According to Apple’s recently-released Apple documentation explains that “the system defines an invisible zone that extends 1.5 meters from the initial position of the wearer’s head”, during ‘immersive experiences’ in VR. It goes on to say that “if their head moves outside of that zone, the experience automatically stops and passthrough returns to help people avoid colliding with objects in their physical surroundings.”
While the Vision Pro does offer some good features, a one-meter limit could prove problematic for some VR apps – especially games. I use VR headsets for gaming, and I definitely move my head more than a meter while playing most games, like dodging an oncoming slow-motion bullet in Superhot VR.
Immersion is king when it comes to gaming in VR; you don’t want to be pulled out of the experience.
However, with just a single meter of space to move around before your in-game surroundings become transparent, it’s not hard to see how in-game immersion could easily be interrupted.
The Vision Pro also relies on hand gesture controls rather than the physical handsets used by most VR headsets, which could prove to be a significant barrier to developers porting their VR games to Apple’s product. Obviously, neither of these stumbling blocks is a concern for playing non-VR titles, where the Vision Pro simply ‘projects’ a gameplay screen in front of you.
I can only hope that this is merely the default setting and that Apple will allow Vision Pro users to tweak the boundaries of their ‘safe zone’ for VR gaming, It would be a real shame to see Apple once again drops the ball here.