The Apple Vision Pro may not be what you think

At Apple’s annual World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), they recently announced a new product for their current lineup of devices. It is a mixed reality headset, which combines both augmented and virtual reality into one device, but Apple is now said to be limiting it through software.

The one interesting thing about Apple’s keynote for the Apple Vision Pro was that they rarely showed anything in virtual reality other than watching movies. And, after further explanation, we know why.

According to the documentation for developing virtual reality apps for the the Apple Vision Pro here, it warns developers that they only have a 1.5 meter by 1.5 meter space to work with around the initial position of the user. This suggests that Apple purposely wants to limit what the user can do in virtual reality — going so far to make their playing space smaller.

Apple may be trying to show us that augmented reality is the future, not virtual reality, unless you desire to block out the rest of the world. To truly play immersive games, the user should be able to set the amount of space they want to play with, like the Oculus Quest, which has a custom ‘guardian’ boundary that you can set. On Apple’s headset though, it says that if the user accidentally crosses that 1.5 meter threshold, the app shuts down and augmented reality turns back on, throwing you out of the middle of your game.

Since these features are still in development, this could be changed. Hopefully, Apple sees the need for virtual reality game and app development and opens this up for more programmers. Apple’s headset is a technological masterpiece and, for it to truly succeed, it must be used to its fullest potential to be able to cling onto the market.