Open source game engine Godot: Apple on board – for Vision Pro

Apple is trying to boost game development for the Vision Pro. To position itself more broadly in the future, the company's developers have now submitted concrete plans to adapt the open-source engine Godot for the Vision Pro. The immediate goal is to run Godot-based games natively in a “planar visionOS window”, explained a visionOS developer on GitHub. To enable virtual reality games, the Apple developers have also written a visionOS VR plugin for Godot.

Open-source alternative to Unity and Unreal Engine

The Apple code for these functions is already available in an executable version, notes the employee. This is now to be gradually incorporated into the Godot engine in three “incremental pull requests”. Some pull requests are of “considerable size”, the developer warns, while promising to respond to feedback from the Godot community. The changes build on the existing Godot support for iOS, and as much existing code as possible will be reused for the visionOS extension.

Godot is an open-source alternative to the top dogs Unity and Unreal Engine, which clearly dominate the market. Unity caused quite a stir among developers a year and a half ago when it changed its licensing model to pay by installation. After massive criticism and a change of CEO, Unity scrapped the changes. Game development for the Vision Pro has so far been based almost exclusively on Unity; the introduction of the Apple headset overlapped unfavorably with the Unity debacle. Apple does not yet support the Unreal Engine in visionOS. Unreal Engine provider Epic Games and Apple have been engaged in a bitter dispute for several years, with no end in sight.

Hardly any VR games for the Vision Pro

The range of games for the Vision Pro was so meagre at launch that Apple was not above presenting “Fruit Ninja” as a VR showpiece. Meanwhile, a few VR classics such as Vacation Simulator have been adapted for visionOS, and the same applies to newer titles such as Demeo. However, the Vision Pro lacks hand controllers for ambitious VR games that require fine control. Apple is reportedly working with Sony to integrate support for PSVR2 controllers into visionOS.

(lbe)