Diego Alexander Salazar

$AAPL: «Apple Vision Pro is more than just a new product. It’s the start of an entirely new platform»

Overview:

Apps on visionOS are organized into “scenes”, which are Windows, Volumes, and Spaces. Windows are a spatial version of what you’d see on a normal computer. They’re bounded rectangles of content that users surround themselves with. These may be windows from different apps or multiple windows from one app. Volumes are things like 3D objects, or small interactive scenes. Like a 3D map, or small game that’s not immersive. Spaces are fully immersive experiences where only one app is visible. That could be full of many Windows and Volumes from your app. Or like VR games where the system goes away and it’s all custom content. You can think of visionOS itself like a Shared Space where apps coexist together and you have less control. Whereas Full Spaces give you the most control and immersiveness, but don’t coexist with other apps. Spaces have immersion styles: mixed, progressive, and full. Which defines how much or little of the real world you want the user to see.

User Input:

Users can look at the UI and pinch like the demo videos show. But you can also reach out and tap on windows directly, sort of like it’s actually a floating iPad. Or use a bluetooth trackpad or video game controller. You can also look and speak in search bars, but that’s disabled by default for some reason on existing iPad and iOS apps running on Vision Pro. There’s also a Dwell Control for eyes-only input, but that’s really an accessibility feature. For a simple dev approach, your app can just use events like a TapGesture. In this case, you won’t need to worry about where these events originate from.

Spatial Audio:

Vision Pro has an advanced spatial audio system that makes sounds seem like they’re really in the room by considering the size and materials in your room. Using subtle sounds for UI interaction and taking advantage of sound design for immersive experiences is going to be really important. Make sure to take this topic seriously.

Development:

If you want to build something that works between Vision Pro, iPad, and iOS, you’ll be operating within the Apple dev ecosystem, using tools like XCode and SwiftUI. However, if your goal is to create a fully immersive VR experience for Vision Pro that also works on other headsets like Meta’s Quest or PlayStation VR, you have to use Unity.

Apple Tools:

For Apple’s ecosystem, you’ll use SwiftUI to create the UI the user sees and the overall content of your app. RealityKit is the 3D rendering engine that handles materials, 3D objects, and light simulations. You’ll use ARKit for advanced scene understanding. Like if you want someone to throw virtual darts and have them collide with their real wall, or do advanced things with hand tracking. But those rich AR features are only available in Full Spaces. There’s also Reality Composer Pro which is a 3D content editor that lets you drag things around a 3D scene and make media rich Spaces or Volumes. It’s like Diet-Unity that’s built specifically for this development stack. One cool thing with Reality Composer is that it’s already full of assets, materials, and animations. That helps developers who aren’t artists build something quickly and should help to create a more unified look and feel to everything built with the tool. Pros and cons to that product decision, but overall it should be helpful.

Existing iOS Apps:

If you’re bringing an iPad or iOS app over, it will probably work unmodified as a Window in the Shared Space. If your app supports both iPad and iPhone, it’ll look like the iPad version. You can use the Ornament API to make little floating islands of UI in front of, or besides your app, to make it feel more spatial. But that’s not something all existing apps get automatically. Ironically, if your app is using a lot of ARKit features, you’ll likely need to ‘reimagine’ it significantly as ARKit has been upgraded a lot. If you’re excited about building something new for Vision Pro, my personal opinion is that you should prioritize how your app will provide value across iPad and iOS too. Otherwise you’re losing out on hundreds of millions of users.

Unity:

You can build to Vision Pro with the Unity game engine, which is a massive topic. Again, you need to use Unity if you’re building to Vision Pro as well as a Meta headset like the Quest or PSVR. Unity supports building Bounded Volumes for the Shared Space which exist alongside native Vision Pro content. And Unbounded Volumes, for immersive content that may leverage advanced AR features. Finally you can also build more VR-like apps which give you more control over rendering but seem to lack support for AR Kit scene understanding like plane detection. The Volume approach gives RealityKit more control over rendering, so you have to use Unity’s PolySpatial tool to convert materials, shaders, and other features. Unity support for Vision Pro allows for tons of interactions you’d expect to see in VR, like teleporting to a new location or picking up and throwing virtual objects.

Product Design:

Build a Foundation:

You could just make an iPad-like app that shows up as a floating window, use the default interactions, and call it a day. But like I said above, content can exist in a wide spectrum of immersion, locations, and use a wide range of inputs. So the combinatorial range of possibilities can be overwhelming. If you haven’t spent 100 hours in VR, get a Quest 2 or 3 as soon as possible and try everything. It doesn’t matter if you’re a designer, or product manager, or a CEO, you need to get a Quest and spend 100 hours in VR. I highly recommend checking out Hand Physics Lab for a broad overview of direct interaction demos. There’s a lot of subtle things they do which imbue virtual objects with a sense of physicality. And the Youtube VR app that was released in 2019 looks and feels pretty similar to visionOS, it’s worth checking out. Keep a diary of what works and what doesn’t. Ask yourself: What app designs are comfortable, or cause fatigue? What apps have the fastest “time-to-fun/value”? What’s confusing and what’s intuitive? What experiences would you even bother doing more than once? Be brutally honest. Learn from what’s been tried as much as possible.

General Design:

Recommended: The @ideo style design thinking process, it works for spatial computing too. You should absolutely try it out if you’re unfamiliar. There’s http://designkit.org with resources and this video from 1999 is a great example of the process https://youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM… . The road to spatial computing is a graveyard of utopian ideas that failed. People tend to spend a very long time building grand solutions for the imaginary problems of imaginary users. It sounds obvious, but instead you should try to build something as fast as possible that fills a real human need, and then iteratively improve from there.

Spatial Formats and Interaction:

You should expect people to be ‘lazy’ and want to avoid moving most of the time. Generally in spatial computing the more calories people burn using your app the less they’ll use it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t build your VR boxing game. But you should minimize the required motion as much as possible, even if it’s a fundamental part of what your app is. To that point, the purpose of your app should be reflected in its spatial arrangements and interaction pattern. Aka, form follows function. So if you’re making a virtual piano app, you probably want to anchor it on a desk so people make contact with a physical surface when they touch a key. There’s a saying like, “when you want to say something new, use a familiar language.” IIf every aspect of your app is totally innovative it will likely be incomprehensible to users. So pick and choose your battles and make sure there’s a familiarity in the UI and experience.

Prototyping:

I highly recommend paper and cardboard prototyping. Don’t start in Figma. Literally get some heavy weight paper or cardboard and make crude models of your interface. If you’re expecting users to directly touch your UI, pay attention to how much muscle strain in your shoulder the design creates. Use masking tape against a wall and sticky notes to mock up some UI. Then take a few steps back from it, pretend you’re in VR, and feel out how much head motion your layout requires. Again I think everyone needs a Quest to try existing apps. And as prototyping tools they can be great, even before writing any code. There’s an app called ShapesXR that lets you sketch out ideas in space, create storyboards, and supports real time collaboration with remote users. It can be a great tool during early development. You also use the Quest to mockup “AR in VR” by creating a scene with a realistic virtual living room, and having other objects appear as if they’re AR. It’s not as good as a full passthrough setup, but it’s better than nothing. And the virtual living room is helpful if you’re sharing the demo with people in other locations. If you have the budget you might want a Varjo XR-3. It’s the current Rolls Royce of VR and the closest thing to the Vision Pro on the market with high quality passthrough, high res displays, hand tracking, world mapping, etc. But they’re $6500 each and need a $2-3k PC to power them. If you’re a giant company with the budget and worried about getting access to a Vision Pro dev kit I would probably get at least one XR-3 setup.

Startups and Businesses:

There’s obviously a ton of potential business use cases for Vision Pro and spatial computing in general. Everything from the Product Design section of this thread heavily applies and I would read that first. Start with real problems that real people have and try to solve those. Resist the urge to imagine something fantastical people might eventually want in the far future.

Strengths of Spatial Computing:

Spatial computing in general is great for teaching people spatial things. It would be much easier to learn how to assemble Ikea furniture in VR than using the paper instructions. To that point, the aircraft manufacturer Airbus got rid of all their paper instructions for assembly and does everything on tablet computers. And they’ve used the Hololens to help speed up the process of installing hundreds of miles of wiring in airplanes during manufacturing. Likewise, it’s great for viewing things at scale and relating to them with your body. Amazon’s mobile app already has a ‘View In Your Room’ feature for lots of products so you can see a couch in your room with AR and understand it in context. You can imagine how much better things like that might be in a headset. The range of user inputs is going to be great for expressive applications. You could imagine an audio production app that simulates a ton of music equipment in a more tactile way, turning your desk into drum pads and keyboards. And it’s obviously great for immersive media. Overall there’s likely going to be a bunch of general uses that are 5% better because you can surround yourself with virtual screens. But I would try to focus on focused transformative moments and real problems real people have.

Weaknesses of Spatial Computing:

It’s not great for anything you need to move quickly while doing. A spatial computing golf swing trainer that records your motion and plays back the best swings might sound fun. But wearing a headset while you’re doing that is probably going to give you motion sickness, the computer vision that tracks your body will likely fail, and the headset might go flying off your head and break. An idea like that might work if you put an iPhone on a tripod and filmed the person using ARKit’s body tracking API. But even then, fast motion will likely break it. VR and AR headsets are generally not great for long term use. I think I read that the average PSVR user spends 50 minutes in an experience, which is already a long time. I don’t have anything to say about the Vision Pro on this topic. But in general head mounted displays have historically been best for short duration uses.

Fail Fast and Pivot:

People say “Fail Fast” but may not practice that mindset. This talk by @ericries is basically a condensed version of his Lean Startup book and extremely relevant to product development for spatial computing https://youtu.be/fEvKo90qBns . Build something fast that mocks up your idea and get user feedback, and pivot away from things that aren’t working. You can ‘wizard of oz’ some features and fake them just to get user feedback quickly.

For Existing Products:

You should ship as much of your existing app as you can to the Vision Pro. But try to identify specific moments that would benefit from spatial computing and make those the highlight of your app. Again, check out ShapesXR on the Quest and use it to make crude mockups in VR and have people try them to get feedback. Resist making things overly spatial and spreading out content everywhere just because you can, it’s easy to make a mess out of an experience.