Step Into Newsletter – January 5, 2025

Working with hand anchors, transitioning between immersive spaces, and getting started with Spatial SwiftUI.

Happy New Year! We launched Step Into Vision less than six months ago. Since that time we have published 89 examples, labs, resources, and articles. You can expect much more in 2025. If you pay attention to the Learn visionOS page you will see some of our mini-series start to take shape. We currently have series on several topics with much more on the way.

Example Code: Hand Anchors

Expanding on the series for user input, we have several new examples for working with hand anchors in RealityKit. We can use these anchors to attach entities to our hands and fingers. We can create a Spatial Tracking Session of we need to access more advanced features.

How to set tracking mode for a Hand Anchors – The default tracking mode .continuous is very accurate but it can lag slightly behind. We can also use .predicted, which can feel much faster but it has a tendency to overshoot during very fast motions.

How to use Physics Interactions with Hand Anchors – We can add a Spatial Tracking Session if we need our hands to interact with physics bodies in the scene.

How to Access Hand Anchor Transform Data with Spatial Tracking Session – When using Spatial Tracking Session with Hand Anchors, we gain access to the anchors transform data.

How to create hand anchors with Anchoring Component – Creating entities with anchoring components attached instead of using AnchorEntity.

Interacting with Hand Anchors using Spatial Tracking Session – We can add a Spatial Tracking Session if we need to use hand tracking features. These features include physics and collisions. They also include accessing transforms.

Check out the entire series on the Learn visionOS page.

Example Code: More Updates

Multiple taps with TapGesture – We can specify a count to indicate the number of taps required to trigger a TapGesture.

How to show and hide the window bar in visionOS – We can use persistentSystemOverlays(_:) to control the visibility of window controls.

We have several new and updated examples for scene transitions.

How to transition between a window and an immersive space – What if we want to hide a window when entering an immersive space?

How to transition from one immersive space to another – Part One – (Updated) – Building on what we have learned about scene phase, we can transition from one space to another.

How to transition from one immersive space to another – Part Two – Using a loading window as a launch pad from one immersive space to another.

Coming soon

We started a new series called Spatial SwiftUI. We’ll explore the various ways that we can add depth and space to our SwiftUI views in windows and volumes. The first post is available now.

Spatial SwiftUI: offset modifier – Using z axis offset to lift our views out of their window.

We will also be starting work on the ARKit series for RealityKit, using Spatial Tracking Session to access AR anchors.

If you find Step Into Vision useful, please help us spread the word. Share this email with your friends and colleagues. Post your favorite examples or labs on social media.

As always, let us know if there is a topic you would like to see covered.

Joseph