Multi-Room Capabilities

[happypappy]

Do you think you’ll have the ability to place windows in multiple locations of the surrounding?

For example…

You are in your living room and have a safari window, messages window, and email window all open and stuck in space where you want them…

We know those windows will all remain in place perfectly and you can walk around them and through them freely.

But what if you then walked out of the living room and into the kitchen? Could I open a YouTube video about cooking and place that window above the range? Will that window always remain in the kitchen? So if I leave the kitchen and come back, that window will still be above the range where I placed it?

Would be very cool to have these different apps and windows spread throughout your house and each room has a different set of apps/windows based on the needs of the user.

I could walk into my office and have spreadsheets, safari, banking apps, etc. But then walk into my entertainment room and apps like Apple TV, games, huge screens, etc., all show up.

Also wondering how that would work if it does? Especially for people that have multi-level homes.

Curious 🤔

 

[Kierkegaarden]

Interesting thought, and something I hadn’t considered. I didn’t see any kind of reference to this in the WWDC sessions, so I’m guessing it isn’t something that will be available. Maybe this would require quite a bit of memory/processing power that is not available right now. The device would have to map out your entire home and keep placement of windows arranged in memory — I can just hear the fans blasting! I think what you’re describing is something coming down the road.

Great imagination 👍🏻

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Interesting thought. However in terms of absolute utility, it's limited. Sure, you want your recipes in the kitchen and your repair manual for your car in the garage. But why do I need to be in a specific room, to see a spreadsheet or play a game? "Location" isn't as important as "Near physical objects I need access to for this app."

 

[kkee]

It was mentioned in keynote that a pair of high-resolution cameras transmit over one billion pixels per second to the displays also do real‑time 3D mapping constantly on your surrounding. AFAIK so far, VisionOS is restricted to 1 Full Space app but can run multiple Shared Space apps according to the developer documentation: "In visionOS, people can run multiple apps at the same time in the Shared Space or concentrate on a single app at a time in a Full Space. By default, your app launches in the Shared Space, where people can switch between multiple running apps much as they do on a Mac."

So, yes, it could be possible to have a virtual pet app that you can have floating next to you while you do other stuff (think of it as having multiple windows running different apps at the position you choose at the same time at the screen of your Mac).

Think of the shared space as your desktop, spatialized; an app in the shared space might have a 3D model of the scene of your virtual pet on the sofa, a thumbnail of your recipe in safari window next to the kitchen or a tv screen window in living room, allow you to launch the app so that only its content is visible in the full space. So you might have different windows around your house, but only one can be opened in full space (think of it as a "maximized screen").

There's tons of Videos by apple that go into this, I suggest starting here:
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10091

 

[Piggie]

This is the potential future for sure.
You wear "some type" of glasses all the time, and your home (and other places) are 100% mapped out.
You then "purchase" virtual products/creations to place around your real home.
You could have multiple "scenes" one for daytime when you are working, one for the evening etc etc.
Virtual TV's locked into place on your real walls.
Plants, decorations, coloured lighting, virtual windows showing virtual environments.

As long as it's not something you need to physically touch, like a chair, a door, a drawer then it does not actually need to physically exist.
One could imagine a distant future where some people have very very minimal homes for those physical items, and the rest of what's in their homes is virtual.

This would seem to be an inevitable place we are moving towards, but of course whilst I would say it's technically just about possible today to create, the hardware needed and quality needed are still many years away from a practical reality.

 

[dante_mr]

Interesting thought, and something I hadn’t considered. I didn’t see any kind of reference to this in the WWDC sessions, so I’m guessing it isn’t something that will be available. Maybe this would require quite a bit of memory/processing power that is not available right now. The device would have to map out your entire home and keep placement of windows arranged in memory — I can just hear the fans blasting! I think what you’re describing is something coming down the road.

Great imagination 👍🏻

The only thing I saw that's similar to OP's question is this: Tracking specific points in world space

But I'm not a developer so a lot of it goes over my head. And it seems to describe specific objects rather than windows but I don't know if that means the same thing?

 

[zerocustom1989]

This is not very possible on 1.0.

If you have app windows from multiple apps then they are in the shared space.

I don’t believe these windows will be occluded by corners and other physicals elements of a room. (They are not in the simulator)

The big reason this isn’t possible is that holding the home-crown down will re-localize the windows in the shared space.

So, say you move a window 6 feet in front of you and walk to another room.

If you hold the home button down, that window will move from where you left it and back to being 6 feet in front of you.

I’m thinking about this as sort of a “portable spatial app bubble” of sorts.


It’s _possible_ to anchor things to world positions that will stick to walls and surfaces of the real world, but it’s only possible in an immersive scene and that’s only something one app at a time can be doing.

I foresee “AR mounted widgets” happening in the future but it doesn’t feel like a 1.0 thing.

 

[1rottenapple]

Do you think you’ll have the ability to place windows in multiple locations of the surrounding?

For example…

You are in your living room and have a safari window, messages window, and email window all open and stuck in space where you want them…

We know those windows will all remain in place perfectly and you can walk around them and through them freely.

But what if you then walked out of the living room and into the kitchen? Could I open a YouTube video about cooking and place that window above the range? Will that window always remain in the kitchen? So if I leave the kitchen and come back, that window will still be above the range where I placed it?

Would be very cool to have these different apps and windows spread throughout your house and each room has a different set of apps/windows based on the needs of the user.

I could walk into my office and have spreadsheets, safari, banking apps, etc. But then walk into my entertainment room and apps like Apple TV, games, huge screens, etc., all show up.

Also wondering how that would work if it does? Especially for people that have multi-level homes.

Curious 🤔

Interesting.

Tim Cook. Apple’s Vision Pro is here to revolutionize human civilization by solving the housing crisis and the crisis of loneliness. Vision Pro allows 10,000 inhabitants living in ships containers with no windows experience ocean virtual front window, and a rear window facing the Himalayas. And next software update will allow Vision Pro to project virtual walls allowing your 30x10 home to have unlimited rooms with different theme. In addition the Vision Pro App Store will start selling virtual companion such the son you never had, E-Pets, helpful companion to add color to your life! We believe Vision Pro is apple next revolutionary product.

 

[jclardy]

This is something I've been wondering since launch, and even more since I bought a Quest 3. With the Quest 3 I can "carry" a window with me around the house, but it will often drop my hand from being tracked and the window will be in the staircase somewhere. But if you are actually using an app/experience, it is limited to 1 pre-defined play area.

In the Vision Pro simulator, you can leave windows all around...but every space is just a single room. I also wonder how you can "manage" windows then - if I left Safari downstairs, can I close it from my office? Do I need to "close" things? (IE is it like an iPad...but based on the location you are in?) Or can I open a new instance?

But this is also the exciting/scary part - we are 10 years into iPadOS and Apple still hasn't figured out how multitasking should work 😂

 

[VPsmith]

My guess is that's what the new AirTag is for. To create spatial anchors in your home. Just glue the new AirTag to your desk, living room and kitchen. Then Apple Vision Pro 2.0 software will remember where windows/workflows in those different areas exist. Essentially waking up those app instances / windows from a suspended state when you are in the area of the AirTag. So go to your desk to continue working on your project and then go into the living room to continue that spatial D&D game with your kid.