Cover of this issue

For this issue, we recommend Roman Klčo 's Mixed Reality Pokemon .

OpenUSD: The increasingly influential OpenUSD

This week, AOUSD has two new "heavyweight" members joining : Microsoft and Sony . Along with these two heavyweight members, there are three new working groups of AOUSD and the v24.08 version of OpenUSD.

When writing last year's issue 006 and issue 014 , I did not expect that this Apple-led organization would gain more and more industry recognition. In addition to new members, NVDIA, which is riding the wave of AI and has unlimited glory, is also contributing to the development of OpenUSD with actions: at the recent SIGGRAPH conference, NVDIA announced that they will provide services based on a series of large models of OpenUSD . According to the press release, these services are mainly used to help users generate OpenUSD-related processing code and materials for 3D models using natural language, and are mainly used in the industrial and engineering fields to help Apple Vision Pro be utilized in industrial scenarios.

In addition, according to the WWDC 2024 Session , Finder on macOS will also support simple editing of usd files on the new macOS. According to this trend, it is very likely that in a few years, usd will become the jpg format in the field of 3D models.

Table of Contents

Recap

• How Qualcomm and Shenmu helped the XR industry grow with OpenXR

News

• Use "SUPERHOT VR" to get a half-price discount on Meta Quest +

• Starting this week (2024-08-05) apps on Meta AppLab will be migrated to the Meta Horizon Store

Activity

• VisionHack: The world's first online visionOS online Hackthon

Idea

• 3D Interactive Icons

Tool

• Helm for App Store Connect

Article

• PDF：Create virtual and mixed reality experiences in Unity

• Apple Document——ShaderGraph

Code

• RealityKit Terrain Shader

App

• Spatial Physics Playground（Free）

Job

• ILLUSION Tech: Front-end development, content cybertribe operations, operations development, 3D content designer

Recap

What is OpenXR: How Qualcomm promotes OpenXR technology

In this article , we delve into Qualcomm's initiative to launch Snapdragon Spaces XR Development Platform in the XR field, as well as the OpenXR-related content derived from it, and the work done by Shenmu Technology in Localization landing.

News

Use "SUPERHOT VR" to get a half-price discount on Meta Quest +

Meta Quest + is a membership subscription service similar to Sony's PS + or Xbox launched by Meta. After subscribing to this service, users only need to pay 7.99 dollars per month or 59.99 dollars per year to play all the games in the game catalog given by Meta., and you can add the two games given each month to your game library (as long as you keep subscribing, you can play all the time). At the same time, you can enjoy limited-time discounts when purchasing some games.

From August 3rd until August 31st, if you want to subscribe to Meta Quest +, you can use " SUPERHOT VR " to get a half price discount.

If you plan to subscribe to Meta Quest + recently, it is recommended that you do not miss this discount.

Starting this week (2024-08-05) apps on Meta AppLab will be migrated to the Meta Horizon Store

In April of this year , Meta announced that it would rename Meta Quest OS to Meta Horizon OS and rename the app store to Meta Horizon Store to show its determination to turn to Mixed Reality.

Starting this week , AppLab, which was originally used as an internal testing channel, will also be merged into the Meta Horizon Store. The original internal testing AppLab will exist in the Meta Horizon Store in the form of Early Access. The overall process is very similar to Apple's AppStore and TestFlight.

However, for most AppLab developers, there is nothing special to do. After AppLab is merged into the Meta Horizon Store, developers who have published apps on AppLab will receive a confirmation email.

Activity

VisionHack: The world's first online visionOS online Hackthon

From September 13th to 15th, visionOS Dev Partners will hold an online visionOS App Hacthon - VisionHack . If you are confident in your creativity or want to communicate with international developers through Discrod and Spatial Persona, you can come and participate in this Hackthon.

It should be noted that participants need to pay a fee of 25 dollars to ensure participation.

Idea

3D Interactive Icons

How to make the interaction of an App very vivid? When the user views the icon, there are some corresponding animations to play, which will definitely make the interaction inside the App more dynamic. bigloong also shows us similar interactions in his design :

If you want to see the actual effect of this interaction, you can directly through the Spline preview address to see the actual effect.

Happily, visionOS 2 also provides a new CustomHoverEffect API to allow developers to achieve similar effects (a more complete development approach can be found in the Create custom hover effects in visionOS Session).

Tool

Helm for App Store Connect

Helm for App Store Connect is a native macOS app that helps developers submit to the App Store.

By using this application, we can obtain many practical functions when submitting applications, such as automatically translating submitted descriptions into multiple languages, using templates to restore application reviews, automatically checking for duplicate application descriptions or descriptions that do not use application search.

This is indeed a very useful productivity tool for independent developers who frequently need to submit applications.

Article

PDF：Create virtual and mixed reality experiences in Unity

Recently, Unity has released a new VR/MR experience guide in its official community . In this guide, Unity mainly explains the following content:

• The basic elements of building a world in XR, such as design purposes, implementing audio and visual cues, adding interactive elements, etc

• Tips to follow when creating assets in XR to save time later in the development cycle

• Decision factors for each development stage in the new VR project and actual steps in Unity

• Practical tips for MR development on Apple Vision Pro

Apple Document——ShaderGraph

Since the release of Reality Composer Pro at WWDC 2023, the documentation for the ShaderGraph section in Reality Composer Pro has been missing. Fortunately, with the passage of time, this part of the documentation has gradually been supplemented. If you want to know the details of ShaderGraph, it is highly recommended that you take a look at the details of this document.

Code

RealityKit Terrain Shader

In the terminology of game engines, Terrain generally refers to technology specifically used for scene layout. Although this technology is currently missing in visionOS, the RealityKit Terrain Shader project shows us how to use Fractal Brownian Motion (fBM) technology to create a complex terrain through a series of parameters.

Unfortunately, the RealityKit CustomMaterial API can only be used on iOS and macOS, so this project cannot be used for visionOS yet. However, we can learn the technology now and migrate directly when visionOS supports CustomMaterial in the future.

If you are interested in the detailed technical content, you can read the accompanying article written by the author: RealityKit Terrain Shader .

App

Spatial Physics Playground（Free）

Spatial Physics Playground is a simple and fun physics simulation app. With the spatial perception ability of Apple Vision Pro, this app can give you an intuitive understanding of the physical simulation and virtual-real combination ability of visionOS.

Job

ILLUSION Tech: Front-end development , content cybertribe operations, operations development, 3D content designer

ILLUSION Tech is a technology company focusing on the XR field. " Seasons " is the first Apple Vision Pro application under ILLUSION, which has been recommended by Apple several times since its launch.

The company is developing a space content creation tool to promote the emergence of more high-quality space content.

Currently, the company is recruiting positions.

If you are interested in the above positions, please send your resume to [email protected].

Contributors of this issue

SpatialOnee

SwiftSiqi

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