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Hello and announcement of „Vision Teleport“ Screencast

digitster

digitster

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 22, 2024
30
17
Hello, I want to announce the availability of a new native app for the Apple Vision Pro in the Apple AppStore.

„Vision Teleport“ is a productivity app, which allows to screen cast ( a virtually unlimited number of ) connected physical and also virtual displays from a Mac to the Apple Vision Pro. The displays content is controlled as usually when working with multiple displays on a Mac by using the native input controllers like, mouse, touchpads and keyboards connected to your mac. You can freely resize and arrange the displays in spatial space on the Vision Pro.

All information can be found on the official support and product website at: https://visionpro.digitster.com
Early youtube previews are available here:
,

I am there for your support. 🫡

There is a TestFlight version published too.
TestFlight releases have a lifespan of 89 days. There are no restrictions applied in functionality.

I also want to share some promo codes (even if the app is currently very cheap for one-time lifetime purchase) for this release premiere.
Please contact me if you are interested.
 
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Sounds like just the App we were hoping Apple would deliver natively when the ability to use the AVP as a virtual monitor for the Mac was released. Nice work!!!!

Does it support multiple Macs? I’ve got an M3 MacBook Pro I’d like to use with it but I also have an Intel iMac I’d like to try it with as well. If it doesn’t support Intel Mac’s that’s OK. I’d buy it just for multiple virtual displays on my M3 MacBook Pro but I’d be happy to throw it on my Intel iMac to see if it works. It’s a 2017 Intel iMac with a 27” 5K display (I’m still peeved Apple doesn’t make a 27” 5K version anymore) and it does run Sonoma though I’m using OpenCore Legacy Patcher as Apple dropped support for the 2017 line of Intel Macs for Sonoma so if it worked great but if not it’s no big deal given that I’m not running an OS that isn’t compatible with the hardware out of the box.
 
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I am quite sure, Apple will fix this, as it was criticised so massively all over the early reviewers.

My concerns with this was the blacking out of the mac display this way and making it impossible to select another display than the primary inbuilt retina display. That was not what I would have been imagined as true ‚spatial computing‚.

So Apples approach is rather a kind of ‚I want to be autistic now, (and working in my private room for 2 hours)... which may have a justifiable purpose too, sometimes.
 
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It works like a charm on my M3 MacBook Pro. No dice on the Intel iMac running Sonoma through Open Core Legacy but I doubted that was going to work given getting the OS on there in the first place was a hack job on my part. No errors or anything though. The virtual display just doesn’t show up as if the server app isn’t running. It worked just fine on the MacBook. My only suggestion would be an installer for the Server app. If you think I might have missed a step when I was trying to get it going on my iMac met me know. I downloaded the server app and the app to setup the virtual displays through the links on the website. The app that lets you setup the displays had an installer but the server app didn’t. I downloaded it then dragged it to the Applications section in Finder. I wanted to check it out quickly so didn’t spend a lot of time reading the website like I normally would have but again, the Intel iMac aspect isn’t a deal breaker as I didn’t expect it to work based on it’s config and the notes about how it’s not been tested on supported Intel Mac’s with Sonoma yet.
 
😲 Oh thank you very much!!

I do develop on M2/M3 Pro chips too (MacBooks Pro). But I have a (last) Intel macBook Pro in suspension. I will do further research, whether it works or what the problem there is. My suspection was, it wont‘t work at all there.
I also do have an open core legacy (old 27 iMac with that), but honestly do not believe that could work there.

At first I want to improve performance for the current release, as some beta testers have reported it could be somewhat more performant, even if loads or very large displays are connected to the Mac.

And yes, I will ship all furthert macOS releases with a native macOS *.dmg (disk image file). Some early releases are just *.zip files but there are *.dmg files available too. All apps are notarised by Apple with my developer ID, by the way, so it is secure to sideload this way. ( Unfortunately Apple always rejects the server apps, which I travel to the macOS AppStore reviews - for several unacceptable reasons. ^^ )
 
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Very cool!

I'm curious - a lot of early reviewers guessed that Apple limiting the virtual mac to just one display was due to bandwidth constraints. In testing your app, what is your judgement of that?
 
The current version needs allot of power on the server side. Please wait for the next performance update, as it will solve some significant things and introduce new options for user adjustments to the performance. The current released versions (also the betas) use 100% HQ rendering by default and texture upscaling and such, which needs allot performance.
 
I currently cannot reply directly to posters.

My suspections for Apple‚s considerations of course are quite similar to mine. The image quality is most important for a first release for demonstrating superior abilities. And such high quality requires allot of bandwidth, as everything is transported via WLAN network connection with at least 60 Hz frequency per picture. This can become easily around 100 MB per second, then multiplied by several displays with possibly up to UHD resolution. It‘s quite a challenge. ^^
 
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By the way: It was always a kind of ‚tradition‘ on Apple‚s side to release apps with rather ‚demonstration‘ character. They usually leave the app development to 3rd party developers. So they do usually not spend loads of money on this... ^^
 
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I‘m quite happy that I could manage to increase the performance drastically today. I‘ve implemented 3 different options for reducing bandwidth (always connected to display quality) on the server side.



https://visionpro.digitster.com/wp-content/uploads/Vision-Teleport-Update-2.png



  • the image compression of the stream can now be adjusted between 1 and 100% (global) in realtime.
  • internal texture upsampling for increasing sharpness can be switched off (per display). But this usually results clearly in some blurring.
  • the frame rate can be toggled between 30 and 60 Hz (per display). For mostly text based apps 30 frames are totally sufficient, for movies and games 60 frames are much better of course.


Theoretically the user can now reduce the bandwidth from initially fixed 100% to merely 10% with relative few lost of information. So also mobile Tethering and multiple virtual displays should be possible with the Vision Pro. The initial release used best quality settings and an additional Metal Shader sharpness filter, which may have caused some issues with the overall performance. 3 to 4 displays at ones should be no problem at all now. Virtual displays can be created on the Mac with our new extra app for macOS (more to that later).



I will ship the new visionOS TestFlight beta to the review teams in the next hours. It usually takes some days until Apple releases apps. Rejections for all kind of reasons are possible any time of course and usually also will happen allot.



The new macOS server apps are available after release on the website https://visionpro.digitster.com as usually.
 
The current (third) TestFlight beta did remove the ability of creating an additional virtual display (which was introduced in second beta), due to an AppStore review rejection of the server app.

https://visionpro.digitster.com/wp-content/uploads/Rejected.png

(The strange Mac AppStore delays and rejections - even for the beta versions - are a huge problem for user friendly distribution and access, so we decided to distribute the server apps for the macOS directly on our website from now on, distributed in notarised macOS native disk file images.)

In the meantime we found a workaround for „rejected virtual displays“ and released an extra app for the macOS, which is independent and able to create up to 4 virtual displays, just on the fly, for direct usage with the Vision Teleport.

https://visionpro.digitster.com/wp-content/uploads/Vision-Displays-1.png

Vision Teleport client will already detect any display changes (hot plugging) while running, so temporary virtual displays can be created any time, promoted and projected onto the spatial workspace of the Vision Pro while working. These are usually invisible on the Mac by default. Hardware displays can be switched on and off or plugged dynamically too.

In latest tests, we opened 3 hardware display projections (2 x UHD) along with 2 additional virtual displays for working on the Vision Pro with success. Currently all virtual displays created by ‚Vision Displays‘ have a max. resolution of 16:9 HD (1920 x 1080). Internally these are translated for Retina resolution (UHD).

The app (Vision Displays) is freely available on our product website. https://visionpro.digitster.com
 
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Furthermore I am happy to announce the availability of the 4th Public TestFlight Beta (performance update), available at:

https://apps.apple.com/de/app/vision-teleport-screencast/id6477599227

The corresponding server app for macOS is available too, for direct download on our product website.
The latest matching version number for beta and the scheduled official (auto*)release is now 1.5.326.

* auto release means, that the app is released in the Vision Pro AppStore automatically shortly after the review team did accept the build
 
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… just received this:

Congratulations!​

Your submission was accepted for release on the App Store.

Submission ID: …
App Name: Vision Teleport Screencast
https://apps.apple.com/app/vision-teleport-screencast/id6477599227
…


Personal remarks:
Currently it seems to be quite fast when releasing visionOS apps to the Apple AppStore. Both, release and TestFlight versions. Unlike to the macOS AppStore, there always (kind of) boycotts are performed and unacceptable delays introduced. We transmitted both, the client and the server apps for both OSs at same time. So we probably will continue with shipping the macOS server part via direct distribution, just ignoring their ignorance at the macOS AppSore review teams. But for the user experience this is surely somewhat suboptimal. ^^
 
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In one of the videos above you showed the ability to resize windows into narrower and wider aspect ratios by dragging the corner of the Vision Pro window. It looked like this was resulting in content being squished or stretching which wouldn't be a great experience for any use case I can think of.

Is that still in the app or is there an option to lock the aspect ratio?
 
Yes, this is an intentionally implemented ‚feature‘.
A retaining screen ratio actually would also restrict the sizing, i.e the maximum.

(But I fear, users will not stop asking for a screen ratio lock. So we probably will implement it as an option.)
There is also a plan for better support of ultra wide displays this way.

ps: we want to do (and think ^^) things clearly different than Apple did.
 
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A call to TestFlight Beta Testers

If you applied to beta testing via Apple TestFlight, we usually won‘t see anything of you. You will be totally opaque and anonymous.

But all active beta testers are entitled for receiving a lifetime promo code for the released app.
‚Active‘ here means, you send your feedback to the official support address, which is visible via TestFlight.

We urgently are also in need of some user videos, showing usage on a real device. Please hide all sensitive data from such captures and send these to us.

Because we are sitting in Germany, a real device is not available to us and Apple did not ship any loaned Developer Kit devices yet.

Furthermore, promoters will have the ability for receiving bunch of promo codes for their subscribers, if the generated reviews are gentle and suited for selling apps. (If you put the app to pieces, probably not. ^^ So please contact me if there is an interest.)


The TestFlight beta is public. In the meantime both, the macOs server and the visionOS client app are available via public TestFlight link. Anyone can apply and is invited : https://testflight.apple.com/join/AUplJgRZ
 
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https://apps.apple.com/de/app/vision-teleport-screencast/id6477599227

I accidentally generated too many promo codes, so ere are some lifetime premiere promo codes for forum users:

Code: 
PW4XFPK6WRMF

6PP7P3NF9RM9

6PJ4N9M36RF7

63FXL4949Y4R

969NMK39NYP6

3KP6PWJ4NMWM

HH69HMXALM77


( These are supposed to work only on the real Apple Vision Pro device of course. )

Please note that promo codes are always for the current release version, beta versions sometimes may be more actual, as for instance currently the case. TestFlight betas have a lifespan of 89 days after release and are currently public.

( If a code does not work, it was grabbed by someone. So, it would be kind, if each grabbed code is reported in a message below, as the following users can see this way, which code was grabbed and which are left to be available. )

I am not able to be here all day long and possibly reply to private messages and so on. If you find issues or have ideas for improvement, please contact me via official support address or comment directly on the product website.

visionpro.digitster.com – Native Apps for the Apple Vision Pro

visionpro.digitster.com visionpro.digitster.com
 
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ysvsr1 said:
How do i enter code to buy this app?
Click to expand...
It‘s an official Apple AppStore code. You could redeem it with any iOS device, i believe. But it is of use merely with the Apple Vision Pro. The Vision Pro AppStore should have an area where this can be redeemed, but I am currently not able to test, as the AppStore is not available in Europe yet. But the code is valid for all geographic areas.
 
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digitster said:
It‘s an official Apple AppStore code. You could redeem it with any iOS device, i believe. But it is of use merely with the Apple Vision Pro. The Vision Pro AppStore should have an area where this can be redeemed, but I am currently not able to test, as the AppStore is not available in Europe yet. But the code is valid for all geographic areas.
Click to expand...
I tried adding coupon code on my ipad like any other code or gift card but it was not recognized. On vision pro, I am not seeing option to enter code. When I click buy the app it is directly asking me to confirm the purchase but no option to enter code.
 
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