CONNECTOME: A Game Of Points & The Challenges Of Building For Apple Vision Pro

Building applications for the Apple Vision Pro presents technical hurdles that developers do not encounter on other platforms. Grant Hinkson, the creator of the art experience Connectome, recently shared the specific engineering obstacles he faced while porting his game to Apple's headset. The process required creating custom workarounds for missing library support within the Unity engine.

The main issue stemmed from the incompatibility of common Unity toolkits with Apple's visionOS rendering requirements. Shapes, a popular library used by Hinkson, failed to function with Unity's default toolkit, PolySpatial. To address this, he moved the application to Metal, a move that fixed one rendering problem but introduced a new one. The switch broke eye-based hover effects, a core part of the user experience on the Vision Pro.

Because Unity does not currently support these effects for Metal applications, Hinkson built a custom bridge from scratch to track eye movement and feed that data into the compositor. This solution required a post-build patcher because Unity wipes custom modifications every time a new version of the app is generated. He faced similar roadblocks with color management, forcing him to build yet another system to bridge the gap between Unity and SwiftUI.

Hinkson's experience provides a look at why XR development remains slow. Without deep, native integration from major game engines, creators must spend significant time writing custom tools just to get basic functionality operational. As the hardware market grows, engine developers will face increased pressure to support these devices natively rather than leaving individual creators to solve these problems alone.

Connectome is now live on the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest. It serves as a reminder that the transition to new hardware is rarely a simple port but an extensive re-engineering effort.