iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Hello from Apple Park!! I've taken a little break from sharing on socials, but my Vision Pro journey is alive and well over here. I'm still scrolling around online and rooting for all of you in the visionOS community. Excited for our future 🙏

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Excited to share that I'm joining Apple to work on Immersive Analytics! Big thank you to everyone who's been engaging with my Vision Pro experiments. I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to keep pushing in this direction career-wise 🙏

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

RealityKit experiment #86 (code in the replies) Here's a simple PSVR2 Sense Controller example that handles the inputs, tracks the aim anchor, and triggers haptics

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

RealityKit experiment #85 (code in the replies) I made one more update to my Logitech Muse example to preserve the anchor orientation when spawning the model. Switched to cubes to demonstrate and added a little axis indicator at the aim

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

RealityKit experiment #84 (code in the replies) Here's an update to my Logitech Muse example that handles the pressure values for the tip and secondary button

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

RealityKit experiment #83 (code in the replies) This example turns the Logitech Muse into a virtual laser pen for point-to-point measurements. The surface intersection point is determined by raycasting along the stylus' aim-origin vector against the scene reconstruction meshes

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

RealityKit experiment #82 (code in the replies) Here’s a simple Logitech Muse example that tracks the aim, handles the action buttons, and triggers haptics

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

RealityKit experiment #81 (code in the replies) I found a scan of a human skeleton and wanted to try to visualize it in RealityKit. The PLY file had millions of triangles, so I had to decimate the mesh. It ended up being really satisfying to see the wireframe at different LODs

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

RealityKit experiment #80 (gist in the replies) LowLevelMesh “Falling Sand” dissolution and reassemble effect created with SDF shapes and Marching Cubes. A Metal compute shader uses a spatial sweep to "release" triangles that rigidly start to fall

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

RealityKit experiment #79 (code in the replies) Animating 3D text by converting the output of MeshResource(extruding:) to a LowLevelMesh and applying a Metal compute shader The MeshResource was interesting to unpack since it had multiple models/parts plus instance transforms

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

RealityKit experiment #78 (gist in the replies) LowLevelMesh explode-and-assemble animation created by meshing an SDF using Marching Cubes and rigidly pushing it’s triangles outward

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

RealityKit experiment #77 (gist in the replies) Color-blending metaballs created from animated sphere SDFs via Marching Cubes. LowLevelMesh vertices store per-vertex color in the Geometry Color vertex attribute, read by ShaderGraphMaterial

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

RealityKit experiment #76 (gist in the replies) LowLevelMesh blob from meshing the smooth-min of animated sphere SDFs with marching cubes. Glassy ShaderGraphMaterial is based on Apple's "Implementing adjustable material" sample

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

RealityKit experiment #75 (gist in the replies) LowLevelMesh shape shifting by interpolating between two signed distance fields and meshing with marching cubes

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

RealityKit experiment #74 (gist in the replies) - LowLevelMesh with disconnected geometry - Marching Cubes + SDF for vertex positions - Vertex normals from SDF gradient - Polynomial smooth-min to blend the shapes

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

RealityKit experiment #73 (gist in the replies) Here's a simple burn fade example. The ShaderGraphMaterial directly sets the color and opacity from the UV2 attribute of the LowLevelMesh vertices and the Metal compute shader updates those color/opacity values

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

RealityKit experiment #72 (gist in the comments) LowLevelMesh Torus Spinner - incrementally adds vertices/indices (or shifts the indexOffset when removing) - multiple layers of varying opacity and minor radius are stacked with additive blend mode for the glow effect

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

RealityKit experiment #71 (gist in the comments) - Loads mesh & texture from USDZ - LowLevelMesh verts use float4 color+alpha in uv2 - ShaderGraphMaterial blends texture with uv2.rgb, sets opacity from uv2.w - Metal Compute Shader animates uv2

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

RealityKit experiment #70 (gist in the comments) Grass Mesh with Wind 🌬️🌿 - Single LowLevelMesh with part for each blade - Poisson Disk Sampling for evenly distributed blade placement - Incremental mesh growth performed on CPU - Compute Shader for offsetting vertices on GPU

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

RealityKit experiment #69 🇺🇸🔊 (gist in the comments) Happy 4th of July!! - LowLevelMesh + compute shader for flag - Burst particles + point light for fireworks - Entity.playAudio(resource:) for sound - MeshResource(extruding:) for text

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

RealityKit experiment #68 (gist in the comments) One LowLevelMesh with 50 procedurally growing branches. Each branch pre-allocates vertex/index space with offsets. Using multiple parts with index offsets organizes the bookkeeping which enables growing each branch incrementally

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

RealityKit experiment #67 (gist in the comments) LowLevelMesh with multiple parts and material indexing

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

RealityKit experiment #66 (gist in the comments) LowLevelMesh growing/shrinking branch

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

RealityKit experiment #65 (code in the comments) LowLevelMesh sphere to circular plane morph using Metal compute shader

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

RealityKit experiment #64 (code in the comments) LowLevelMesh sphere to rectangular plane morph using Metal compute shader

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

RealityKit experiment #63 (code in the comments) Procedural tree with LowLevelMesh. Branching is still pretty simple, but figured I'd share before going too deep into growth direction algorithms

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

RealityKit experiment #62 (code in the comments) Pancake effect using LowLevelMesh and a Metal compute shader. It progressively compresses all vertices towards the minimum Z bound

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

RealityKit experiment #61 (code in the comments) Height map image to animated 3D terrain pipeline using LowLevelMesh, LowLevelTexture, and Metal compute shaders Inspired by Apple's tutorial on the topic (link in replies)

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

RealityKit experiment #60 (code in the comments) Takes USDZ model, extracts vertex/texture data into LowLevelMesh & LowLevelTexture, then uses compute shaders to morph the vertices to a sphere and fade the texture to white

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Added socials to the Contact Me so I (hopefully) don’t miss critical feedback like this again: "As I strum, the tempo goes all over the place. The way guitar players hold the pick replicates a click trigger on a Vision Pro. Adding a lock function would solve this."

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Just updated the visionOS tuner + metronome app with support for combined or split windows After getting back into sax practice sessions with the Vision Pro, I realized that managing two windows was kind of a pain

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

SwiftUI 🤝 MTKView update #4 (code in the replies) Added this Signed Distance Function drawing example and got quite carried away. It is mesmerizing how many cool, morphing patterns you can create by applying simple math to a 2D SDF primitive

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

visionOS Combine and Split View #2 (code in the comments) Thanks to @vrhermit.com's recommendation, this now opens the new window next to the existing window (in 1-2 order) I found that I needed defaultWindowPlacement and defaultSize. defaultSize determined the distance from the existing window

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

visionOS Combine and Split View (code in the comments) The idea is to have only one instance for each view but allow them to be combined or split up

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

SwiftUI 🤝 MTKView update #3 (code in the comments) I'm beginning to go through The Book of Shaders and port its examples to Metal. Trying to battle-test and refine my compute shader patterns

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

SwiftUI 🤝 MTKView example #2 (code in the comments) Worked up a protocol pattern for using a single MTKView to run different Metal texture shaders regardless of the properties they require. The goal is to be able to quickly spin up and preview new shaders in SwiftUI

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

SwiftUI 🤝 MTKView #1 (code in the comments) Ever since playing around with compute shaders in visionOS, I've wanted them accessible on all platforms. Here's a simple, cross platform pattern for creating a SwiftUI MetalView

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

SwiftUI Slider with fill coming from center (code in the comments) Similar to last post - overlay a new track and thumb over the top of the native slider (disable hit testing on the overlay so gestures are hitting the slider) SFSymbol effects at the bounds for a touch of love

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Reskin a SwiftUI Slider the easy way (code in the comments) If you can live with having the same height as the native slider, you can just overlay a new track and thumb with disabled hit testing

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

In case this helps anyone.. If you accidentally add a breakpoint inside your swift macro generated code (inside the dropdown), you may get stuck on build with a noisy error message about how "the replacement path doesn't exist". Delete that breakpoint

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Apple Image Playground API Tutorial (link with code in comments) Did you know the API supports source images and long-form text? Or that it integrates with UIKit using a delegate conformance? 🤯 My first video tutorial - I'm trying new formats this year. Would love feedback!

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Is there currently a way to do bookmarks with Bluesky?

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

I know we've all poked fun at the state of Apple Intelligence, but my non-tech friends and family love Image Playground. I think the full-sized images are a little laughable and that's actually a feature not a bug. They are humorous. Genmojis are pretty cool too imo

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Waited till today to download macOS 15.2 + visionOS 2.2 and I have to say this is a huge upgrade! The new Wide/Ultrawide aspect ratios make the Mac Virtual Display a killer app for the Apple Vision Pro Now if only I could still use iPhone Mirroring while in sidecar...

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

RealityKit experiment #59 (code in the comments) Another LowLevelMesh metal shader. It's come to my attention that a sphere can be constructed through simply normalizing the vertices of a cube. This method gives you complete control over the sphere's resolution

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

RealityKit experiment #58 (gist in the replies) Expanding on Apple’s low level mesh plane example, you can make a cube mesh using 6 planes. When doing so, you will want to be mindful of the triangle winding order so that all faces point outwards

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

RealityKit experiment #57 (gist in the comments) Apple has a simple LowLevelMesh plane example that is a great start for understanding vertices / indices / triangle winding order. I put together that example + made a GPU/metal shader implementation of the same mesh

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

RealityKit experiment #56 (code in the replies) Happy Thanksgiving! - Downloads .usdz file from online url - Creates model entity and clones it ⁃ Plays model’s animation

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

RealityKit experiment #55 (code in the replies) Simple LowLevelTexture + Gaussian Blur example - separate compute shader pass using intermediate texture - shared C struct definition between swift/metal

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Matt Pfeiffer ᯅ @mattpfeiffer.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

RealityKit experiment #54 (gist in the comments) Breathing autumn leaves for the Fall season 🍂 - LowLevelMesh programmatic leaf - CGImage programmatic texture for different shades of leaves - fibonacci lattice to distribute entities evenly - scale + rotate effect

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