“A Developer’s Initial Experience with the Vision Pro: Weighty Yet Remarkable”

Enrique Sánchez-Rivera, who runs Augmented Island Studio in Portland, Oregon, has been working on two cool apps for Apple’s new Vision Pro headset, which costs around $3,500 in the US. One app, called Sojourns, helps people relax and meditate in beautiful virtual environments. The other app is a helicopter training program that uses augmented reality. Sánchez-Rivera thinks the Vision Pro is amazing technology, but he admits it can feel a bit heavy after wearing it for a while. Apple is aiming the Vision Pro at early adopters and developers like Sánchez-Rivera, who can create awesome apps and experiences for what Apple calls “spatial computing.”

Sojourns is simpler than the helicopter training app because it doesn’t use real pictures or 3D scans. Sánchez-Rivera’s team hopes to launch Sojourns for the Vision Pro by the end of March. They’re also planning to adapt it for Meta’s Quest headsets later on. However, making Sojourns work well on the Vision Pro involves figuring out how to use hand gestures and eye tracking to interact with virtual objects. As for the helicopter training app, it took a lot of effort to adapt it for the Vision Pro. This app guides users through a checklist before they can fly the virtual helicopter, making it more immersive for users wearing the headset.