After months of work from developers around the world, Apple Vision Pro is getting official Unity support, just in time for the release day. In a press announcement, Unity representatives said: “You can now leverage Unity’s familiar authoring workflows, robust XR tools, and cross-platform compatibility to create immersive spatial experiences for a whole new ecosystem on Apple Vision Pro. Official support channels and success plans are also available to help you get started.”
To get started on building visionOS apps, you need to download the latest version of Unity so you can get your hands on a visionOS template. You’ll also need access to a Unity Pro, Enterprise, or Industry subscription. You can get a free 30-day Unity Pro trial to test it out for yourself.
A great sign — iMore’s take
Spotify, Netflix, and YouTube unwillingness to put their apps on Apple Vision Pro was a bit of a worrying prospect. Given how easy it would be to essentially flick a switch to allow support, the choice not to feels like a mixture of protest and concerns about the platform's longevity. Unity Support means that independent developers and creatives can pick up that slack to put out unique experiences and that Unity believes in the platform. There are some excellent Unity candidates like Beat Saber, Job Simulator, and Superhot.
Interestingly, the press release mentions the three types of spatial experience this support will enable. They are:
- “Immersive mixed reality experiences that blend digital content with the real world and can run alongside other apps in the Shared Space, made possible by Unity’s newly developed PolySpatial technology
- Ports of existing virtual reality games or new, fully immersive experiences that replace a player’s surroundings with another environment
- Content that runs in a 2D window and can be resized and repositioned by the user in the Shared Space”
No matter what type of Apple Vision Pro user you are, Unity support makes being an owner of Apple’s new headset much more interesting.
