Discuss Spatial Computing on Apple Platforms.

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Does Apple Spatial Audio Format documentation exist
The WWDC25 video and notes titled “Learn About Apple Immersive Video Technologies” introduced the Apple Spatial Audio Format (ASAF) and codec (APAC). However, despite references throughout on using immersive video, there is scant information on ASAF/APAC (including no code examples and no framework references), and I’ve found no documentation in Apple’s APIs/Frameworks about its implementation and use months on. I want to leverage ambisonic audio in my app. I don’t want to write a custom AU if APAC will be opened up to developers. If you read the notes below along with the iPhone 17 advertising (“Video is captured with Spatial Audio for immersive listening”), it sounds like this is very much a live feature in iOS26. Anyone know the state of play? I’m across how the PHASE engine works, which is unrelated to what I’m asking about here. Original quote from video referenced above: “ASAF enables truly externalized audio experiences by ensuring acoustic cues are used to render the audio. It’s composed of new metadata coupled with linear PCM, and a powerful new spatial renderer that’s built into Apple platforms. It produces high resolution Spatial Audio through numerous point sources and high resolution sound scenes, or higher order ambisonics.” ”ASAF is carried inside of broadcast Wave files with linear PCM signals and metadata. You typically use ASAF in production, and to stream ASAF audio, you will need to encode that audio as an mp4 APAC file.” ”APAC efficiently distributes ASAF, and APAC is required for any Apple immersive video experience. APAC playback is available on all Apple platforms except watchOS, and supports Channels, Objects, Higher Order Ambisonics, Dialogue, Binaural audio, interactive elements, as well as provisioning for extendable metadata.”
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Sep ’25
Debug Vision Pro application directly on physical device instead of the simulator
I have Mac mini M4 with 16GB memory, the Xcode is 16.1, when I test my Vision Pro App with the Simulator, it is very slow and system shows the memory is under the high pressure. How do I run/test/debug the application on Vision Pro directly? Tried to add my Vision Pro to my developer account, it didn't work due to cannot find UDID, when I hook the USB to the battery, it only shows Battery device ID.
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483
Jan ’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
Looking for a way to implement the video display effect in Apple's 'Spatial Gallery'
Hi guys, I noticed that Apple created a really engaging visual effect for browsing spatial videos in the app. The video appears embedded in glass panel with glowing edges and even shows a parallax effect as you move around. When I tried to display the stereo video using RealityView, however, the video entity always floats above the panel. May I ask how does VisionOS implement this effect? Is there any approach to achieve this effect or example code I can use in my own code. Thanks!
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Jun ’25
visionOS Simulator Rotate and Scale gestures difficult to register (capture)
We were having an issue wrb the system rotate and scale gestures (two-handed gestures / RotateGesture3D and MagnifyGesture) were extremely difficult to register (make work) in the visionOS simulator. The solution we found was to: Launch your app in the simulator Move the pointer on top of the 3D object for which you are testing rotation and scaling gestures. Press and hold the Option key to display touch points (ie: the two-handed gesture points). While maintaining the option key pressed, release the pointer and re-enable it again. I am using a track pad with tap-to-click enabled and three-finger to drag enabled in accessibility, so "release the pointer and re-enable it again" translates simply to removing the three finger and placing them again on the trackpad. If you have maintained the option key pressed, then you should now be able to rotate and scale the 3D object. Context if you are interested: Our issue was also occurring in Apple's own sample project relating to gestures "Transforming RealityKit entities using gestures", at below link. On Apple's article "Interacting with your app in the visionOS simulator" at the below link, for two-handed gestures it states "Press and hold the Option key to display touch points. Move the pointer while pressing the Option key to change the distance between the touch points. Move the pointer and hold the Shift and Option keys to reposition the touch points." This simply did not work anymore for rotation and scaling gestures. These gestures used to be a lot more responsive in Sonoma. Either the article should be updated to what I described above, or there is an issue. Our colleague who is using macOS Sonoma 14.6.1 with the latest release of Xcode is not having these issues. Here is the list of configurations (troubleshooting we tried!) where it is difficult to achieve rotation and scaling gestures in the visionOS simulator: macOS Sequoia 16.1 Beta, Xcode 16.1 RC w visionOS 2.1 macOS Sequoia 16.1 Beta, Xcode 16.1 RC w visionOS 2.0 macOS Sequoia 16.1 Beta, Xcode 16.2 Beta 1 w visionOS 2.1 macOS Sequoia 16.1 Beta, Xcode 16.2 Beta 1 w visionOS 2.0 macOS Sequoia 16.1 Beta, remove all Xcodes and installed the build from AppStore (Xcode 16.1) macOS Sequoia 16.1 Beta, Xcode 16.0 w visionOS 2.0 completely wiped out, and reset entire development machine, re-installed latest releases of sequoia (15.1) and xcode (15.1)) Throughout these troubleshooting I often: restarted both xcode and sim erased all derived data erased all contents and settings from sims performed fresh git clones None of the above worked, only the workaround described above works atm. As you can maybe deduce, it was very time consuming to find the workaround, we also wasted some development effort thinking our gesture development was no-good. Hopefully this will help other devs. Article Link: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/interacting-with-your-app-in-the-visionos-simulator Gesture sample project link: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/transforming-realitykit-entities-with-gestures
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Oct ’25
Setting clip shape of a RealityView
I am following this example to create a stereoscopic image: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/visionos/creating-stereoscopic-image-in-visionos I would also like to add corner radius to the stereoscopic RealityView. With ordinary SwiftUI views, we typically just use .clipShape(RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 32)): struct StereoImage: View { var body: some View { let spacing: CGFloat = 10.0 let padding: CGFloat = 40.0 VStack(spacing: spacing) { Text("Stereoscopic Image Example") .font(.largeTitle) RealityView { content in let creator = StereoImageCreator() guard let entity = await creator.createImageEntity() else { print("Failed to create the stereoscopic image entity.") return } content.add(entity) } .frame(depth: .zero) } .padding(padding) .clipShape(RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 32)) // <= HERE! } } This doesn't seem to actually clip the RealityView shown in the sample above. I am guessing this is due to the fact that the box in the RealityView has a non-zero z scale, which means it isn't on the same "layer" as its SwiftUI containers, and thus isn't clipped by the modifiers apply to the containers. How can I properly apply a clipshape to RealityViews like this? Thanks!
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Feb ’25
Creating a voxel mesh and render it using metal within a RealityKit ImmersiveView
Hi everyone, I'm creating an educational App that allows doing computational design in an immersive environment with the Vision Pro. The App is free and can be found here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/arcade-topology/id6742103633 The problem I have is that the mesh of voxels I currently create use ModelEntity and I recently read that this is horrible for scalability. I already start to see issues when I try to use thousands of voxels. I also read somewhere that I should then take advantage of GPUs and use metal to that end. I was wondering if someone could point me to a tutorial or article that discusses this. In essence, I need to create a 3D voxel mesh, and those voxels have to update their opacity within an iterative loop. Thanks! —Alejandro
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Jun ’25
Cannot extract imagePair from generated Spatial Photos
Hi I am trying to implement something simple as people can share their Spatial Photos with others (just like this post). I encountered the same issue with him, but his answer doesn't help me out here. Briefly speaking, I am using CGImgaeSoruce to extract paired leftImage and rightImage from one fetched spatial photo let photos = PHAsset.fetchAssets(with: .image, options: nil) // enumerating photos .... if asset.mediaSubtypes.contains(PHAssetMediaSubtype.spatialMedia) { spatialAsset = asset } // other code show below I can fetch left and right images from native Spatial Photo (taken by Apple Vision Pro or iPhone 15+), but it didn't work on generated spatial photo (2D -> 3D feat in Photos). // imageCount is 1 when it comes to generated spatial photo let imageCount = CGImageSourceGetCount(source) I searched over the net and someone says the generated version is having a depth image instead of left/right pair. But still I cannot extract any depth image from imageSource. The full code below, the imagePair extraction will stop at "no groups found": func extractPairedImage(phAsset: PHAsset, completion: @escaping (StereoImagePair?) -> Void) { let options = PHImageRequestOptions() options.isNetworkAccessAllowed = true options.deliveryMode = .highQualityFormat options.resizeMode = .none options.version = .original return PHImageManager.default().requestImageDataAndOrientation(for: phAsset, options: options) { imageData, _, _, _ in guard let imageData, let imageSource = CGImageSourceCreateWithData(imageData as CFData, nil) else { completion(nil) return } let stereoImagePair = stereoImagePair(from: imageSource) completion(stereoImagePair) } } } func stereoImagePair(from source: CGImageSource) -> StereoImagePair? { guard let properties = CGImageSourceCopyProperties(source, nil) as? [CFString: Any] else { return nil } let imageCount = CGImageSourceGetCount(source) print(String(format: "%d images found", imageCount)) guard let groups = properties[kCGImagePropertyGroups] as? [[CFString: Any]] else { /// function returns here print("no groups found") return nil } guard let stereoGroup = groups.first(where: { let groupType = $0[kCGImagePropertyGroupType] as! CFString return groupType == kCGImagePropertyGroupTypeStereoPair }) else { return nil } guard let leftIndex = stereoGroup[kCGImagePropertyGroupImageIndexLeft] as? Int, let rightIndex = stereoGroup[kCGImagePropertyGroupImageIndexRight] as? Int, let leftImage = CGImageSourceCreateImageAtIndex(source, leftIndex, nil), let rightImage = CGImageSourceCreateImageAtIndex(source, rightIndex, nil), let leftProperties = CGImageSourceCopyPropertiesAtIndex(source, leftIndex, nil), let rightProperties = CGImageSourceCopyPropertiesAtIndex(source, rightIndex, nil) else { return nil } return (leftImage, rightImage, self.identifier) } Any suggestion? Thanks visionOS 2.4
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Jun ’25
WorldTrackingProvider stops working on device
After re-launching the immersive space in my app 5-10 times, the WorldTrackingProvider stops working. Only restarting the app will allow it to start working again. Only on device, not the simulator. I get these errors when it happens: The device_anchor can only be queried when the world tracking provider is running. ARPredictorRemoteService <0x107cbb5e0>: Service configured with error: Error Domain=com.apple.arkit.error Code=501 "(null)" Remote Service was invalidated: <ARPredictorRemoteService: 0x107cbb5e0>, will stop all data_providers. ARRemoteService: remote object proxy failed with error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4099 "The connection to service with pid 81 named com.apple.arkit.service.session was invalidated from this process." UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=The connection to service with pid 81 named com.apple.arkit.service.session was invalidated from this process.} ARRemoteService: weak self released before invalidation @Observable class VisionPro { let session = ARKitSession() let worldTracking = WorldTrackingProvider() func transformMatrix() async -> simd_float4x4 { guard let deviceAnchor = worldTracking.queryDeviceAnchor(atTimestamp: CACurrentMediaTime()) else { return .init() } return deviceAnchor.originFromAnchorTransform } func runArkitSession() async { Task { try? await session.run([worldTracking]) } } } which I call from my RealityView: .task { await visionPro.runArkitSession() }
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Feb ’25
For a third year, no screenshot capability for immersive visionOS apps... here's a workaround?
Since only the user can take a screenshot using the Apple Vision Pro's top buttons, the only workaround available to an immersive app that needs a screenshot to document the user's creative interior design choices is ask the user to take a screenshot wait until the user taps a button indicating the screenshot has been taken then the app asks the user to select the screenshot when the app opens the PhotoPicker when the user presses Done, the screenshot is handed off to the app. One wonders why there is no Apple Api for doing this in a simple privacy protective way such as: When called, the Apple api captures the screenshot in Apple secured memory The api displays the screenshot to the user with appropriate privacy warnings and asks if the user wants to a. share this screenshot with the app, or b. cancel, c. retake the screenshot If the user approves, the app receives the screenshot
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Jun ’25
Reading scenePhase from custom Scene
Hi, I've encountered a thread where an Apple engineer points out that there are 2 possible ways to anchor scenePhase, either App or View implementation: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/757429 This thread also links to documentation which states If you read the phase from within a custom Scene instance, the value similarly reflects an aggregation of all the scenes that make up the custom scene: This doesn't seem to be the case on visionOS 2, I tried the following code starting from an empty app template: import SwiftUI @main struct SceneTestApp: App { var body: some Scene { MyScene() WindowGroup(id: "extra") { Text("Extra window") } } } struct MyScene: Scene { @Environment(\.scenePhase) private var scenePhase @Environment(\.openWindow) private var openWindow var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { ContentView() .onAppear { openWindow(id: "extra") } } .onChange(of: scenePhase) { oldValue, newValue in print("scenePhase changed") } } } The result was that I didn't get onChange callback if I only closed the extra window, the callback only came after I closed both windows and the whole app was suspended. Is this expected behavior?
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Feb ’25
Vision OS: HUD mode windows
If I correctly understand, a new Enterprise API has been introduced In visionOS 26 allowing to fix windows to the user frame of reference, implementing a something like an "head up display", with the window tracking the user movements. Is this API only available to enterprise applications, and if so is there a plan to make it available for every kind of app?
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Jun ’25
RealityView Not Refreshing With SwiftData
Hi, I am trying to update what entities are visible in my RealityView. After the SwiftData set is updated, I have to restart the app for it to appear in the RealityView. Also, the RealityView does not close when I move to a different tab. It keeps everything on and tracking, leaving the model in the same location I left it. import SwiftUI import RealityKit import MountainLake import SwiftData struct RealityLakeView: View { @Environment(\.modelContext) private var context @Query private var items: [Item] var body: some View { RealityView { content in print("View Loaded") let lakeScene = try? await Entity(named: "Lake", in: mountainLakeBundle) let anchor = AnchorEntity(.plane(.horizontal, classification: .any, minimumBounds: SIMD2<Float>(0.2, 0.2))) @MainActor func addEntity(name: String) { if let lakeEntity = lakeScene?.findEntity(named: name) { // Add the Cube_1 entity to the RealityView anchor.addChild(lakeEntity) } else { print(name + "entity not found in the Lake scene.") } } addEntity(name: "Island") for item in items { if(item.enabled) { addEntity(name: item.value) } } // Add the horizontal plane anchor to the scene content.add(anchor) content.camera = .spatialTracking } placeholder: { ProgressView() } .edgesIgnoringSafeArea(.all) } } #Preview { RealityLakeView() }
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Jan ’25
RealityKit Trace Metric Max/Range for VisionOS app
Hi Nathaniel, I spoke with you yesterday in the WWDC lab. Thanks for chatting with me! Is it possible to get a link to a doc that has some key metrics I'd find in a RealityKit trace so I know if that metric is exceeding limits and probably causing a problem? Right now, I just see numbers and have no idea if a metric is high or low :). This is specifically for a VisionOS app. Thanks, Bob
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Jun ’25
[WWDC25] For GuessTogether, can you initiate a FaceTime call via the custom SharePlay button?
Hello, For GuessTogether source code, it seems like the code assumes that you're already in a FaceTime call before pressing the custom SharePlay button (labeled "Play Guess Together"). If not already on a FaceTime call, my Apple Vision Pro and the visionOS simulator both do nothing after throwing warnings. Is this intended behavior? If so, how do I make it so that pressing the button can also initiate FaceTime calls? Is this allowed? Thank you!
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Sep ’25
ReplayKit start and stop capture breaks and give me an error when switching from Immersive to Mixed and back.
Hi, I'm developing a virtual camera system using ReplayKit to capture scene video by directly accessing raw video buffers. The capture mechanism works flawlessly when repeatedly starting and stopping video capture within a continuous immersive environment. However, a critical issue arises when interrupting the immersive space: Step 1: Enter immersive environment and start and stop capture videos(Multiple times with no issues) Step 2: Press the crown button to exit the immersive environment Step 3: Return to the immersive space subsequently Step 4: Attempt to start the video capture At this point, the startCapture method throws an unexpected error, disrupting the video capture workflow. This is the Xcode error that I see " [ERROR] -[RPScreenRecorder startCaptureWithHandler:completionHandler:]_block_invoke_2:500 failed to start due to error: Error Domain=com.apple.ReplayKit.RPRecordingErrorDomain Code=-5803 "Recording failed to start" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Recording failed to start}" I have tried all possible ways to stopCapture including OnDisappear and other methods and nothing seems to solve this.
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Mar ’25