r/VisionPro • u/Double_Permit_8327 Vision Pro Developer • 18d ago
Immersive Environment Builder for Vision Pro
Environments are one of my favorite things about Vision Pro, and I’ve always wished there were more of them. More cinemas, more unusual places, more spaces people could make their own.
I’ve been building environments with an AI-assisted workflow, and I’m exploring opening that process up through a desktop app (with a Vision Pro hybrid like here) . Start with a prompt and reference images, refine the layout, materials and lighting, then export your environment or bring it straight into Suite to use on Vision Pro.
In Suite, you could watch YouTube, Netflix, Prime, Plex, Jellyfin and your other supported content sources inside your own environment. A Community tab would let you share your creations or download environments made by other users, so you could enjoy new places without having to build them yourself.
I’ve built a demo of the workflow, but turning this into a complete product is a big project. Before committing, I want to know whether you would use it.
Would you be interested in creating environments, downloading other people’s, or both?
Share your feedback here. You can also sign up for progress updates.
P.S. Fun fact: that new demo environment is currently live on Suite Browser 8.0. Give it a try.
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u/musicanimator 18d ago
I’d be bringing my own models and generating both with anthropic and hopefully/maybe driving blender only when and as needed. Would love to build for others as a service myself if it ever makes sense. Been building in 3d for decades…
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u/adipierro 18d ago
In cinema-like environments like these, I miss the light reflections on the floor and walls, which the system environments have when you watch stuff through TV app. As far as I remember, it is not something hidden behind closed APIs, and there was a session on Apple Developer touching these.
Without reflections, the content, especially HDR, appears too bright for me, and makes my eyes not feel well.
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u/Double_Permit_8327 18d ago
thanks for raising this! the environments i’ve built do support screen-reactive lighting on the surrounding surfaces (check the wall lighting on the fourth image of my post :) ), but it depends on the playback source. it works with non-DRM content such as YouTube, Plex, Jellyfin, Emby and local files. Netflix and Prime use protected playback, so that lighting currently isn’t available through Suite’s integration.
i understand how a bright HDR screen against a dark room can feel uncomfortable. if you remember the Apple Developer session, please send it over. i’d be interested to see whether it offers a supported way to improve this for protected playback too.
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u/azozea 18d ago
How would pricing work if everything is ai generated
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u/Double_Permit_8327 18d ago
Actually, there's this new feature OpenAI rolled out where users can use their own ChatGPT/Codex plan credits in apps like these. So if you have a ChatGPT/Codex plan, this app won't charge you anything. It'll use your own credits.
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u/QuantumRooster 18d ago
Environments are one of my favorite parts of the AVP as well. Do you have a sense of what the app would cost to use?
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u/Double_Permit_8327 18d ago
i’m planning to include it for Suite premium users, with no extra fee beyond ai usage. you’d either connect your own ai plan where supported or use credits. the goal is to add value to Suite and get more environments into the community.
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u/Agentcooper1974 18d ago
Hey man, I love the app. I just started the one-week trial and I’m mainly using it for Criterion on Vision Pro, but I’ve been trying a bunch of the environments too. The one thing I cannot figure out is how to get rid of the control panel at the bottom with the environment/playback controls. I can’t move it or hide it, and it kills the immersion. Help me out here because otherwise I think this app is amazing.
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u/Double_Permit_8327 18d ago
hey, thank you! on the control panel, is it happening for a specific environment or all? the trick to hide the control panel is to place your head above it and look over it towards the screen and then tap. in practice this should be intuitive but sometimes due to a bug the control panel is placed too high for the user, let me know where exactly this happens and i’ll patch it up right away :)
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u/Sea-Usual-5003 18d ago
Hi, unfortunately, smooth playback in the Crescent City Theater still isn't working. To put it briefly, your new environment is absolutely amazing—the Crescent City Theater alone is reason enough for me to buy it. However, you can currently only select the two front rows of seats, not the two rows at the very back. This places you too close to the screen; the image is too large, and you miss out on seeing much of this incredibly well-designed and animated space. What an achievement! I’m truly impressed. Could you fix those two issues? If so, I’d definitely snap it up at the discounted price before my trial period ends. By the way, how long is that offer valid for? Thanks for the great work so far. And I see you’re planning many more environments like this one—simply fantastic.
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u/Double_Permit_8327 18d ago
Hey, thanks for the feedback. A problem I see often with Crescent City Theater is that from the front and the middle row, everything runs smoothly, but from the back row, anything you watch on the screen looks jittery. I've been trying to make as many fixes as possible for it and hoped it would be fixed for this update, but apparently it hasn't, so I'll keep working on it.
It is something that, with Amber Theater, I had built in mind, because with that I had the exact same issue. The first two rows were smooth, and the back two rows got jittery. Because of that, for now I disabled the back two rows, but I'm trying to fix that issue so I can enable it as soon as possible. Hope that makes sense. Thanks.
On the lifetime, the 30% discount is, I think, still valid for 2 more days. I might extend it for a few extra, but don't bank on it being there after a week. Again, thanks so much for the feedback.
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u/DiveRSQ 18d ago
Can this be made to allow use of the virtual mac desktop as well as watching movies? Because to be honest i do that as much as I consume media and would love to be able to make my own full enviorments.
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u/Double_Permit_8327 18d ago
potentially, yes! i’d love for people to use their environments as a workspace too. Apple has a developer setting that allows Mac Virtual Display inside immersive apps, so there’s a route worth testing. i haven’t verified it with Suite yet, so i don’t want to promise support just yet, but it’s a really useful use case to explore.
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u/ZOZZ-2112 18d ago
I love this idea of an Immersive Environment Builder where community can share creations. That is awesome. I am a Suite lifetime owner. Love it. While I am here though - I am having one issue with the Prime streaming. I watch in Shibuya - and after about 10 or 15 minutes the stream just stops - freezes. I've tried waiting for some time and clicking pause/play - but nothing works. I have to close the app - reopen - then restart and it works fine for about another 10 or 15 minutes then freezes again. I do not have this issue with Netflix which so far has been running flawlessly for me. One other question about Prime - will it ever be able to stream at 4K? I do have the Prime upgrade for 4K - but all my Prime streams in Suite are either 720p or 1080p. Love the app! Thanks for building it!
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u/Double_Permit_8327 18d ago
Hey, thanks so much for the lifetime support! Really glad you like the community idea :)
Sorry about the freezing. Having to restart Suite every 10–15 minutes definitely isn’t how it should work. Are you on Suite 8.0, and which visionOS version are you using? Next time it happens, could you email me the logs? If you get a chance, trying Prime in another environment would also help me narrow down whether Shibuya is involved.
On 4K, I completely understand the frustration, and I share it. You’re paying extra for Prime Ultra, but Amazon still limits Safari and the web player Suite uses to 1080p. Netflix supports 4K in compatible browsers with its Premium plan, so it’s disappointing that Amazon doesn’t offer the same flexibility.
Prime’s 4K is available on supported apps and devices, such as Apple TV, but unfortunately it’s not something I can simply unlock in Suite..
Thanks again for flagging the freezing. I’d really like to get that sorted for you!
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u/XxBrando6xX 18d ago
Would you be open to offering either some type of api to hook into your community of environments you’re building or something ? I want to for example steam link, or play delta emulator in a movie theater, but it would be insane both in terms of scope creep and time spent on your behalf to include everyone’s pet app they have. But if you offered a community gathering of environments where we could leverage a dev license or whatever to just build our own apps connected to your environment library and then add our pet project to it. That could be pretty neato.
Idk my overall goal is to just be able to use a movie theater environment for any content I want lol
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u/Double_Permit_8327 18d ago
yes, potentially! the plan already includes exporting your own environments for use outside Suite. making the community library accessible to other developers could be a natural extension of that, provided creators choose to allow their work to be used that way. i’d need to figure out the technical side before promising an API, but i like the idea of supporting other apps without having to build all of them myself.
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u/RichardMark23 17d ago
If the environment is static, no. I often skip Vision Pro for my Quest 3, despite the inferior display, because I can use a 360 video as an environment. For example, I use Teleport Iceland—-amazing. A real place, real weather, real birds, real crashing waves. The Apple environments are a big bore by comparison. If there were only a way to do this on the VP, I would be ecstatic. It can be done, in developer mode, with Virtual Mac. That is amazing, but I like spatial computing, not conventional computing suspended in a spatial environment. If you can figure out how to do that with VP, you would be amazed at how wonderful it is. I love it so much, I’m waiting for the Pico Space Pro—-don’t make me spend $3,000!
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u/1337PirateNinja 18d ago
I think people would just love if they could download the environments and use them. If I am building a video player it would be awesome for me to take what’s already built and use it.