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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How to mix Animation and IKRig in RealityKit
I want an AR character to be able to look at a position while still playing the characters animation. So far, I managed to manually adjust a single bone rotation using skeletalComponent.poses.default = Transform( scale: baseTransform.scale, rotation: lookAtRotation, translation: baseTransform.translation ) which I run at every rendering update, while a full body animation is running. But of course, hardcoding single joints to point into a direction (in my case the head) does not look as nice, as if I were to run some inverse cinematic that includes, hips + neck + head joints. I found some good IKRig code in Composing interactive 3D content with RealityKit and Reality Composer Pro. But when I try to adjust rigs while animations are playing, the animations are usually winning over the IKRig changes to the mesh.
1
0
537
Aug ’25
RealityView attachment draw order
My visionOS 26.3 app displays a diorama-like scene in a RealityView in a mixed immersive space, about 1 meter square, with view attachments floating above the scene. Each view attachment fades out after user interaction, by animating the view's opacity. What I'm observing is that depending on the position of a view attachment relative to the scene and the camera, an unwanted cutout effect is observed (presumably because of draw order issues), as shown in the right column in the screenshots below. YouTube video link of these sequences: https://youtu.be/oTuo0okKCkc (19 seconds) My question: How does visionOS determine the view attachment draw order relative to the RealityView scene? If I better understood how the draw order is determined, I could modify my scene to ensure that the view attachments were always drawn after the scene, fixing the unwanted cutout effect. I've successfully used ModelSortGroupComponent to control the draw order of entities within the RealityView scene, but my understanding is that this approach cannot be used with view attachments. I've submitted FB22014370 about this issue. Thank you.
1
0
375
1w
Reality Kit Scene
Hi, I’m wondering whether RealityKit has its own scene management system, since it uses ARView (backed by ARKit) to present AR content. Does RealityKit manage scenes independently, or does it rely entirely on ARKit’s scene handling? Thank you.
1
0
156
Feb ’26
Immersive environment learning material
I really love the immersive environments, but I don’t have experience with creating them. Do you have resources or tutorials you can recommend for creating these from scratch? I’ve seen the sample projects and videos, but they usually start in the middle, assuming you already have the assets created.
1
0
88
Jul ’25
iOS needs to allow for background bluetooth scanning. I can't fully build my app.
iOS currently restricts background Bluetooth advertising and scanning in order to preserve battery life and protect user privacy. While these restrictions serve important purposes, they also limit legitimate use cases where users have explicitly opted in to proximity-based experiences. The core challenge is that modern social applications need a way to detect when users are physically present at the same location or event without requiring every participant to keep their app in the foreground. Under the current system, background BLE advertising is heavily throttled and can only transmit a limited payload, background scanning intervals are sparse and unpredictable, peer-to-peer proximity detection cannot be maintained reliably when apps are in the background, and Background App Refresh is non-deterministic, making any kind of time-based proximity validation impossible. A proposed enhancement would be to introduce an “Enhanced Proximity Permission.” This would allow developers to enable reliable background BLE advertising and scanning for declared time windows, such as a maximum of eight hours. It would also allow devices running the same app to detect each other’s proximity using ephemeral, rotating identifiers that preserve privacy, with clear user consent and prominent indicators whenever the feature is active. Unlocking this capability would open up new categories of applications. Live events could offer automatic attendance tracking at concerts, conferences, or sports venues. Retail environments could support opt-in foot traffic analysis and dwell-time insights. Social apps could allow users to find friends at festivals, campuses, or other large venues. Safety applications could extend to crowd density monitoring and contact tracing beyond COVID-era needs. Gaming could offer real-world multiplayer experiences based on physical proximity, and transportation providers could verify rideshare pickups or measure public transit flows automatically. Privacy safeguards would remain central. Permissions would be time-boxed and expire after an event or session. A mandatory visual indicator would be displayed whenever proximity tracking is active. A user-facing dashboard would show all apps granted enhanced proximity access. Permissions would automatically be revoked after a period of non-use, and only ephemeral tokens not permanent identifiers would be broadcast. The industry impact would be significant. With this enhancement, iOS could power the next generation of location-aware social platforms while maintaining Apple’s leadership in privacy through explicit user control and transparency. Current alternatives, such as requiring users to keep apps in the foreground or deploying dedicated hardware beacons, produce poor user experiences and constrain innovation in spatial computing and social applications. Can anyone from Apple consider this change? Having to buy iBeacons is brutal and means slower adoption. Please reconsider this for users who opt in.
1
0
1.2k
Sep ’25
Is `ParticleEmitterComponent` implemented for `RealityKit` on iOS?
Hi there, I was looking to add a particle emitter to my augmented reality app I'm developing using RealityKit. I'm targeting iOS. I noticed in the documentation for the ParticleEmitterComponent that it looks like iOS 18.0+ is supported, but when I try to use the ParticleEmitterComponent in my code in XCode, I get an error that it isn't found. Furthermore, this StackOverflow post seems to indicate that particle systems are not available for iOS. Would it be possible to get clarification on this?
1
0
154
May ’25
visionOS Widget Bug
When I was developing the visionOS 26beta Widget, I found that it could not work normally when the real vision OS was running, and an error would appear. Please adopt container background api It is worth mentioning that this problem does not occur on the visionOS virtual machine. Does anyone know what the reason and solution are, or whether this is a visionOS error that needs Feedback? Thank you!
1
0
470
Sep ’25
Draw An Outline Around a Model Entity
Hi, Is there a resource or sample code about how to draw an outline around a mesh in RealityKit? Typically, this is useful for visualizing a selection, like in Reality Composer Pro. How to achieve such effect? A shader material? A post-process effect in ARView or RealityRenderer? Methods such as duplicating the entity mesh, scaling it, and using material.faceCulling = .front did not look good in my experiments. Thank you.
1
0
543
Feb ’26
Do you retain a reference to your content events in RealityView?
Do you retain a reference to your content (RealityViewContent) events? For example, the Manipulation Events docs from Apple use _ to discard the result. In theory the event should keep working while the content is alive. _ = content.subscribe(to: ManipulationEvents.WillBegin.self) { event in event.entity.components[ModelComponent.self]?.materials[0] = SimpleMaterial(color: .blue, isMetallic: false) } _ = content.subscribe(to: ManipulationEvents.WillEnd.self) { event in event.entity.components[ModelComponent.self]?.materials[0] = SimpleMaterial(color: .red, isMetallic: false) } We could store these events in state. I've seen this in a few samples and apps. @State var beginSubscription: EventSubscription? ... beginSubscription = content.subscribe(to: ManipulationEvents.WillBegin.self) { event in event.entity.components[ModelComponent.self]?.materials[0] = SimpleMaterial(color: .blue, isMetallic: false) } The main advantage I see is that we can be more explicit about when we remove the event. Are there other reasons to keep a reference to these events?
1
0
594
Sep ’25
CustomMaterial disable unlit tone mapping
Hi, since iOS 18 UnlitMaterial and ShaderGraphMaterial have the option to disable tone mapping, e.g via https://aninterestingwebsite.com/documentation/realitykit/unlitmaterial/init(applypostprocesstonemap:) Is it possible to do the same for CustomMaterial? I tried initializing a CustomMaterial based on an UnlitMaterial where tone mapping is disabled, like so: let unlitMat = UnlitMaterial(applyPostProcessToneMap: false) let customMaterial = try CustomMaterial( from: unlitMat, surfaceShader: surfaceShader, geometryModifier: geometryModifier ) but that does not seem to work. The colors of my texture still look altered in comparison to a plain UnlitMaterial or a ShaderGraphMaterial where its disabled. Any hints? Thank you!
1
0
145
Jun ’25
Need to rotate child of a 3D mesh
I am creating a vision pro app with a 3D model, it has a mesh hierarchy of head, hands, feet etc. I want the character to look towards the camera, but am not able to access head of character through sceneKit nor reality kit. when I try to print names of the child meshes, it only prints till the character, it does iterate through all the body parts. Can anyone help?
1
0
229
Sep ’25
The folding and unfolding effect of the NBA sand table
Seeing this magical sand table, the unfolding and folding effects are similar to spreading out cards, which is very interesting. But I don't know how to achieve it. I want to see if there are any ways to achieve this effect and give some ideas. May I ask if this effect can be achieved under the existing API
1
0
99
May ’25
Sticky Horizontal AnchorEntity
Hi, I'm trying to use AnchorEntity for horizontal surfaces. It works when the entity is being created, but I'm looking for a way to snap this entity to the nearest surface, after translating it, for example with a DragGesture. What would be the best way to achieve this? Using raycast, creating a new anchor, trackingMode to continuous etc. Do I need to use ARKitSession as I want continuous tracking?
1
0
278
Feb ’26
Using AVAsynchronousKeyValueLoading.load() on an AVAssetTrack gives an error
I'm seeing this error while attempting to compile my VisionOS app under Xcode 26. My existing code looks like: let (naturalSize, formatDescriptions, mediaCharacteristics) = try? await videoTrack.load(.naturalSize, .formatDescriptions, .mediaCharacteristics) This is now giving a compiler error: Type of expression is ambiguous without a type annotation I don't see that anything that was changed or deprecated in the latest version. Also loading the properties individually seems to work fine i.e.: let naturalSize = try? await videoTrack.load(.naturalSize) let formatDescriptions = try? await videoTrack.load(.formatDescriptions) let mediaCharacteristics = try? await videoTrack.load(.mediaCharacteristics)
1
0
122
Jun ’25
How to mix Animation and IKRig in RealityKit
I want an AR character to be able to look at a position while still playing the characters animation. So far, I managed to manually adjust a single bone rotation using skeletalComponent.poses.default = Transform( scale: baseTransform.scale, rotation: lookAtRotation, translation: baseTransform.translation ) which I run at every rendering update, while a full body animation is running. But of course, hardcoding single joints to point into a direction (in my case the head) does not look as nice, as if I were to run some inverse cinematic that includes, hips + neck + head joints. I found some good IKRig code in Composing interactive 3D content with RealityKit and Reality Composer Pro. But when I try to adjust rigs while animations are playing, the animations are usually winning over the IKRig changes to the mesh.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
537
Activity
Aug ’25
RealityView attachment draw order
My visionOS 26.3 app displays a diorama-like scene in a RealityView in a mixed immersive space, about 1 meter square, with view attachments floating above the scene. Each view attachment fades out after user interaction, by animating the view's opacity. What I'm observing is that depending on the position of a view attachment relative to the scene and the camera, an unwanted cutout effect is observed (presumably because of draw order issues), as shown in the right column in the screenshots below. YouTube video link of these sequences: https://youtu.be/oTuo0okKCkc (19 seconds) My question: How does visionOS determine the view attachment draw order relative to the RealityView scene? If I better understood how the draw order is determined, I could modify my scene to ensure that the view attachments were always drawn after the scene, fixing the unwanted cutout effect. I've successfully used ModelSortGroupComponent to control the draw order of entities within the RealityView scene, but my understanding is that this approach cannot be used with view attachments. I've submitted FB22014370 about this issue. Thank you.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
375
Activity
1w
Foveated Streaming - Can I stream Immersive Video from Mac
This is a very exciting feature in 26.4 beta. But from the document, it seems can only integrate with NVIDIA CloudXR™ SDK. I'm wondering if it's possible to use this tool to stream immersive video from Mac to Vision Pro?
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
738
Activity
4w
There some limitations if I open a spatial photo with Quick Look when an immersive space is on?
When viewing an immersive space and I open a spatial photo in Quick Look, which hides the entire app interface to show the photo. Is there a memory limit? If the inmersive space is not active, the application keep the interface.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
192
Activity
Jun ’25
How to break the progress of Entity.animate()
Entity.animate() makes entity animation much easier, but in many cases, I want to break the progress because of some gestures, I couldn't find any way to do this, including tried entity.stopAllAnimations(), I have to wait till Entity.animate() completes. iOS 26 / visionOS 26
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
367
Activity
Sep ’25
Reality Kit Scene
Hi, I’m wondering whether RealityKit has its own scene management system, since it uses ARView (backed by ARKit) to present AR content. Does RealityKit manage scenes independently, or does it rely entirely on ARKit’s scene handling? Thank you.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
156
Activity
Feb ’26
Immersive environment learning material
I really love the immersive environments, but I don’t have experience with creating them. Do you have resources or tutorials you can recommend for creating these from scratch? I’ve seen the sample projects and videos, but they usually start in the middle, assuming you already have the assets created.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
88
Activity
Jul ’25
Does RealityKit support mesh based animation?
I have a mesh based animation 3D model, that means every frame it’s a new mesh. I import it into RealityView, but can’t play it‘s animation, RealityKit tells me this model has no animations by using print(entity.availableAnimations).
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
675
Activity
Aug ’25
iOS needs to allow for background bluetooth scanning. I can't fully build my app.
iOS currently restricts background Bluetooth advertising and scanning in order to preserve battery life and protect user privacy. While these restrictions serve important purposes, they also limit legitimate use cases where users have explicitly opted in to proximity-based experiences. The core challenge is that modern social applications need a way to detect when users are physically present at the same location or event without requiring every participant to keep their app in the foreground. Under the current system, background BLE advertising is heavily throttled and can only transmit a limited payload, background scanning intervals are sparse and unpredictable, peer-to-peer proximity detection cannot be maintained reliably when apps are in the background, and Background App Refresh is non-deterministic, making any kind of time-based proximity validation impossible. A proposed enhancement would be to introduce an “Enhanced Proximity Permission.” This would allow developers to enable reliable background BLE advertising and scanning for declared time windows, such as a maximum of eight hours. It would also allow devices running the same app to detect each other’s proximity using ephemeral, rotating identifiers that preserve privacy, with clear user consent and prominent indicators whenever the feature is active. Unlocking this capability would open up new categories of applications. Live events could offer automatic attendance tracking at concerts, conferences, or sports venues. Retail environments could support opt-in foot traffic analysis and dwell-time insights. Social apps could allow users to find friends at festivals, campuses, or other large venues. Safety applications could extend to crowd density monitoring and contact tracing beyond COVID-era needs. Gaming could offer real-world multiplayer experiences based on physical proximity, and transportation providers could verify rideshare pickups or measure public transit flows automatically. Privacy safeguards would remain central. Permissions would be time-boxed and expire after an event or session. A mandatory visual indicator would be displayed whenever proximity tracking is active. A user-facing dashboard would show all apps granted enhanced proximity access. Permissions would automatically be revoked after a period of non-use, and only ephemeral tokens not permanent identifiers would be broadcast. The industry impact would be significant. With this enhancement, iOS could power the next generation of location-aware social platforms while maintaining Apple’s leadership in privacy through explicit user control and transparency. Current alternatives, such as requiring users to keep apps in the foreground or deploying dedicated hardware beacons, produce poor user experiences and constrain innovation in spatial computing and social applications. Can anyone from Apple consider this change? Having to buy iBeacons is brutal and means slower adoption. Please reconsider this for users who opt in.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
1.2k
Activity
Sep ’25
Is `ParticleEmitterComponent` implemented for `RealityKit` on iOS?
Hi there, I was looking to add a particle emitter to my augmented reality app I'm developing using RealityKit. I'm targeting iOS. I noticed in the documentation for the ParticleEmitterComponent that it looks like iOS 18.0+ is supported, but when I try to use the ParticleEmitterComponent in my code in XCode, I get an error that it isn't found. Furthermore, this StackOverflow post seems to indicate that particle systems are not available for iOS. Would it be possible to get clarification on this?
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
154
Activity
May ’25
Is it possible to create immersive video totally from virtual scene
hi guys, I'm working in VFX industry and I've got the question that, is it possible to create immersive video directly from virtual scene created in DCC software like maya, rendered into footage, then coded into immersive video, and finally play in in vision pro? thanks.
Replies
1
Boosts
1
Views
730
Activity
Sep ’25
visionOS Widget Bug
When I was developing the visionOS 26beta Widget, I found that it could not work normally when the real vision OS was running, and an error would appear. Please adopt container background api It is worth mentioning that this problem does not occur on the visionOS virtual machine. Does anyone know what the reason and solution are, or whether this is a visionOS error that needs Feedback? Thank you!
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
470
Activity
Sep ’25
Draw An Outline Around a Model Entity
Hi, Is there a resource or sample code about how to draw an outline around a mesh in RealityKit? Typically, this is useful for visualizing a selection, like in Reality Composer Pro. How to achieve such effect? A shader material? A post-process effect in ARView or RealityRenderer? Methods such as duplicating the entity mesh, scaling it, and using material.faceCulling = .front did not look good in my experiments. Thank you.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
543
Activity
Feb ’26
Do you retain a reference to your content events in RealityView?
Do you retain a reference to your content (RealityViewContent) events? For example, the Manipulation Events docs from Apple use _ to discard the result. In theory the event should keep working while the content is alive. _ = content.subscribe(to: ManipulationEvents.WillBegin.self) { event in event.entity.components[ModelComponent.self]?.materials[0] = SimpleMaterial(color: .blue, isMetallic: false) } _ = content.subscribe(to: ManipulationEvents.WillEnd.self) { event in event.entity.components[ModelComponent.self]?.materials[0] = SimpleMaterial(color: .red, isMetallic: false) } We could store these events in state. I've seen this in a few samples and apps. @State var beginSubscription: EventSubscription? ... beginSubscription = content.subscribe(to: ManipulationEvents.WillBegin.self) { event in event.entity.components[ModelComponent.self]?.materials[0] = SimpleMaterial(color: .blue, isMetallic: false) } The main advantage I see is that we can be more explicit about when we remove the event. Are there other reasons to keep a reference to these events?
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
594
Activity
Sep ’25
CustomMaterial disable unlit tone mapping
Hi, since iOS 18 UnlitMaterial and ShaderGraphMaterial have the option to disable tone mapping, e.g via https://aninterestingwebsite.com/documentation/realitykit/unlitmaterial/init(applypostprocesstonemap:) Is it possible to do the same for CustomMaterial? I tried initializing a CustomMaterial based on an UnlitMaterial where tone mapping is disabled, like so: let unlitMat = UnlitMaterial(applyPostProcessToneMap: false) let customMaterial = try CustomMaterial( from: unlitMat, surfaceShader: surfaceShader, geometryModifier: geometryModifier ) but that does not seem to work. The colors of my texture still look altered in comparison to a plain UnlitMaterial or a ShaderGraphMaterial where its disabled. Any hints? Thank you!
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
145
Activity
Jun ’25
Need to rotate child of a 3D mesh
I am creating a vision pro app with a 3D model, it has a mesh hierarchy of head, hands, feet etc. I want the character to look towards the camera, but am not able to access head of character through sceneKit nor reality kit. when I try to print names of the child meshes, it only prints till the character, it does iterate through all the body parts. Can anyone help?
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
229
Activity
Sep ’25
The folding and unfolding effect of the NBA sand table
Seeing this magical sand table, the unfolding and folding effects are similar to spreading out cards, which is very interesting. But I don't know how to achieve it. I want to see if there are any ways to achieve this effect and give some ideas. May I ask if this effect can be achieved under the existing API
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
99
Activity
May ’25
Can I use `FromToByAction` to animate the ShaderGraphMaterial parameters?
Can I combine FromToByAction and BindTarget.MaterialPath to animate my ShaderGraphMaterial. I don't know how to use the BindTarget.MaterialPath.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
313
Activity
Sep ’25
Sticky Horizontal AnchorEntity
Hi, I'm trying to use AnchorEntity for horizontal surfaces. It works when the entity is being created, but I'm looking for a way to snap this entity to the nearest surface, after translating it, for example with a DragGesture. What would be the best way to achieve this? Using raycast, creating a new anchor, trackingMode to continuous etc. Do I need to use ARKitSession as I want continuous tracking?
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
278
Activity
Feb ’26
Using AVAsynchronousKeyValueLoading.load() on an AVAssetTrack gives an error
I'm seeing this error while attempting to compile my VisionOS app under Xcode 26. My existing code looks like: let (naturalSize, formatDescriptions, mediaCharacteristics) = try? await videoTrack.load(.naturalSize, .formatDescriptions, .mediaCharacteristics) This is now giving a compiler error: Type of expression is ambiguous without a type annotation I don't see that anything that was changed or deprecated in the latest version. Also loading the properties individually seems to work fine i.e.: let naturalSize = try? await videoTrack.load(.naturalSize) let formatDescriptions = try? await videoTrack.load(.formatDescriptions) let mediaCharacteristics = try? await videoTrack.load(.mediaCharacteristics)
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
122
Activity
Jun ’25