Shared experiences with nearby people

[gfaidley]

Hello,

First off thank you so much for all the work on this project!

I wanted the community's thoughts on support and practicality of multiple co-located Apple Vision Pros (or HMDs in general). We have a PC based software application that allows for remote participants. You can make it work with co-located participants if they all share the same origin in the real world. With lighthouse based systems you can do this by sharing a single room calibration across all the PCs.

I'm wondering if we could do something similar with Apple's new support for shared experiences with nearby people. Could you have the on device apps sync with each other, using Apple's API, this would providing the shared coordinate space and then have each use that coordinate inside steam vr?

I'd approbate everyones thoughts

Thanks in advance

[shinyquagsire23]

Hmm, I guess technically yeah, would be hard for me to test since I don't have a second headset and it might require some fiddling with the existing anchor usage (currently, the ALVR client creates an anchor for the designated SteamVR origin, so that space calibration can be kept consistent across runs and accidental recentering).

[gfaidley]

Thanks for the prompt response! We are happy to test, we have a handful of headsets. If the client already creates the coordinate for SteamVR the PC side may already work. Look like a shared world anchor could be used. In case this anyone needs this the documentation is here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/GroupActivities/configure-your-app-for-sharing-with-people-nearby

[svrc]

FWIW I am looking into this as well, it would however require more than one PC unfortunately I think to start (your personas would appear in the immersive stream). to me it would be to synchronize launching steam games together, but you'd have to delegate to that underlying game's multiplayer support. not sure how useful it would be but it seems like a fun thing to try :)