Project Graveyard – Devlog 009

Pending Apple Release

Project Graveyard 3.0 has been archived, uploaded, submitted, and approved. Now we just wait for visionOS 26. In this article I’m going to review some of the work I did throughout the summer.

You can keep up with our projects in the DEVLOG section on Step Into Vision. If you would like to publish your devlogs here, get in touch!

Version 2 had a second utility window that allowed users to edit and customize their graves. Version 3 does away with that and brings everything back inside the volume. This is more inline with my original vision for the app. This version also has vastly improved gestures and interactions.

Interaction Modes

There are three buttons in the center of the toolbar. Use these to select a mode.

The options are

1. Preview: The default mode. You can pick up entities to inspect them. Scale them up with two hands. Wiggle and shake them around (nothing happens, but wiggling stuff is fun). When you release, the item will snap back to where it was before you picked it up.
2. Arrange: Use this mode to arrange items in your graveyard. Drag them anywhere on the grassy area. Use two hands to scale and rotate. When you release, the new location data is saved.
3. Edit: Tap an item to open a small menu of actions. You can customize the material and color, edit text, or delete them item.

wiggling stuff is fun

These modes are enabled by a handful of new visionOS 26 features.

• Manipulation Component replaces all the system gestures I used in version 1 and 2. I use this for both Preview and Arrange Mode. See DEVLOG 002 for details on how I set up the two modes.
• Gesture Component lets us attach unique gestures to any entity, instead of adding gestures to the RealityView. I used this to set up the Tap Gesture on each item in Edit Mode.
• Presentation Component allows us to attach popover to our entities. When activated, these can float above or near the entity. This brings the editing and customizing features into the volume, instead living an a utility window. We can even use presentationBreakthroughEffect to make sure these popovers are always visible.
• View Attachment Component is a new way we can add attachments for each entity. We don’t have to use the attachments closure of RealityView. Users may not notice a difference, but this change was great for me. I no longer have to try to keep attachment creation and entities in sync.

See also

Other Highlights

The most commonly used feature of the Edit popover will be the Customize page. Here users can change material and color. This view has a special feature that allows them to pin as the active view. When this is enabled, they can quickly go from item to item, customizing each one as they go. Take a look:

The New Items menu is the biggest feature for this version. Until now, users have been able to add a a gravestone and customize it, but there has only been a single model. Now we have a handful of new models to pick from.

These new items are not (yet) customizable, but that will change soon! I’m working on many new items too.

My favorite item is the new Lamp Post. We can add up to four of these to the graveyard. These dynamic lights to so much to improve the overall appearance of the app. I hope to add some options for light color and intensity.

There were some challenges to getting these lights to work in the volume. If you’re working with Dynamic Lights and Volumes, make sure to check out this custom component and system.

How it Works

I recorded a short tutorial to show you how to use the app.

Before and After

I also captured one last video with version 2.0. This takes a quick look back before showing off all the changes in version 3.0.

There is always more to do, but I’m pretty happy with the progress I made on this silly app over the summer. Let me know what you think of Project Graveyard 3.0.