Apple Explains Vision Pro's VR Playspace Boundaries

Apple Explains Vision Pro’s VR Playspace Boundaries

Time Stamp: June 22, 2023 1:23 PM
Source Node: 2143342

Vision Pro takes a different approach to playspace boundaries in VR than existing headsets.

Apple uses the term “fully immersive experiences” for VR apps on visionOS – that is, apps which show entirely virtual content instead of any of the real world. The documentation does actually list “a virtual reality (VR) game” as an example use case of fully immersive experiences.

According to that documentation, when you launch a VR app visionOS creates a 3×3 meter boundary centered on your head. If you move out of that zone, the VR app “stops” and you see real-world passthrough instead.

Existing headsets like Meta Quest, Pico 4, and HTC Vive XR Elite also fade to real-world passthrough as you exit the playspace boundary. But on those headsets you manually draw out the boundary yourself, it’s not just a fixed 3×3 meter zone.

Apple’s visionOS Human Interface Guidelines page also lists other built-in safety measures:

  • “If a person moves more than about a meter, the system automatically makes all displayed content translucent to help them navigate their surroundings.”
  • “The system can stop an immersive experience when people get too close to a physical object or when they move too quickly.”

The mention of the experience stopping when getting close to a physical object suggests the safety system will leverage Vision Pro’s scene understanding capabilities, made possible by its depth sensing hardware. How exactly that will work, and how it will compare to Quest 3’s ‘Smart Guardian’, remains to be seen though.

Vision Pro’s depth sensing hardware generates a detailed mesh of the real-world which its safety system or VR app developers could leverage.

But what exactly does Apple mean by saying the experience will stop when you “move too quickly”? Will this preclude VR games that rely on fast movements, or does this only trigger if you start running at a real world wall?

The only major VR game fully confirmed for visionOS so far is Rec Room, but with the visionOS SDK now available we’re sure many more developers will explore bringing their title to Apple’s platform – even if that means working within new constraints.

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