Step Into Newsletter – March 16, 2025
Playing with portals, starting RealityKit Concepts, and new community resources.
Example Code
We have a couple of examples for how to work around the dreaded “Presentations are not currently supported in Volumetric contexts” issue.
Spatial SwiftUI: Volumetric presentation with attachments – Exploring a workaround to system SwiftUI views that use presentations in RealityView attachments.
Spatial SwiftUI: Building volumetric pickers with attachments – Exploring a workaround to system SwiftUI pickers that use presentations in RealityView attachments.
We also started working on a new section of the Learn visionOS page called RealityKit Concepts. This section will have mini-series covering a variety of RealityKit topics. We’ll starting with Collision & Physics. We’ll cover things like Materials, Shader Graph, Timelines, Animations, Audio, Lighting, working with assets, and more.
Collisions & Physics: Getting started with Collision Component – This component is vital to user input, collision detection, and physics.
Collisions & Physics: Collision Use Cases – The Collision Component is used input, collision detection, and physics.
From The Labs
Portals are a fascinating concept in any 3D environment, but they really feel like magic in XR headsets.
Lab 037 – Portal in a Window – Learning the basics of how to use PortalComponent to render one scene inside another.
Lab 038 – Portal Sphere in a Volume – We can render Portal Material on more than just a plane.
Lab 039 – Portals in Immersive Spaces – In immersive spaces, portal contents share the same coordinate space as the main scene.
Lab 040 – Portal Swap – Using a portal to switch between two worlds.
Resources
We’ve added a handful of new resources to the library, with a focus on educational material.
Introductory visionOS samples from Apple
XR Tutorials by John Rodrigues
Community Update
I’ve been making a little progress on Dark Spaces, and I hope to get more time to focus on this project. You can catch up with the project in Devlog 006.
Ice Moon, Ep 2: Prototyping an immersive experience on Apple Vision Pro from Gregory takes us through his process for blocking out a new scene and bringing it into Reality Composer Pro.
Fewer, better, stronger – Long-time XR veteran Tony (@Skarredghost) wrote a great article about how to think about the work we focus on. If you find yourself jumping around from idea to idea, then maybe there is something here for you.
I share some thoughts on my personal site about why I decided to part with my Oculus and Meta devices.
Justin Ryan has started two new series on his YouTube channel. Spatial Builders are discussions with developers in our community. Spatial Insiders is a new series news and updates in the world of Spatial Computing.
Mike Bundy shared a fascinating concept for creating a virtual mouse and keyboard controls for the virtual desktop.
Office Hours
If you have attended yet, please come and join us. These weekly discussions have turned into the highlight of my week. Every Friday at 2 PM (Eastern US) we get together to talk about visionOS, development, design, and Spatial Computing.
I hope to see you there!
Joseph
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