameSemantics = .bodyDetection Expected Behavior ARBodyAnchor should be detected and body.skeleton should contain ~89 valid joints with continuous updates.
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Access Main Camera not working in VisionOS 26.1
I downloaded the official sample project “Accessing the Main Camera”, but I found that it’s not able to retrieve the camera feed on visionOS 26.1. After checking the debug logs, it seems the issue is caused by the system being unable to find the expected format. I tested on a device running visionOS 2, and the camera feed worked correctly — but only when using the sample code from the visionOS 2 version, not the current one. I also noticed that some of the APIs have changed between versions. Has anyone managed to successfully access the camera feed on visionOS 26.1?
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A Summary of the WWDC25 Group Lab - visionOS
At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for visionOS. I saw that there is a new way to add SwiftUI View attachments in my RealityView, what advantages does this have over the old way? Attachments can now be added directly to your entities with ViewAttachmentComponent. The removes the need to declare your attachments upfront in your RealityView initializer and then add those attachments as child entities. The new approach provides greater flexibility. Canyon Crosser and Petite Asteroids both utilize the new approach. ManipulationComponent looks really cool! Right now my app has a series of complicated custom gestures. What gestures does it handle for me exactly, and are there any situations where I should prefer my own custom gestures? ManipulationComponent provides natural interaction with virtual objects. It seamlessly handles translation and rotation. You can easily add manipulation to a SwiftUI view like Model3D with the manipulable view modifier. The new Object Manipulation API is great for most apps, and is a breeze to implement, but sometimes you might want a more custom feel, and that’s ok! Custom gestures are still fully supported for that scenario. I saw that there is a new API to also access the right main camera. What can I do with this? Correct, in visionOS 26, you can access the left and right main cameras. You can even access them simultaneously as a stereo pair. Camera access still requires a managed entitlement and an enterprise license, see Accessing the main camera for more details about those requirements. More computer vision and machine learning use-cases are unlocked with access to both cameras, we are excited to see what you will do! What do I need to do to add spatial accessory input for my app? First, use the GameController framework to establish a connection with the spatial accessory, and then listen for events from the controller. Then, you can use either RealityKit, ARKit, or a combination of both to track the accessory, anchor virtual content to it, and fine tune the accessory interaction with the content in your app. For more details, check out Discovering and tracking spatial game controllers and styli. By far, the most difficulty with implementing visionOS apps is SwiftUI window management…placing, opening, closing, etc. Are there any improvements to window management in visionOS 26? Yes! We recommend watching Set the scene with SwiftUI in visionOS. You can use the defaultLaunchBehavior to choose whether a particular window is presented (or suppressed) at launch. You can also prevent a window like a secondary toolbar from launching as the initial window using .restorationBehavior(.disabled). Adopting best practices for persistent UI provides a great overview of SwiftUI window management on visionOS. As for placing windows, there is still no API for an app to specify the placement of its windows other than relative placement. If that is a feature you are interested in, please file an enhancement request for it using Feedback Assistant! How to get access to the Enterprise API? First, request the entitlement and license through your Apple Developer or enterprise account. Once these have been granted, include the license and entitlement in your project. Then you can build, test, and distribute as an in-house app.
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Jul ’25
Is ARGeoTrackingConfiguration always more accurate than ARWorldTrackingConfiguration for world scale AR?
We are working on a world scale AR app that leverages the device location and heading to place objects in the streets, so that they are correctly and stably anchored to certain locations. Since the geo-tracking imagery is only available in certain cities and areas, we are trying to figure out how to fallback when geo-tracking is not available as the device move away, to still retain good AR camera accuracy. We might need to come up with some algorithm using the device GPS, to line up the ARCamera with our objects. Question: Does geo-tracking always provide greater than or equal to the accuracy of world tracking, for a GPS outdoor AR experience? If so, we can simply use the ARGeoTrackingConfiguration for the entire time, and rely on the ARView keeping itself aligned. Otherwise, we need to switch between it and ARWorldTrackingConfiguration when geo-tracking is not available and/or its accuracy is low, then roll our own algorithm to keep the camera aligned. Thanks.
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Oct ’25
Unable to Create a Fully Immersive Experience That Hides Other Windows in visionOS App
Description: I'm developing a travel/panorama viewing app for visionOS that allows users to view 360° panoramic images in an immersive space. When users enter panorama viewing mode, I want to provide a fully immersive experience where the main interface window and Earth 3D globe window are hidden. I've implemented the app following Apple's documentation on Creating Fully Immersive Experiences, but when users enter the immersive space, both the main window and the Earth 3D window remain visible, diminishing the immersive experience. Implementation Details: My app has three main components: A main content window showing panorama thumbnails A 3D globe window (volumetric) showing locations An immersive space for viewing 360° panoramas I'm using .immersionStyle(selection: $panoImageView, in: .full) to create a fully immersive experience, but other windows remain visible. Relevant Code: @main struct Travel_ImmersiveApp: App { @StateObject private var appModel = AppModel() @State private var panoImageView: ImmersionStyle = .full var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { ContentView() .environmentObject(appModel) } .windowStyle(.automatic) .defaultSize(width: 1280, height: 825) WindowGroup(id: "Earth") { Globe3DView() .environmentObject(appModel) .onAppear { appModel.isGlobeWindowOpen = true appModel.globeWindowOpen = true } .onDisappear { if !appModel.shouldCloseApp { appModel.handleGlobeWindowClose() } } } .windowStyle(.volumetric) .defaultSize(width: 0.8, height: 0.8, depth: 0.8, in: .meters) .windowResizability(.contentSize) ImmersiveSpace(id: "ImmersiveView") { ImmersiveView() .environmentObject(appModel) } .immersionStyle(selection: $panoImageView, in: .full) } } Opening the Immersive Space: func getPanoImageAndOpenImmersiveSpace() async { appModel.clearMemoryCache() do { let canView = appModel.canViewImage(image) if canView { let downloadedImage = try await appModel.getPanoramaImage(for: image) { progress in Task { @MainActor in cardState = .loading(progress: progress) } } await MainActor.run { appModel.updateCurrentImage(image, panoramaImage: downloadedImage) } if !appModel.immersiveSpaceOpened { try await openImmersiveSpace(id: "ImmersiveView") await MainActor.run { appModel.immersiveSpaceOpened = true cardState = .normal } } else { await MainActor.run { appModel.updateImmersiveView = true cardState = .normal } } } else { await MainActor.run { appModel.errorMessage = "You do not have permission to view this image." cardState = .normal } } } catch { // Error handling } } Immersive View Implementation: struct ImmersiveView: View { @EnvironmentObject var appModel: AppModel var body: some View { RealityView { content in let rootEntity = Entity() content.add(rootEntity) Task { if let selectedImage = appModel.selectedImage, appModel.canViewImage(selectedImage) { await loadPanorama(for: rootEntity) } } } update: { content in if appModel.updateImmersiveView, let selectedImage = appModel.selectedImage, appModel.canViewImage(selectedImage), let rootEntity = content.entities.first { Task { await loadPanorama(for: rootEntity) appModel.updateImmersiveView = false } } } .onAppear { print("ImmersiveView appeared") } .onDisappear { appModel.resetImmersiveState() } } // loadPanorama implementation... } What I've Tried Set immersionStyle to .full as recommended in the documentation Confirmed that the immersive space is properly opened and displaying panoramas Verified that the state management for the immersive space is working correctly Questions How can I ensure that when the user enters the immersive panorama viewing experience, all other windows (main interface and Earth 3D globe) are automatically hidden? Is there a specific API or approach I'm missing to properly implement a fully immersive experience that hides all other windows? Do I need to manually dismiss the windows when opening the immersive space, and if so, what's the best approach for doing this? Any guidance or sample code would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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140
Apr ’25
USDZ with Blend Shapes Workflow Recommendations
Hi, since RealityKit 4 now supports Blend Shapes I was wondering if there are any workflow or tooling recommendations to bake/export them into a USDZ. Are Blender or Cinema4D capable to do that out of the box? Should we look into NVIDIA omniverse (https://docs.omniverse.nvidia.com/connect/latest/blender/manual.htm) So far this topic seems very sparsely documented and I would appreciate any hints. Thank you!
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1.4k
Jan ’25
How to find the camera transform (or view matrix) in the world coordinate from a camera frame
I'm trying to implement a prototype to render virtual objects in a mixed immersive space on the camer frames captured by CameraFrameProvider. Here are what I have done: Get camera's instrinsics from frame.primarySample.parameters.intrinsics Get camera's extrinsics from frame.primarySample.parameters.extrinsics Get the device anchor by worldTrackingProvider.queryDeviceAnchor(atTimestamp: CACurrentMediaTime()) Setup a RealityKit.RealityRenderer to render virtual objects on the captured camera frames let realityRenderer = try RealityKit.RealityRenderer() realityRenderer.cameraSettings.colorBackground = .outputTexture() let cameraEntity = PerspectiveCamera() // see https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/770235 let cameraTransform = deviceAnchor.originFromAnchorTransform * extrinsics.inverse cameraEntity.setTransformMatrix(cameraTransform, relativeTo: nil) cameraEntity.camera.near = 0.01 cameraEntity.camera.far = 100 cameraEntity.camera.fieldOfViewOrientation = .horizontal // manually calculated based on camera intrinsics cameraEntity.camera.fieldOfViewInDegrees = 105 realityRenderer.entities.append(cameraEntity) realityRenderer.activeCamera = cameraEntity Virtual objects, which should be seen in the camera frames, are clipped out by the camera transform. If I use deviceAnchor.originFromAnchorTransform as the camera transform, virtual objects can be rendered on camera frames at wrong positions (I think it is because the camera extrinsics isn't used to adjust the camera to the correct position). My question is how to use the camera extrinsic matrix for this purpose? Does the camera extrinsics point to a similar orientation of the device anchor with some minor rotation and postion change? Here is an extrinsics from a camera frame. It seems that the direction of Y-axis and Z-axis are flipped by the extrinsics. So the camera is point to a wrong direction. simd_float4x4([[0.9914258, 0.012555369, -0.13006608, 0.0], // X-axis [-0.0009778949, -0.9946325, -0.10346654, 0.0], // Y-axis [-0.13066702, 0.10270659, -0.98609203, 0.0], // Z-axis [0.024519, -0.019568002, -0.058280986, 1.0]]) // translation
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788
Jan ’25
Getting to MeshAnchor.MeshClassification from MeshAnchor?
I am working with MeshAnchors, and I am having troubles getting to the classification of the triangles/faces. This post references the MeshAnchor.Geometry, and that struct does have a property named "classifications", but it is of type GeometrySource. I cannot find any classification information in GeometrySource. Am I missing something there? I think I am looking for something of type MeshAnchor.MeshClassification, but I cannot find any structs with this as a property.
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1.3k
Feb ’25
ManipulationComponent create parent/child crash
Hello, If you add a ManipulationComponent to a RealityKit entity and then continue to add instructions, sooner or later you will encounter a crash with the following error message: Attempting to move entity “%s” (%p) under “%s” (%p), but the new parent entity is currently being removed. Changing the parent/child entities of an entity in an event handler while that entity is already being reassigned is not supported. CoreSimulator 1048 – Device: Apple Vision Pro 4K (B87DD32A-E862-4791-8B71-92E50CE6EC06) – Runtime: visionOS 26.0 (23M336) – Device Type: Apple Vision Pro The problem occurs precisely with this code: ManipulationComponent.configureEntity(object) I adapted Apple's ObjectPlacementExample and made the changes available via GitHub. The desired behavior is that I add entities to ManipulationComponent and then Realitiykit runs stably and does not crash randomly. GitHub Repo Thanks Andre
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460
Oct ’25