Apple is reportedly still working on full body tracking for Vision Pro so the platform can eventually support fitness apps.
Last week The Information’s Wayne Ma reported that Apple cut full body tracking from Vision Pro “years ago” because its engineers “couldn’t make it reliable enough”, but his reporting didn’t mention whether or not the company was still working on it for post-launch. Ma reported last year that the headset would track legs using the downwards-facing cameras, in a report that also accurately described the rumored headset’s OpticID iris authentication system.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman today reports that Apple is still “trying to perfect” full body tracking, including of legs, to enable fitness apps. A first party Apple Fitness+ visionOS app “remains on the table”, Gurman writes.
Apple Vision Pro’s sensor array includes downwards cameras.
Apple didn’t discuss fitness at all during the product’s lengthy announcement in June, and didn’t show any examples of apps with fast physical movement.
On Meta’s Quest platform fitness has become one of the primary use cases, and Meta acquired the developer of the leading app Supernatural earlier this year. Other popular VR fitness apps include FitXR and Les Mills Bodycombat.
Meta plans to add inside-out upper body tracking to Quest 3 in a software update in December, which will utilize Quest 3’s downwards-facing side cameras. This feature won’t track your legs, though, just everything above. Meta plans to release “Generative Legs” in the same update to estimate your legs with AI.
Quest 3’s upcoming inside-out body tracking feature won’t track your legs.
Gurman reports that Apple told select developers that full body tracking won’t be available at launch (still set for “early 2024”), and it wasn’t mentioned at all at the WWDC conference where the company gave prospective developers comprehensive overviews of visionOS’s capabilities. So if Apple is able to “perfect” full body tracking to reach its quality standards, expect it to arrive as a post-launch software update.
