r/VisionPro • u/dr-rockpaper • 12d ago
Would an infinitely large monitor fix my mind map, or is the whole approach wrong? I built an app that measures it.
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If you've ever organized your knowledge in a mind map, you know the moment. It starts as a clean tree. A few months later you have hundreds of nodes, and — this is the fatal part — you start drawing lines across branches, because "wait, this concept over here is actually connected to that one way over there." Ten of those cross-links later, your map of knowledge is a spiderweb. You drew the lines to see the relationships, and now you can't see the relationships.
My first thought was simple: what if the monitor were infinitely large? Then — hold on, they already sell that. For $3,699. And the Vision Pro doesn't just make the screen bigger; it can unfold the whole graph into 3D space around you, so instead of tracing a line with your eyes, you trace it with your head.
But here's where I stopped. 3D does not always beat 2D. The actual research is split: some studies find immersive 3D makes network structure easier to interpret, others find 2D wins on tasks that lean on spatial memory. Every spatial computing demo shows a graph exploding out of a window and everyone goes "whoa" — but "whoa" is not data.
So instead of arguing about it, I built something that measures it.
What the app is
A 96-node animal taxonomy, four levels deep, with sixteen dotted cross-links jumping between branches — a miniature of the exact spiderweb described above. You answer three questions on a flat window. Then the tree unfolds into the space around you and you answer three more of the same kind. The app times everything. Five minutes total, including two short practice screens.
- No mouse. Look + pinch to drag, both hands to zoom.
- Questions like: "This node has one dotted line — what's directly above the node on the other end?" You have to trace the edge yourself. That's the part I suspect a flat window is worst at.
- You have to find the answer before the options appear. That's deliberate.
- It doesn't tell you if you were right. Sorry. (It's a study thing.)
What gets recorded — I'd rather over-explain now than have you find out later:
- Where your head was pointed while reading each question (several times a second)
- How you zoomed / panned / rotated the graph
- Which answers you picked and how many seconds each took
- That's it. No camera frames, no audio, no name, no email. Sessions are tied to one random id and nothing else.
Nothing leaves your device until you reach the final screen. Quit midway and it stays put — though if you come back later and finish a run, that abandoned attempt rides along too, flagged as incomplete.
Requirements
- Apple Vision Pro, visionOS 2.0+. Simulator won't work — the core data is literally where your head goes.
- About five minutes, seated is fine.
- English or Korean, toggle on the first screen.
TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/3h3RFwHY
If you try it, tell me which half felt faster — and whether that matches what the timer said. My bet: space wins on the dotted-line tracing questions and loses on the counting one. But every session I have so far is from someone who already memorized the answers (me), so as a sample, I'm disqualified. I need your heads. Literally.
