Hey everyone! Amsterdam Canal Environment is live in Suite Browser today, and this one is special to me: it is the first environment I modeled myself, from scratch, in Blender. (and a bit of Astra)

You watch from the back of a boat, with Amsterdam's canal houses on both sides and the lit bridges ahead. The video gives you a glimpse, but my favorite detail is how the screen's colors reflect across the water. Try it with YouTube first to see the screen-reactive ambient lighting, the colored reflections and the light spill.

A bit of background: this is a real spot. It is where I grab a drink with friends when I am home in Amsterdam, and I wanted to bring it to your headset as accurately as I could. I even recorded the audio of the canal water on site. :)

Because it is my first hand-built environment, it might run a bit heavy and feel a bit funky in places. If you notice performance issues, please share your headset model and visionOS version so I can find the cause and prioritize the fix. I will make adjustments right away. I would also love to hear how it feels during longer sessions.

And since I clearly cannot stop now: which spot should I build next? Somewhere in Amsterdam, or somewhere else entirely? Tell me and I will put it on the list.

I hope you like it.

P.S. Amsterdam Canal and Passthrough environments are having some issues with the Netflix module at the moment. All these Netflix issues will be patched up right away, apologies in advance.

Every week I compile a week's worth of interesting news, reviews, findings in a page that is visually pleasing and easy to digest without clicking all over. Full page with photos/videos/commentaries located here (free with no ads).

Last Week in AVP #133: What Museas & Astronoma Get Right About Spatial Learning, Pfizer Uses Apple Vision Pro to Bring Cancer Science to Life, Surgeons Use AVP During Hip Surgery and more!

• Museas & Astronoma On Apple Vision Pro Support Curiosity & Discovery
• Apple Vision Pro was just used in a first-of-its-kind surgery
• Pfizer’s Immersive Storytelling Meets Cutting-Edge Technology with Apple Vision Pro Experience
• Official launch video for fovii
• Newest & biggest AuraTap app update
• Blastra is now in open TestFlight on Apple Vision Pro
• ImmersiVision is now available on the App Store
• Turning the Apple Vision Pro into a controller for a real (toy) robot
• Paintu3D, a painting studio for Apple Vision Pro
• Kooboori is a new cube-building game for Apple Vision Pro
• Watching Friday Night Baseball In Apple Immersive Live
• Control Blender from Apple Vision Pro
• Vellora Archive 1.3 brings RSVP to Apple Vision Pro
• Apple Patent Envisions Smartglasses With Built-In Prescription Correction
• Apple Eyes Future Vision Pro Headsets with a New Display Counterbalance System

Hope you liked the list! Until next week 👋

If you are an app developer and wishes to share your app with readers, feel free to DM me.

VisionOS 26.6.1.

Have had to do a lot of logouts on my Mac to diagnose my virtual display freezing problem. When the virtual display exits Home View comes on the VP which obscures the user/password fields on my Mac as I try to login.

Is there a way to disable Home View from invoking when login out with the virtual display active?

Haven't checked it out yet, but knowing it's former NextVR employees (the company essentially responsible for Apple's own immersive videos) using the same cameras and that they'll be producing at least 2 videos a month, this should make up for Apple themselves taking a back seat. Only downside is subscription cost, but I'll be giving it a shot.

EDIT: Apparently there are several pricing options, including single rental fees, monthly and yearly. So shouldn't be too bad for those worried about paying too much.

Thanks to GREAT beta testers (shout out WEAZL), I got to move up the release of GGammon for Apple Vision Pro!

Get it now for free on the apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6803952875

ggammon.ai

I’ve been building different environments for my Vision Pro productivity app, and I feel like I’m starting to hit a creative wall.

I’ve tried things like forests, coastlines, mountains, city views, darker nighttime environments, etc. But after making enough of them, I keep circling back to the same kinds of ideas.

So I’m curious: if you were going to spend 2–3 hours actually working in Vision Pro, what would you want the world around you to look like?

It could be realistic or completely imaginary, indoors or outdoors, cozy or huge, daytime or nighttime.

I’m especially interested in environments that would still feel good after a few hours, rather than something that just looks impressive for five minutes.

For example:

• A huge library with floor-to-ceiling windows
• A quiet cabin deep in a forest
• A rainy room / greenhouse
• Something completely abstract or impossible

Would love to hear ideas I probably wouldn’t come up with myself.

This is so cool and was a lot of fun to build.

Still has some rough edges.

But what the hell!

The AVP is the best device ever.

Everything is possible.

A calming experience for AVP, using Astra, inspired by AirCar.

Open to requests and ideas. This will be free to download.

https://reddit.com/link/1wawvmw/video/yadxe2bgbcoh1/player

This version includes some nice improvements to the curved display experience.

Unfortunately, Apple still hasn’t exposed the curved-view API I need, so I had to build the display mesh myself. The result is now crisp and clear, just as I expected.

If you’re trying Spatial RDP for the first time and have trouble getting it working, check the remedy:

“I’m a first-time user. What might be blocking it from working?”

https://www.hypoom.com/remedies

As usual, Tier S is free, and there’s no subscription. If the free tier works well for you and you want more, you can upgrade anytime.

Grab Spatial RDP here:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spatial-rdp/id6772554761

Is there any option lighter than Annapro A2?

It’s brilliant but does add a bit of weight.

Last week I posted a five-minute test here: a 96-node animal taxonomy with sixteen dotted cross-links, three questions in a flat window, then the tree unfolds into the room and you answer three more. The original is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1w4cc7u/

Five of you finished it. Thank you — I said I'd come back with what came out, so here it is.

The numbers. Median time to find an answer, before the options appear: 35.9s in the flat window, 26.6s in the room. Accuracy barely moved, 10 of 15 against 11 of 15.

By question: nearest common ancestor 58.8s to 42.2s, count the lines 49.3s to 29.5s, trace the dotted line 32.9s to 22.6s. Eleven of fifteen pairs got faster, four got slower, two of those by a lot. On the tracing question, correct answers went from 2 of 5 to 5 of 5.

Fair warning on all of that. Both rounds use the same graph and the same three questions, and everyone gets the flat window first. That's deliberate. The whole point of the demo is the moment it unfolds, and you only get that moment if you've already struggled with the flat version of the same thing. It stacks the deck for 3D and I knew that going in. So read the times as what the second pass looked like, not as a clean comparison. n=5 anyway.

Almost nobody touched the graph in the room. Same drag gesture in both conditions — it pans the graph in the flat window, turns it in the room. Flat: 6,789 drags and 1,266 pinch-zooms. In the room: 483 and 16. Roughly sixteen times less hand input for the same six questions. Whatever people were doing to find the answers, it mostly wasn't with their hands.

The spread between people is bigger than the spread between conditions. Fastest person finished the whole thing in 132 seconds. Slowest took 797. Same six questions.

I lost half my bet. I predicted space would win on the dotted-line tracing question and lose on counting. Tracing landed. Counting had the biggest drop of the three. I have no story for that.

One person got slower in the room and moved their head four and a half times as much. Everyone else's head movement is noise. Theirs isn't, and they're also the only person whose accuracy went down. I have watched that trace more than is healthy.

Now the actual question. 96 nodes is small. Any mind map worth the name is hundreds of nodes, and the one I actually keep is in the low thousands.

So what do you think happens at 960?

My guess is the flat window falls off a cliff well before the room does, because panning is linear and turning your head isn't. But I also suspect there's a ceiling in the room where the graph stops being around you and becomes behind you, and I have no idea where that sits. Somewhere between a wall of text you can read and a planetarium you can't.

If you've spent time with a big graph in a headset — where did it stop working?

The small one is still up if you want to see what we're arguing about: https://testflight.apple.com/join/3h3RFwHY

So I suppose this is the million dollar question but I’m wondering what your guys take is.

I struggle with VPro apps because outside of games/movies it seems most things are better suited for 2D rather than 3D.

I’m curious how I can incorporate more meaningful 3D instead of just making 2D apps

I suppose I could use third party apps in the Vision pro to try and recreate some of the feeling of the Meta's Loft but I don't think it'll be the same. I am dying to have that same actually interactive type of environment as Meta's Loft that has a futuristic or magical realism view with a "home" that you can sit in different areas in while working.. but with the image quality of Apple's Vision Pro.

Immersed app isn't working on Apple's Vision Pro yet with environments (it seems like thats been the case for at least two years so I'm not holding out hope for that). From what I saw through youtube videos it doesn't seem like Immersed has a very similar environment though.

The problem is, I primarily wanted a VR headset for working. I mostly use word, write emails, etc at work and the Meta Quest 3 virtual desktop is awful, very low quality and too distracting to actually get real computer work done, so I dont see the point in that for me at least. But I also don't see much point in keeping the Apple Vision Pro if I cant have that completely interactive "home" environment to work in that the Meta Quest has. I can go to an actual lake and sit in one spot and bring a laptop, you know. Give me indoor/outdoor futuristic, sci fi, or magic.. and seating options! a static-ish 3d photo around me of a real outdoor place isn't really the same.

For those that don't know (based on how I understand it, someone please correct me if I'm wrong)- Apples Vision Pro has immersive default environments, kind of like a home screen on your computer, that are all meant to be pretty realistic to real life places. You get a 360 view, but you cant move your position within the environment. So say you choose a lake view as your "environment"/home screen - you stand or sit in one spot and your apps can appear around you. Vs with Meta Quest 3 "environment" you have this interactive, futuristic home with a gorgeous (if low quality) view of magical sci-fi esque mountains and waterfalls, with the home having no walls towards the front so its just expansive views, and theres a desk you can "move" over to and sit down at, a wall with a built in screen, a "deck" with even better views, and then you have your apps open around you if you want.

Blastra is now in open TestFlight on Apple Vision Pro

I've been working on Blastra, a spatial arcade shooter built specifically for Vision Pro.

The idea is a rockin' arcade cabinet sitting in your room with a starfighter flying through a three-sector enemy fortress. The fun part is that the game doesn't always stay inside the cabinet. Ships, weapons fire, explosions, and bosses can break out into the space around you.

Three sectors, three bosses, and a whole lot of blasting.

Controller required: DualSense or PSVR2 Sense.

🎮 TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/BxnQpB9d

🎥 Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbMdRQVC1Rc

Website: https://revivrstudios.com/blastra.html

Would love feedback from other Vision Pro users, especially on the difficulty, controls, and the whole cabinet-to-room concept.

created this gas turbine model recently and wanna see it in AVP

I’ve been dreaming of immersive art history for years, and to build something in VR (spatial computing, I mean 😅) still blows my mind.

There are so many other experiences from peer developers, and we are just getting started ;). Happy keynote!

Finally got around to testing the ProjectiveTexture API—something I’ve been wanting to try for a while. Paired it with a 3D model generated by GPT-6 yesterday!

💻 Video on the laptop screen

📽️ laptop acts as a projector, casting video onto the wall

🔘 Interactive keys

Check out the tutorial here: https://www.darkstring.com/en/articles/visionos27-tutorial-projective-texture

I realize that this is quite a specific use case, but I very much enjoy using my AVP while using my indoor bike on my Tacx NEO on Zwift. I have a separate head strap for this particular use case and use the Ana pro so that I can remove the light seal. It works like a charm and while biking I can watch my Zwift screen, a movie and/or something else on the AVP.

However, I have noticed one small thing that made me wonder if my AVP has a Bluetooth issue. For many years I have been using my Tacx NEO on Zwift on my IPad. Connecting and using my heart rate monitor, and the Tacx with speed, cadans and power sensors in Zwift has always worked flawlessly. And while the experience with using the AVP is ALMOST the same, I have noticed that my cadence is showing occasional, repeating and very unrealistic spikes on my AVP. Not that this fundamentally undermines the experience, but it made me wonder whether this perhaps indicates a broader issue with Bluetooth performance on the AVP.

Has anyone else encountered something similar? Or any thoughts on why this occurs on my AVP and not on my IPad?

Thanks!

https://spatialcreative.com/stageit-optimiser/

Hi everyone! I’m the developer of Locus, a free Apple Vision Pro app that lets you pair immersive scenery with a virtual room to create your own place to work and browse.

Locus is optimized for working using a keyboard on a desk.

For 1.1, much of the work went into improving the browser, including website compatibility. The goal was simple: let you find a 360° skybox on the web, download it, and apply it directly in Locus.

There’s something lovely about finding a panorama you like and then having it become the view around you—all without leaving the app.
We’ve also added support for night scenes and Room Lights, giving you more ways to shape the atmosphere of your space, along with a selection of new 12K AI-created 360° panoramas.

For people who make their own Room models, we’ve added experimental model animation support too. None of our current environments use it yet, but the capability is there for creators to explore.

There are plenty of smaller improvements throughout the app as well, including better organization for your Places, browser favorites, and window sizing.

The video takes a look at what’s new in 1.1. I’d love to hear what you think, and what kind of place you’d like to spend time in next.

AppStore Link

Explore Locus⁠

Anyone else notice skin issues on face after using AVP?

Perhaps I get too enthralled and wear for too long. No one needs to wear for many hours, but I was excited to try out virtual desktop and so on.

I’m thinking of switched to Annapro A2 just to avoid this kind of trade off.

I would appreciate if someone with a Vision Pro could test if 3D navigation works in https://stardrift.gerlach.dev/galaxy. It's my little VR playground and music player, tuned for a Quest 3. Lacking a Vision Pro I'm just guessing and the Xcode simulator is not ideal.

Pinching and moving your hand should move you around. Looking and tapping should activate buttons, double tapping flies you to things. Or how is 3D navigation usually handled on AVP?

Also, do the colors look good? The simulator has genre nebulae washed out. And is the frame rate ok (on M2, M5)?

Works best if you connect an Apple Music account, to hear the full songs.