Dark Spaces – Devlog 011

Picking up where I left off.

It has been more that five months since the last update on Dark Spaces. I’ve been pretty busy documenting visionOS 26, working on example code, updating Project Graveyard, and starting Shared Visions. I’m trying to make more time to work on Dark Spaces. My goal is to release a TestFlight in a few weeks and start getting feedback.

Over time this app will may grow to dozen of spaces, but I have to start somewhere. Chapter One will consist of six spaces that each use a primitive shape as a central design element.

• Planes
• Cubes
• Spheres
• Cylinders
• Cones
• Capsules

The first scene is called alignment and features 128 planes placed around the visitor in a large circle. The planes all start with their bottom edge on the ground. A scene-level sequence picks a plane and animates it to a position in the sky. By the end of this phase, all planes will have their top edge aligned. After a short rest, each plane returns to their starting position. The entire sequence takes just under ten minutes.

I shared an early version of this last spring. This new version features a much darker environment.

Something I may add to this is vantage points to let the visitor view the space from multiple points. For example.

• Starting on the ground, encouraging the visitor to look up
• View from the center, around 40 meters off the ground
• View from the top, around 40 meters off the ground

From a visual perspective, this space is close to what I want. The remaining work will be on the audio. The song that plays in the background is only about 30 seconds long. I need to extend that and add a bit of variation. I also need to pick some sound effects that play when a plane starts and stops moving

I have a few other ideas for now to improve this first space. More tinkering will be needed. For now, check out this short video to see the current state of the alignment dark space.