visionOS support is coming to the popular Godot engine

Developers using the Godot game engine will soon be able to build for the Apple Vision Pro, as visionOS support is actively being tested after Apple staff offered support.

Godot is a free and open-source game engine that, in April, caught the attention of Apple. A good-natured request from Apple to help add visionOS support to the game engine has borne fruit just over a month later, with it now being beta tested.

On Monday, Godot release coordinator Thaddeus Crews posted to the official blog about the fifth developer beta of Godot 4.5, the next release of the engine. With a content freeze on the horizon for the update, the post discusses some of the highlights of the release.

The list is topped off by the inclusion of native visionOS support. Crews writes that the change will make visionOS the first officially-supported platform integration for the engine in roughly a decade.

It's added that, while Godot is familiar with XR platforms, they are distinct and have to be handled separately. With visionOS users apparently expressing a strong interest in using Godot for XR content, it's proposed that visionOS could feature heavily in a future XR game jam.

Godot has made the fifth developer beta of Godot 4.5 available to download. It is unclear when it will exit the beta process.

Sourced from the source

The visionOS support is credited to Ricardo Sanchez-Saez, marking his first contribution to the engine. The feat is notable to Crews, as highlight features usually stem from long-time contributors who are intimately familiar with the engine.

While Sanchez-Saez is a first-time contributor to Godot, Crews adds that he is part of the visionOS engineering team at Apple.

The original pull request from Sanchez-Saez said that Apple was "really excited" to be working on adding visionOS support. An attempt was made to follow Godot's coding standards, as well as keeping a "high-quality bar" that is typical of Apple.

At the time, the team working through Sanchez-Saez had created ways to compile and link Swift files with Godot, and had made a working version of a visionOS VR plugin for the engine. There was an intention to add full visionOS support as a platform, by reusing code for existing iOS support.

Encouraging game development

Apple has gradually been making more of a push into helping developers produce games for its platforms. For example, the Game Porting Toolkit helps developers see how their games could look like running on Mac hardware, before working on the port itself.

The direct contribution of visionOS support by Apple itself is also an unusual move in the gaming field, but one that makes sense.

While Unity and Unreal Engine are major game engines that are well funded and with dedicated development teams working on them, Godot does not. As a free engine that's also open-source, it relies on contributions from volunteers.

By using the visionOS team's expertise, it's also support that has been quickly implemented by Apple engineers, versus the expected longer development period by unpaid contributors.

For Apple, the addition of visionOS support in Godot provides indie developers a way to bring 3D games made in the engine to the Apple Vision Pro.

Godot may be a lesser-used engine, having been employed for indie titles such as Buckshot Roulette and Cassette Beasts. But with Apple's support, Godot will have more of an even standing in the VR and AR space with its well-funded rivals.