Heavy, but phenomenal…’: A developer’s first-hand account on using the Vision Pro and creating apps for it
‘Heavy, but phenomenal…’: A developer’s first-hand account on using the Vision Pro and creating apps for it
Sánchez-Rivera’s seven-year-old Augmented Island Studio is now working on two immersive applications for Apple’s Vision Pro, which recently hit retail stores in the US starting at $3,500.
Apple Vision Pro
Apple's high-end Vision Pro headset itself looks like a pair of designer ski goggles. (Image: REUTERS/Loren Elliott)
“The technology is phenomenal,” Enrique Sánchez-Rivera is clear about his first impressions of the Apple Vision Pro. But he quickly acknowledges how “heavy” the device starts to feel after a point. This early feedback from users like Sánchez-Rivera is the reason Apple is targeting the Vision Pro headset at early adopters and developers whose experience will bring compelling apps and new experiences to what it calls the “spatial computing” platform.
Based in Portland, Oregon, Sánchez-Rivera’s seven-year-old Augmented Island Studio is now working on two immersive applications for Apple’s Vision Pro, which recently hit retail stores in the US starting at $3,500. One is a wellness app called Sojourns, and the other is an augmented reality helicopter training app being ported to the Vision Pro from its original iOS and Android versions.
“You go to some of the most beautiful parts of the world, meditate, or spend five to 15 minutes of your time there just to disconnect a little bit and have beautiful scenery around you. You can engage in activities like putting puzzles together, throwing paper airplanes from the top of a cliff, or watching a lava fireplace inside a beautiful glass home,” he explains, adding that his team has an internal target to launch Sojourns by the end of March on the Vision Pro.
Apple Vision ProThe Vision Pro headset blends both virtual reality and augmented reality, a technology that overlays virtual images on live video of the real world. (Image credit: Enrique Sánchez-Rivera)
Sojourns is less complicated than the other app because it’s all rendered and doesn’t use real footage or 3D scans. Sánchez-Rivera says he plans to bring the meditation app to Meta’s Quest headsets first. Even though Sojourns is designed for a Meta Quest headset, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of hand gestures for the Vision Pro version of the app as it relies on eye tracking and hand gestures to allow users to manipulate objects in the virtual space in front of them. However, the helicopter training app required a fair amount of work to develop the application for Vision Pro.
The AR helicopter training app requires users to go through a pre-flight checklist where they have to review a list and check everything before they fly. Sánchez-Rivera says that since the app already exists on iOS and is designed for mobile, the ‘challenge’ was how to rethink and redo it for a headset while also making it more immersive.
“The voice of an instructor walks you through the different parts of the pre-flight, and you have to tap on the screen to accept and ensure that you have checked every part of the checklist before you can continue moving down the list,” he says. “For the Vision Pro version, we needed to take those hand gestures and put them in the context of selecting them with your eyes. Sánchez-Rivera says it took the company over a year to develop the AR helicopter training app for iOS, but porting it to the Vision Pro requires at least three to four months with all its functionalities.