Unity has made an exciting announcement today, opening the beta version of its cutting-edge development platform for visionOS.
The highly-anticipated PolySpatial, which debuted alongside the Vision Pro headset at WWDC, aims to empower developers to create and port immersive 3D experiences for Apple’s groundbreaking “spatial computing” platform.
You May Also Like: Valve Addresses Claims Of Banning AI-Generated Games From Steam
The primary goal of PolySpatial is to streamline the development process, offering familiar workflows to those who are already well-versed in building applications with Unity Engine.
However, this endeavor does come with its share of challenges, given the paradigm shift that Apple’s spatial computing offers for the world of computing.
Marc Whitten, President of Unity Create, acknowledges these challenges, stating, “[W]e had to work from the ground up to make sure we could make it easy for our creators to unlock capabilities.”
He added, “Primarily that includes Unity applications existing in a shared space with other applications, seamless integration with Reality Kit, and the visionOS.”
During the WWDC keynote, Vision Pro gaming experiences were notably scarce. This was somewhat surprising, given Apple’s extensive efforts to bring games to its iOS and macOS platforms over the years.
The reason for this absence may be the company’s positioning of the product as a productivity device. Demonstrations at the event predominantly revolved around office and creative workflows, with a focus on enterprise applications.
Yet, gaming has always played a pivotal role in driving adoption for any computing platform, and the availability of unique gaming experiences will undoubtedly impact the fortunes of Vision Pro.
Mike Rockwell, VP of Vision Products Group, shared his enthusiasm for developers to create Unity-based apps for Apple Vision Pro, saying,
“We know there is a huge community of developers who have been building incredible 3D experiences using Unity’s robust authoring tools, and we’re so excited for them to build apps for Apple Vision Pro.”
He added “Unity-based apps and games run natively on Apple Vision Pro, so they have access to groundbreaking visionOS features, including low latency pass-through and high-resolution rendering.”
PolySpatial will undoubtedly play a crucial role in porting existing titles to this innovative platform initially. Building new experiences from scratch is more resource-intensive, given the inherent challenges.
You May Also Like: Niantic Lays Off 230 Employees And Cancels NBA And Marvel Games
As the release of Vision Pro is slated for early next year, content is of utmost importance to the platform’s success. Unity remains focused on this aspect and is making progress with the limited beta release of PolySpatial.
While they have not disclosed the timeframe for the public version, the beta phase allows interested developers ample time to create groundbreaking experiences for this revolutionary hardware.
