visionOS 26.4 beta 1 debuted today, and in addition to supporting Apple Podcasts’ new video features, the update also unlocks “foveated streaming” for apps and games.
Apple explains the benefits of new streaming support in visionOS 26.4
According to Apple’s official visionOS 26.4 release notes: “VisionOS 26.4 supports NVIDIA CloudXR with enhanced streaming, enabling applications to display immersive high-resolution, low-latency content on Apple Vision Pro.”
It sounds exciting, but what exactly does this mean for users?
In short, it’s a new tool that apps and games can use to provide better experiences on the Apple Vision Pro.
From Apple’s developer documentation:
If you have an existing VR game, experience, or application built for desktop or a cloud server, you can stream it to Apple Vision Pro using the Foveated Streaming framework.
Foveated Streaming allows your endpoint to stream high-quality content only where necessary, based on information about the approximate area where the person is looking, ensuring performance. You can also layer native spatial content over streamed content on Apple Vision Pro. For example, a racing game can use RealityKit to render gauges inside a car and stream CPU-intensive outdoor environments from a remote computer to the device.
Since NVIDIA CloudXR is a third-party technology used by other VR and computing platforms, it’s clear that improved streaming will make it easier to bring apps and games to Apple Vision Pro.
In addition, however, the new feature should unlock new capabilities in existing visionOS applications as well.
The racing example above proves this. Here’s another example Apple gives: “a flight simulator application can render a cockpit using RealityKit and stream CPU-intensive scenery from a remote computer to the device.”
It’s unclear if any of Apple’s native visionOS apps currently use this technology, but hopefully the company is leading the way in showing developers best practices.
What are your thoughts on visionOS 26.4 adding rendering support? Let us know in the comments.
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