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  This is Apple’s Vision Pro headset. It looks a bit like a particularly bulky pair of ski goggles, with the materials and design language of Apple’s AirPods Max headphones. [credit:
  Samuel Axon ]

Recent discoveries by developers working with Apple’s visionOS software development kit have revealed that Apple isn’t going for room-scale VR with Vision Pro—something that will potentially frustrate users hoping for a high-end VR headset to compete with offerings from Meta and others.

As reported by 9to5Mac, Hans Karlsson of creative marketing agency Mimir lamented last week on Twitter that visionOS pulls users out of immersive VR when they move more than 1.5 meters away from the virtual environment’s origin point, saying that Apple has thus “crippled VR” and made it so the platform is only for “couch potatoes.” This wasn’t new information, though; Apple’s documentation for visionOS developers revealed this was the case during WWDC. The 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.

Around the same time, people discovered that Apple also yanks you out of any immersive environment if you start moving too quickly in any direction. visionOS will show users a message stating that they are “moving at an unsafe speed” and that “virtual content has been temporarily hidden until you return to a safe speed.”