Apple to Grant Enterprise Access to VisionPro Headset's Passthrough Cameras
TapTechNews June 11th, Apple announced at the WWDC24 Developer Conference that it will grant enterprises the original access rights to the passthrough cameras of the VisionPro headset, but only for non-public internal applications.
Similar to mixed-reality headsets such as the MetaQuest3, the VisionPro also uses cameras to allow users to see the real world. However, currently only the system and some official Apple applications can truly obtain the original data of the cameras. Third-party developers can only use the passthrough function as the background and cannot directly obtain the camera images. They can only obtain things like hand and body skeletal coordinates, a 3D environmental mesh including the bounding box of objects such as furniture, and some object tracking functions.
Previously, when trying to access the front-facing camera using an iPad application on the VisionPro, users would only see a virtual webcam image showing Apple's virtual persona named Persona. For the rear camera, visionOS would return a black screen and display a No Camera icon.
At the WWDC conference, Apple announced the launch of enterprise-level APIs for visionOS2, aiming to provide enterprises with advanced functions that consumer-level applications do not have. These enterprise-level APIs include:
Main camera access rights
Passthrough screen capture
Access rights to Apple's neural network engine
Barcode and QR code scanning
Object tracking parameter adjustment
Increased performance ceiling
Apple clearly stated that these functions can only be used for applications that are only used in a commercial environment, and applications using these functions can only be internally deployed or custom application distributed through the Apple Enterprise Manager, and cannot be listed on the AppStore.
TapTechNews noticed that Pico also opened the original camera access rights in its enterprise-oriented Pico4Enterprise version (this version has eye-tracking and face-tracking functions), but only for registered enterprises, and neither Meta nor HTC has currently opened the original camera access rights.
Apple WWDC24 Developer Conference Keynote Special