Who will win the future of VR software? My Thoughts on Vision OS 26 and Apple vs Meta.

June 16, 2025

visionOS 26 introduces powerful new spatial experiences

On June 9th 2025 Apple has shown the world the new version of Vision OS. And it seems like it was worth the wait – the new OS has a huge number of exciting new features. Tracked Controllers support, Widgets, so called "Spatial Scenes" (personally I think volumetric photos would be a more accurate name), and new Personas that seem close to crossing the uncanny valley, just to mention few of them.

Unfortunately, I do not own an Apple Vision Pro, as it's not available for sale in Poland at this time, and it's quite an expensive device, so I cannot test those features myself yet. But building software for Meta Quest devices daily, and just using them to play games with my friends, I can't help but look with envy at Apple's ecosystem and thinking if I chose the losing side in battle for future of immersive technologies.

Meta is releasing updates for Quest roughly every month, and there was a time when I installed new updates with excitement. Original Oculus Quest launched without hand tracking, PC VR streaming capabilities nor depth-accurate passthrough. Back in those days device redefining features would get added all the time. And I may be looking back at Oculus Quest days with my nostalgia-tinded glasses, but I think OS software and user experience was actually more stable back then than it is today. Quest always had a bunch of "screen goes black and then back on" or "window shows up for a second, then hides and another one shows up" kind of issues, but in my subjective experience, there's more of them today than back when it was newly released device category. Something is not going in the right direction at Meta.

Me in Quest 1 I took out of a closet

Today, in Meta Quest 3 era, software updates still give us substantial improvements from time to time. Passthrough has been improved significantly. Travel mode allows for using your headset in a train, car or airplane, and new apps like HDMI Link enable exciting new use-cases. I have personally taken my Quest 3 on my trip to Japan last year, and while without those features it would have been almost useless, thanks to travel mode I could forget about being on a plane and watch predownloaded movies on my own huge virtual TV. Thanks to HDMI link, I could control my drone and see beautiful landscape of Japan live from drone on huge virtual display. Those are some great memories I will not forget. So, I am far from saying that Meta is doing nothing. But looking at the latest release of Vision OS, I can't help but think that Meta might be in trouble going forward.

Me using drone during my trip to Japan - captured while using Quest 3 with HDMI Link

Lights, Camera, Action! Or could we skip straight to action?

There is one crucial difference in how Meta and Apple have been dealing with development of third-party applications for their platform is in how much control they give developers. Meta's approach so far has been to give developers a lot of freedom. Lighting, custom shaders, interacting with objects, all of it is in complete control of developers. Development through full 3D engines like Unity or Unreal is strongly encouraged, and tooling for development without full engines, like Meta Spatial Editor has only become a priority recently.

This gives developers a lot of power to create exactly the experience they want their users to have. On the flip side, there is a cost to this freedom – a lot needs to be done from scratch. Developers need to get the lighting right, develop custom shaders, mess with engine's rendering pipelines (looking at you Unity), and developer their own input. It's worth mentioning there are ready templates and SDKs which improve the situation a fair bit, most notably Meta's Interaction SDK and Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit, but they still leave a lot in hands of developers.

Apple, on the other hand, seems to encourage developers to develop without full 3D engines. Developers can focus on just getting the core content of their apps right and leave the details of rendering or input interactions to Apple's software. This has a few benefits. For once, for simple apps, it seems borderline insane to require a full Unity or Unreal app just to display a floating 2D panel and maybe a few 3D models. It allows for more unified feel between different apps – input is the same whether the app has been developed by company A or B. Quest apps have differences in how things are rendered, like handling of reflections or shadows, quite often not as a conscious artistic choice but because of lack of time or resources to make them look better, or simply due to developer not knowing better. On Vision Pro developers can just leave it to Apple to do it right. Of course, Apple allows the use of full fat 3D engines to develop apps exactly as developers have envisioned them, but it doesn't seem like Apple is putting them in spotlight to anywhere near the same extent Meta does. To add to it, Apple doesn't seem interested in making OpenXR compliant runtime.

I don't think either side is clearly in the right about which approach is correct. And they both seem to recognize the strengths of their competitor – Apple's recent addition of controller input, and Meta's focus on Spatial Editor indicates as much. In terms of OS capabilities at least, I think with VisionOS 26 Apple is poised to take a lead. Closing the gap in support for fully immersive apps, including support for OpenXR, is going to be much easier for Apple than rearchitecting the whole OS around not fully immersive apps will be for Meta.

The vision of Mark Zuckerberg

So far, most of this article did not put Meta in best spotlight. But I think there is one crucial strength Meta has, that Apple and other tech giants could only dream of, and that is the power of Mark Zuckerberg's stock options. Due to how Meta's stock is structured, Mark can pick a course and stick to it for decades. Tim Cook on the other hand can be fired by Apple's board of shareholders at any moment. It's actually quite remarkable how much resources Apple has allocated to development of VR platforms so far, considering how unlikely it is to pay off in the short to medium time frame, and the list of publicly traded companies which only care about next quarter results is quite long. It's worth mentioning Google here too, with their daydream platform a few years ago and recent re-entry into the race with Android XR platform. Only time will tell how well if Sundar Pitchai will have as much luck in convincing shareholders to stick to the course as Tim Cook had so far.

From the past decade of VR development, I think we can safely say that Mark really is a "True Believer" in VR, and if you don't trust me on this one, I think there's none better to confirm it than Palmer Luckey.

So, what is exactly new in Vision OS 26?

So now that we have a bit of context on Apple vs Meta VR wars, let's go a bit more in depth into what Vision OS 26 actually brings to the table.

Tracked Controllers support

Apple has added support for PlayStation VR2 controllers on Vision Pro. This seems like an acknowledgment on Apple's side that there are certain types of applications which really benefit from having physical tracked controller, in stark contrast to their initial Vision Pro Announcement where they emphasized Apple Vision Pro as controller free experience, instead leveraging Eye Tracking and Hand Tracking.

Developers so far were rather wary of developing game for Apple Vision Pro. Not only is the install base small, but lack of controllers made porting experiences from other platforms tricky, or in some cases simply impossible. We'll have to wait to see how many developers will decide that support of PS VR 2 controllers is good enough for them to make the apps available on Vision Pro. My gut feeling is that it won't be too many, and for real change here to happen, we'll need significantly cheaper headset from Apple, ideally with option buy controllers very cheaply in a bundle with headset.

Widgets

Watching Apple's Widgets on Apple Vision Pro must have been a bit painful for Meta Reality Labs CEO Andrew Bosworth. Widgets allow for putting small persistent mini apps around your home, like clock, a panorama, calendar, weather. Developers can create their own widgets, and VisionOS compatible iOS and iPadOS apps will automatically support displaying their widgets on VisionOS. This feature reminds me of Meta's "Augments" announced all the way back in 2023. We were expecting to see augments launched in 2024, but instead we heard the news that the feature in its current state has been scrapped, and Meta is going to drawing board with completely new architecture for Augments. We can pretty clearly say at this point that this is an area where Meta is being left behind by Apple.

Spatial Scenes

There are few things which leave me as impressed and make me as optimistic about future of VR as well-done spatial capture. Probably the best example being gracia.ai with their Guassian splatting based volumetric videos. If you haven't tried them, and you have a VR headset plus ideally a beefy PC, I can't recommend them enough. Being able to see parents with their small baby in full 6 degrees of freedom, just as if they're standing right next to me – it's just incredible. I would really want to be able to capture important events in my life like this and share them with others. To be honest, I think this use case alone makes it near certain to me that VR, in one form or another, will be quite mainstream in future. I've demoed this experience to few people and most are really impressed. If only capture was easier and didn't require a really expensive multicamera setup…

Here enters Apple with Spatial Scenes from on Vision OS 26. Just take any photo, made with your phone, or mirrorless camera, or any photo really. Vision OS can now convert your photo into a 6 DoF scene where you can look around.

Improved Personas

One of the most impressive improvements in visionOS 26 is the leap forward in Personas quality. Apple's digital avatars have always been a bit of a mixed bag – sometimes looking surprisingly lifelike, other times falling deep into the uncanny valley. With visionOS 26, Apple seems to have finally cracked the code on making Personas that feel genuinely human.

The new Personas feature significantly improved facial expressions, more natural eye movements, and better lip-sync accuracy. Apple has also added support for more diverse hair textures and skin tones, making the avatars feel more inclusive and representative. But perhaps most importantly, the new machine learning models seem to capture subtle facial micro-expressions that make conversations feel more natural and engaging.

This is crucial for Apple's vision of Vision Pro as a device for remote work and social interactions. If you're going to spend hours in virtual meetings, your digital representation needs to feel authentic enough that colleagues don't feel like they're talking to a robot. While we're still not at the point where Personas are indistinguishable from reality, they're finally good enough that you might forget you're looking at a digital avatar during a conversation.

The Verdict: Who's Winning?

So, after all this analysis, who do I think is winning the VR software war? Honestly, it's complicated.

In terms of pure technical capability and user experience polish, visionOS 26 puts Apple ahead. The OS feels more cohesive, the development tools seem more mature, and features like Spatial Scenes and improved Personas show real innovation. Apple has also solved some fundamental UX problems that have plagued VR for years – their passthrough quality and hand tracking accuracy are simply better than anything else on the market.

But Meta has two huge advantages that Apple can't easily replicate: price and ecosystem maturity. A Quest 3 costs less than a quarter of what a Vision Pro costs, making it accessible to millions more people. And Meta's app ecosystem, while not as polished as Apple's, is much more mature with thousands of games and experiences already available.

Mark Zuckerberg's long-term vision and ability to weather short-term losses also can't be underestimated. While Apple has to justify Vision Pro's existence to shareholders every quarter, Meta can afford to lose money on VR for years while building the foundation for what they believe will be the next computing platform.

My prediction? In the short term (next 2-3 years), Apple will continue to lead in premium experiences and professional use cases. Vision Pro will become the Mac of VR – expensive, beautifully designed, and preferred by professionals and enthusiasts. Meanwhile, Meta will dominate the mass market with affordable headsets and a growing gaming ecosystem.

The real winner will be determined by who can bridge that gap first. If Apple can release a significantly cheaper headset without sacrificing too much quality, they could dominate both markets. If Meta can dramatically improve their OS and user experience while maintaining their price advantage, they'll be unstoppable.

Either way, competition is heating up, and that's great news for all of us who believe VR is the future of computing. The innovations in visionOS 26 show that we're finally moving beyond the experimental phase into truly mature, useful VR experiences.

Now I just need to figure out how to convince my wife that I need a Vision Pro for "research purposes"...