I was starting to test visionOS SDK on an existing project that has been running fine on iPad (iOS 17) with Xcode 15. It can be configured to run on visionOS simulator on a MacBook that runs M1 chip without any change in Xcode’s project Build Settings.
However the Apple Vision Pro simulator doesn’t appear when I run Xcode 15 on Intel MacBook Pro, unless I change the SUPPORTED_PLATFORMS key on the Xcode’s project Build Settings to visionOS.
Although, I can understand that a MacBook pro running M1 / M2 chip would be the ideal platform to run the visionOS simulator, it’s so much better if we can run the visionOS simulator on iPadOS, as it has the same arm64 architecture, and it has all the hardware needed to run camera, GPS, and Lidar.
The Mac is not a good simulator, even though it has an M1 / M2 chip, first of all:
- It doesn’t have a dual facing camera (front and back)
- It doesn’t have a Lidar
- It doesn’t have GPS
- It doesn’t have a 5G cellular radio
- It’s not portable enough for developers to design use cases around spatial computing
Last but not least, I have problems or not very clear on simulating ARKit with actual camera frames on a VisionPro simulator, while I would estimate this can be simulated perfectly on an iPadOS.
My suggestion is to provide us developers with a simulator that can be run on iPadOS, that will increase developers adoption and improve the design and prototyping phase of apps running on the actual Vision Pro device.
