Great to hear that full immersion (VR) is coming.
While I totally understand why mixed immersive (MR) isn’t coming, it would be cool (and much easier) to implement the following modes:
- Stereoscopic flat game mode
- Portal flat game mode
Stereoscopic flat game mode
This would let you run your UE game in a Window like a stereoscopic 3D movie.
Portal flat game mode
This would let you run your UE game in a Window that lets you see different angles depending on where you are looking.
Technical Details
While it is not possible to use Metal in Immersive Spaces to render 3D scenes in 3D (thus requiring everyone to use the RealityKit rendering engine), it is possible to use Metal in Immersive Spaces to render 3D sceens onto a 2D plane using CAMetalLayer.
Unreal already uses CAMetalLayer to render an Unreal scene in iOS and iPadOS so I don’t think it will take long to adapt this to visionOS. You should be able to use Camera Index Shift to render to different eyes.
For the portal mode, you could get the user’s position through RealityKit and then updates Unreal’s camera appropriately.
Any ETA for 5.4 Preview release? Even if just as a very draft, please!
They are planning to release the first public preview of 5.4 at GDC (Mar 18, 2024).
For Apple Vision, will we need to compile from an Apple device?
Yes you will need an Apple Silicon Mac to compile for Unreal for visionOS. And also to run your game in the Simulator