To work around early gaps, Hinkson built a custom bridge at the native Unity compositor level to register eye-tracking data and render hover effects, plus a post-build patcher to preserve VisionOS changes across builds.

CONNECTOME is currently available on Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest, serving as a case study of broader industry adoption hurdles for XR applications.

During a June demo at AWE, the reviewer called the experience elegant and soothing, focusing on connecting dots to form shapes within a spatial, zen-like environment, with the session lasting over twenty minutes.

A core hurdle in porting to Apple Vision Pro is Unity tooling gaps: Shapes, a Unity library, isn’t compatible with PolySpatial, forcing a switch to Metal rendering and removing eye-based hover effects because Unity has not yet implemented that support.

CONNECTOME: A Game Of Points is an immersive experience on Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro that uses hand tracking on both platforms and eye tracking on Vision Pro, highlighting development challenges faced by creator Grant Hinkson.

These challenges show how new XR platforms slow development due to engine and tooling gaps, requiring custom tools and workarounds and underscoring ongoing dependencies between hardware APIs and engine support.

As XR adoption grows, developers may rely on engine updates or continue building bespoke tools, potentially at higher costs, to bridge compatibility gaps.

Apple and Meta have provided some developer tools and partnerships—Apple’s WWDC eye-tracking APIs, Unity and Unreal integrations, and Meta’s Unity collaboration—yet full integration remains incomplete, pushing developers to improvise until engines and tools catch up.

A second bridge was needed to maintain room color anchors using SwiftUI APIs not exposed by Unity, necessitating another post-build patcher to preserve these modifications across builds.