Ahead of the Apple Vision Pro’s release in ‘early 2024’, the company says it will open several centers in a handful of locations around the world, giving some developers a chance to test the headset before it’s released to the public.

It’s clear that developers will need time to start building Apple Vision Pro apps ahead of its launch, and it’s also clear that Apple doesn’t have heaps of headsets on hand for developers to start working with right away. In an effort to give developers the earliest possible chance to test their immersive apps, the company says it plans to open ‘Apple Vision Pro Developer Labs’ in a handful of locations around the world.

Starting this Summer, the Apple Vision Pro Developer Labs will open in London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, and Cupertino.

Apple also says developers will be able to submit a request to have their apps tested on Vision Pro, with testing and feedback being done remotely by Apple.

Image courtesy Apple

Of course, developers still need new tools to build for the headset in the first place. Apple says devs can expect a visionOS SDK and updated versions of Reality Composer and Xcode by the end of June so support development on the headset. That will be accompanied by new Human Interface Guidelines to help developers follow best practices for spatial apps on Vision Pro.

Additionally, Apple says it will make available a Vision Pro Simulator, an emulator that allows developers to see how their apps would look through the headset.

Developers can find more info when it’s ready at Apple’s developer website. Closer to launch Apple says Vision Pro will be available for the public to test in stores.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Daniel Dobson

    This is likely to be the premium headset for some time. The M2 is an absolute beast of a chip in relation to VR / MR. Other premium headsets will struggle to match this standalone performance I suspect.

    • Cless

      Yeah, I wish Meta had access to anything that came even close to an M2 performance wise. But we are stuck with shitty mid tier mobile SoC for years to come still.

      • ViRGiN

        M2 for driving 4k display and rendering a lowpoly nba game on virtual screen?
        I think Quest 3 soc could handle that just fine.
        It’s not like we are seeing jaw breaking apps using M2.

        Nothing is really known about anything of the headset yet lol, what’s the FOV like? What’s up with the battery? Propetiary? Hot swappable? Battery life? If it can’t handle 2h30m on included? battery, it’s a catastrophe. Can’t watch a movie on it without ripping it off right the charger when you want to use it.
        What about their miniverse? I want to watch movies with a friend. Are they really going to be half-3D window popups? Can they even sit next to me? The persona-avatar has not been shown from very sides or back at all.

        Apple seems to be the most alienating ARVR experience, all for the cost of not alienating yourself from direct environment, and still looking kinda like a clown.

        • Daniel Dobson

          The Quest 3 the device I see selling the most. But Apple’s device is pushing 23 million pixels, whereas the former will be closer to 2064*2208*2 = 9,114,624 million pixels from what I have read.

          Both are good for the market.

          • ViRGiN

            One can fully deliver above and beyond Meta vision, the other is extremely limited to whatever Apple allows. And so far, all we have seen is panoramas and lowpoly NBA game.
            Insane amount of power to drive insanely low fidelity outside of very basics.

      • Guest

        Be careful what you wish for. All the other sleezey big tech companies are now drooling about what they could do with such an invasive device!

      • Jonathan Winters III

        Actually, the Quest 3 chips are quite impressive graphically. Check out Asgard’s Wrath II trailer for proof.

        • Cless

          Lol, don’t be a troll, you! hahaha

        • Dragon Marble

          Oh, the trailers we’ve seen are not even Q3, they were all Q2. And according to David Heaney, the M2 is only 15% more GPU power than the SoC on Q3.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        But the M2 is a very pricey chip and would make the headset well past the $1000 mark, which just is too high for a mainstream headset.

    • Davo

      How much more powerful is it ?

      • Mike

        +15 percent gpu performance.

      • ViRGiN

        Enough to render 4k+ windowed image and play apple arcade nba game.
        Benchmarks are largely irrelevant. What’s important is reliability and stability of trackings and sensors, snappy and robust operating system.

    • wowgivemeabreak

      Too bad the performance will be wasted on stuff like browsing or using big bad imessages in augmented reality rather than for actual VR games where the performance would be the most useful.

      Also keep in mind the display of this thing is a crazy resolution so that added you performance you speak of isn’t to be as big as you think.

      This will only possibly be the premium headset for anyone that doesn’t give a lick about VR gaming. For those that do, it’s downright useless without controllers because hand tracking is not better than controllers with buttons good for most games.

    • Gato Satanista

      Show me the games. Okay, productivity as an extra super immersive monitor is good to, but no way I will pay this high price for that. I will just wait for the games to consider if its a good fit for me or no.

  • Mike

    this is a hard no for me ill stick with my psvr2 and my rift s.

  • All the good bits about VR (and why I like VR experiences and games) is missing with Apple’s headset.Most of the demos were about watching TV, movies or 2D screens floating in space. Even the “landscapes” were just a 360 video like YouTube or Facebook videos but with much higher quality. You couldn’t walk inside them (As far as I could tell). What makes VR is walking around inside virtual spaces and interacting with objects, avatars and the space itself. Looks good as a monitor replacement though or a TV watching device, but unless the visuals are astoundingly better than your 55 inch TV, I’m not sure that alone will sell it. Still, we should probably wait for first hand reviews. I think they will be coming soon hopefully.

    • Jonathan Winters III

      Yes but the Facetime avatars would be amazing assuming they are 3D in VR. And being able to record videos/pics at 4k in 3D VR is a big feature too. Still, the price is silly high.

    • Gato Satanista

      My quest 2 is eating dust for months. Pcvr link is to cumbersome for me, tried to play half life Alyx for the seventh time but link problems made me quit. I already played most quest games that i liked.
      I buyed a lot of quest games that i never finished because i lost interest.

      Example: Zero Caliber. I was in a inch to play a military single player shooter and buyed this game after reading a lot of reviews. I wasnt expecting an AAA experience. A “B” game would made me happy. But the gameplay and shooting was in a bare bones state.

      The first mission was a ridiculous small map with bad level design (beyond bad… i would say non existent level design) and with very dumb enemies spawing in front of me. I just played the first mission and returned the game because i was risk averse to loose my money for another bad game on quest. This was the last game I touched on quest 2.

      I am now just playing xbox game pass and steam games with zero vr. My hopes with vr gaming in an apple device are zero. My last hope is sony psvr2, but I will wait a year, see how it performs, to decide it about buying or not.

  • Till Eulenspiegel

    This is the ‘Pro’ version, I will wait for the non-pro version – which probably will still be more expensive than the Quest Pro but will also be more powerful and has better visuals.

  • Yay, a simulator!

  • I want to port my app over so you could experience 180 videos, but I really don’t want to re-write it a 4th time, where is unity support?

    • Andrew Jakobs

      As I understand there is Unity support for this device. Also I understand that it doesn’t support OpenXR, which ofcourse sucks.

  • Pab

    Apple is betting on sports. With this device, you´ll be able to have the best sit at any event. Of course, having an apple+ subscription.