Vision Pro apps: the good, the bad, and the ridiculous

In the Apple Vision Pro, that is. Disney Plus has rolled out a National Geographic edition virtual environment for its visionOS app that lets you watch movies in a snowy corridor in Iceland’s Thingvellir National Park.

The environment uses “3D models captured on-site using photogrammetry,” according to Disney’s announcement. When you watch a movie, it turns dark and shows you the Northern Lights!

Apple has released Lake Vrangla, one of two Vision Pro Environments that have spent months marked “coming soon,” and boy is it moody.

So what is Lake Vrangla? Well, it’s a small lake roughly 25 miles west (as the crow flies) of Oslo, Norway. You can see it fog-free on YouTube. Seems pretty!

I’m now convinced of that after adding one using the free Dock Pro app. Now, some of the Vision Pro apps I use most (along with time and battery percentage) are just right there, waiting. Adding third-party apps is tricky and involves finding app URL schemes, though.

Don’t get me wrong; I like the hand flourish to open apps in the visionOS 2 beta. But sometimes, a dock is just better.

Previously an experimental feature, WebXR support is on by default for Vision Pro beta testers, RoadtoVR wrote last week. The open standard allows for VR and AR experiences on the web, such as those listed on this GitHub page.

However, the outlet writes that AR experiences do not seem to work quite yet, limiting it to fully-VR ones for now.

Marvel says What If...? – An Immersive Story will have viewers (players?) casting spells, fighting battles with Marvel characters, and using the infinity stones. Judging from the trailer, that means making Doctor Strange’s magic sparks with your hands.

This edition of What If...? will be “free for a limited time” when the app is available on May 30th.

I have finally justified my Vision Pro purchase with the iOS version of the Delta emulator.

What’s it like to play Metroid Prime Hunters in an Apple-approved emulator for iOS — Delta, in this case — on a Vision Pro?

Well, since nobody asked, I’ll tell you: it’s unexpectedly playable. Emulated Nintendo DS touchscreen aiming works well if you pinch and hold while looking at the upper screen. Sure, you could use buttons to aim in Hunters, but why would you?

Apple’s headset doesn’t have an official Netflix app, but MacRumors mentions Best Buy’s app has arrived.

Just put on your Vision Pro, open the Best Buy Envision app and scroll through hundreds of options to see them appear digitally, right in front your eyes, in your physical space.

Now, all we need is a Netflix app for those virtual TVs.

That’s what I kept asking myself when testing out spatial Personas with Wes. The short of it is your ghostly Personas are now free to interact in any SharePlay enabled app, so you can watch movies, play games, and collaborate on projects. It’s neat — and you can interact more with other people. But seeing Wes’ head just float in my office also reminded me he really wasn’t there.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is now available in 3D on the Vision Pro Apple TV Plus app, joining free-for-subscribers films that Apple added to its streaming service in March.

New, but not in 3D, are several other movies that probably should be — including the first three John Wick films, Armageddon, Taken, and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol. The new crop of movies is available for between four and eight weeks, reports MacRumors.

Jason Snell of Six Colors details his experience with the MLB’s visionOS app now that the season is underway. Of the Gameday feature that puts a 3D-animated baseball field in your space during a game, he writes:

I couldn’t find support for Gameday when I first used the app, though later when playing back an archived stream, I did find Gameday available—from within the video playback, so you can’t use it for a game you’re not watching on the app. And it’s immersive, so you can’t put it up and then do something else, which is also probably a mistake.

Ah, the early days of the Vision Pro’s app ecosystem.

Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City, Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, and Spire Blast will each get Vision Pro “spatial” apps tomorrow, Apple shared in a release emailed to The Verge.

Also, rhythm game Synth Riders — aka the only game I’ve been coming back to besides bullet hell shooter Void-X — has been updated with Game Center leaderboards and a pass-the-headset Party Mode.

The NCAA’s March Madness Live app is also getting a new, swipeable vertical video highlights feed.

The “Vision Pro compatibility” means the iPad app, so you won’t get any “spatial” features, but at least it’s there (unlike, say, YouTube). What, did the Samsung Gear VR app not do well or something?

The NCAA also says it’s offering “expanded live game radio” for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

It’s essentially the same thing you’d see if you were browsing the store in the Vision Pro itself — a few curated lists of native apps here, some recommended iPad apps there.

But at least there’s a way to casually cruise those sweet spatial apps without popping the headset on now.

It’s getting four: A Beautiful Planet 3D, Pandas 3D, Super Power Dogs 3D, and Deep Sky. You’ll also see trailers for new releases.

These are part of a wave of new spatial films on the Vision Pro. Apple debuted 150 3D movies at launch through Apple TV Plus and other streamers, including recent releases like Avatar: The Way of Water and Dune.

If you miss the kitchen TV, then this Television app for Apple’s headset has got your back. You’re able to watch videos (even spatial ones, if you like) on a whole bunch of different 3D models of TVs, from a portable CRT to a Samsung Frame lookalike.

I want to watch iCarly on a big bulky silver 2000s console.

In this interview for the Voices of VR podcast, Apollo developer Christian Selig shares his experience creating Juno, an unofficial YouTube player he created for the Vision Pro in only a week’s time.

Despite the small number of people who own the headset, he says he’s earned enough from it to buy “multiple” Vision Pros.

Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator are both making their way to Apple’s headset, developers Owlchemy Labs announced. They don’t say when the games will arrive, but they should offer a welcome stress reliever for whenever you’re not filling out spreadsheets or attending Zoom calls.

XR designer Greg Madison has created this chrome ball as a fun way to visualize how Apple’s headset can reflect lighting in augmented reality based on your real environment.

Reflection mapping is hardly new or unique to the Vision Pro, but Madison’s experiment is commendably easy to play with — just open the file in this Google Drive link while you’re wearing the headset.