Step Into Newsletter – January 19, 2025

Spatial SwiftUI, 100 posts, broken windows, and preparing for the MIT Reality Hack.

It has been a busy couple of weeks since the last newsletter. I published my 100th post on Step Into Vision. I added new posts to the Spatial SwiftUI series and created some interesting labs. I also started preparing for the MIT Reality Hack.

Example Code

Most of my attention has been on the Spatial SwiftUI series. I’ve also been working a lot with ARKit and Spatial Tracking Session, but I don’t have much to share yet. When working in RealityKit we have two paths we can take to add ARKit features to our apps. I’ve been working on understanding each path so I can make examples for each one.

Spatial SwiftUI: rotation3DEffect – Using rotation3DEffect to rotate views in a window.

Spatial SwiftUI: transform3DEffect – Exploring some uses of transform3DEffect and AffineTransform3D.

Spatial SwiftUI: shadow modifier – Using shadows on 2D views to convey depth.

Spatial SwiftUI: hoverEffect modifier – Taking a look (😜) at the hoverEffect modifier.

Spatial SwiftUI: ZStack – ZStack is a core container view in SwiftUI, but it really shines in visionOS where depth is real.

From the Labs

Lab 022 – A simple hand menu idea – Building a simple hand menu with hand anchors and attachments. I’ll expand on idea this idea over time to add more features.

Lab 023 – Anchored Bounce Box (mini-game) – Dave Briccetti invited me to show his class a few things about visionOS development. I created a mini-game that uses a hand anchor to control a box to bounce a ball toward a target. It was a ton of fun to code and a to play with.

I had a special guest in my computer science elective class today at one of my schools: @vrhermit.bsky.social. Thank you Joseph Simpson for showing us some of your Apple Vision Pro projects. It’s great to know you.

— Dave Briccetti (@dcbriccetti.bsky.social) 2025-01-14T23:32:12.712Z

Lab 024 – Be careful with Windows – Just a bit of fun with attachments and physics. Enjoy!

Lab 025 – Moving Windows Should Be Easy – Expanding on Lab 024 with some gestures and selective gravity.

Lab 026 – Using Dynamic Lights and Shadows with Passthrough – This was really interesting to learn. We can use ShadowReceivingOcclusionSurface to enable virtual lights and shadows to affect our real space.

Other Updates

Check out the article about the latest milestone on our journey. 100 Posts on Step Into Vision.

Resources added: Last week in Apple Vision Pro and Interactful.

I’ve been working on a new logo and some branding for the Step Into Vision project. You may have already noticed some visual changes on the site. Let me know what you think!

I’ll be in Boston for the MIT Reality Hack from Jan 22 through 28. My role will be to mentor and help visionOS developers in any way I can. I’m really looking forward to spending time with so many people from our community. If you are going, let me know!