In the current Xcode iPhone Duo simulator runtime, AVCaptureDevice.DiscoverySession does not expose physical or simulated camera devices, returning empty arrays and necessitating custom synthetic mock pipelines for UI and kinematic tests.
Are there plans to introduce synthetic camera device emulation directly within the Duo CoreSimulator runtime? In the interim, what is Apple’s recommended architecture for verifying camera UI, preview rendering, and capture triggers on the Duo simulator target without diverging from production AVFoundation pipelines?
Regarding whether there are plans to introduce mock cameras into the simulator, we can't comment on unreleased products, but encourage you to file enhancement requests at feedbackassistant.apple.com.
In general though, you should always test your camera app on actual devices. Real-time performance varies from model to model. Verifying performance on a simulator is great for general UI flow, but can give a false sense of security for performance-senstive, real-time operations.
