This safe area limit defines the area that the wearer can move around while wearing the headset with immersive VR enabled.
Vision Pro safe area limit
The information comes from the courtesy of Hans Karlsson, who is serving as the chief technology officer of the VR creative agency Mimir. The limit of 10 x 10 feet is quite a limitation for Apple Vision Pro and might rule out the device entirely for several industrial and commercial applications. Describing the confinement limit of Vision Pro, Hans Karlsson said: “I just learned that Apple has crippled VR so that it stops when you move more than 1,5 meters. So Apple VR is for coach potatoes. No real volumetric video possible then outside the coach zone. No table tennis, nothing that makes you move outside a small box. Super bummer.” It is under stable why Apple has defined a safe area limit for Vision Pro as we have seen several accidents and fail videos of virtual reality headset wearers who often smash into things or fall off while playing a VR game or other VR experiences. A document in VisionOS’ official developmental guide has also specified this safe area with a warning note. Apple’s official documentation reads, “When you start a fully immersive experience, visionOS defines a system boundary that extends 1.5 meters from the initial position of the person’s head. If their head moves outside of that zone, the system automatically stops the immersive experience and turns on the external video again. This feature is an assistant to help prevent someone from colliding with objects.” There are some VR experts who believe that this safe area limit will be imposed initially and once people get used to experiencing VR using Vision Pro, then Apple might increase the limit or remove it altogether. Neil Cybart, a tech analyst wrote on Twitter that Apple has plans to focus more on AR than VR with its headset, which is why the company has imposed a limit on VR experiences. He said, “To be clear, VR is being positioned as a somewhat narrow subset of Vision Pro use cases out of the gate. Apple also has a vested interest in playing a heavy hand with how VR is used on device. However, the company is open to VR-related applications/development.”
