At the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2023, Apple Vision Pro, the company's first mixed reality headset, was announced on June 5. The visionOS operating system powers the mixed-reality headset, which will be available for purchase in the United States at the beginning of the following year and supports both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies. An Apple engineer confirmed ahead of time that the Apple Vision Pro's camera feeds will not be accessible to third-party developers. Apple is denying access to cameras due to concerns about privacy.
An Apple engineer confirmed via UploadVR that third-party developers do not have access to the camera feeds of Apple Vision Pro during the developer talks at WWDC 2023. Apple will lock the mixed reality headset's camera access due to privacy concerns.
"When apps inquire about the availability of the camera and microphone, anticipate receiving different values than the iPad and iPhone. Apps will receive a single front location microphone when querying a microphone. Apps will locate two cameras when querying camera. A black frame with the glyph "no camera" is returned by the back camera. This camera does not work with apps that assume it has a back camera. Apps locate a single composite camera when searching for the front camera. "Apple's Platform Compatibility Engineer John Marc Hickey stated that "no camera frames will return to apps" if a device does not have a spatial Persona.
Instead of a standard front-camera video feed, the Apple Vision Pro will use a Persona of the wearer when making a FaceTime call. The face and hand movements of the wearer are displayed in real time in personas, which are digital avatars created using Apple's machine learning tools. Personas are also said to be used in meetings by apps like WebEx and Zoom. visionOS will display a black feed with a "no camera" icon in the middle for the rear camera. This would prevent developers from developing bespoke computer vision solutions and prevent the application from crashing.
Raw camera access is prohibited for competitors like Meta Quest headsets, according to UploadVR. On the Vive XR Elite, HTC also prohibits access to the raw camera. However, as new headsets become available, this may change in the coming years.
The price of the Apple Vision Pro is $3,499 (roughly Rs. 2,88,500) and will begin shipping to the United States in 2024. It has two micro-OLED displays with high resolution and runs on visionOS. Apple's M2 and a brand-new R1 chipset provide power for it.