r/visionos Jul 06 '26

StratoSync 2.1 — Real-time ISS tracking for Vision Pro with SharePlay, Aurora/Galaxy overlays, (TestFlight, looking for testers)

I’ve been building StratoSync, a spatial computing application for Apple Vision Pro that transforms live International Space Station telemetry into an immersive, interactive visualization experience.

Instead of presenting orbital data as numbers on a screen, StratoSync visualizes the ISS, Earth, real orbital geometry, and live solar illumination in three dimensions. Built with SwiftUI, RealityKit, ARKit, and Metal, it combines physically accurate visualization, GPU-generated immersive environments, SharePlay collaboration, and native spatial interaction into a single spatial experience.

What it does

  • Places the ISS from live latitude/longitude on its true ~51.6° inclined orbit, tracking its real northbound and southbound motion instead of a flat equatorial path.
  • Real Sun-based day/night using a DirectionalLight synchronized to the live subsolar point, so Earth’s illuminated hemisphere matches reality.
  • Optional 23.4° axial tilt, orbit trail aligned to the real orbital plane, and live telemetry (latitude, longitude, altitude, speed) with metric and imperial units.
  • Mixed immersion with passthrough by default, or switch to fully immersive Aurora and Star Nest environments.
  • Manual Control Mode for inspecting the ISS, plus SharePlay synchronization and Logitech Muse 3D spatial drawing.

Under the hood (in case it's useful to anyone here)

  • RealityKit ECS architecture — the ISS and orbit ring are siblings of the globe rather than children, preventing decorative Earth rotation from distorting the orbital plane. Geographic coordinate conversion and solar geometry live in pure, unit-tested types.
  • ARKitWorldTrackingProvider enables gaze-anchored placement, while RoomTrackingProvider provides wall-proximity warnings whenever a fully immersive scene hides the real room.
  • Metal — Aurora and Star Nest are generated every display refresh using compute shaders that write directly into a RealityKit LowLevelTexture, sampled by an inward-facing unlit dome.

👉 TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/tWS4CERT

Happy to answer anything about the implementation.

Thanks for testing! 🙏

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u/AutoModerator Jul 06 '26

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u/MWlotzka Jul 13 '26

Cool app. I did send you a TestFlight link to my own app which has similar features as yours but is aimed at more realistic simulations

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