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ial components are nice, but they don’t add a lot compared to playing the game on an iPad.
Another example of a game that doesn’t do very well in 3D is Cut the Rope 3, which is little more than the iPhone game thrust into a 3D diorama. It looks nice, but the 3D effects don’t add much to the game itself.
Jetpack Joyride is a 2D game on a 3D stage.
Jetpack Joyride 2 has a slightly different problem. It’s immersive, taking over your entire field of view, but it’s a 2D linear game by design, and using pinch gestures in a fast-paced action game is too hard. The Apple Arcade listing for the game says it supports game controllers,1 which I’m sure would have improved the experience, but I wasn’t able to get them to work with the Vision Pro version of the game.
Overall, I wasn’t expecting much from spatial games designed for the Vision Pro. Most of the Apple Arcade titles are ports of existing titles, and in some cases it shows, because the spatial aspect is superficial. However, games like Synth Riders, Super Fruit Ninja, stich., Blackbox and Stak!, which were built from scratch or reimagined for spatial computing, work well. The lack of precision available with hand tracking is going to severely limit the kinds of games that will work well on the Vision Pro, but as these games demonstrate, puzzle and turn-based games can be a lot of fun on the device.
Compatible iPad Games
I was surprised by how well some iPad games work on the Vision Pro too. I’ve spent less time testing games that work in compatibility mode, but it’s worth checking to see which of the games you already own work with the Vision Pro and browsing through the ones recommended for the Vision Pro by Apple.
I tried two that I already owned that were recommended by the App Store editorial team: Automatoys and Bad North. Automatoys is a Rube Goldberg machine puzzle game where you manipulate a contraption to guide a ball to a destination. Bad North is a tower defense game where you defend a series of procedurally-generated islands from invaders. Both games worked well using the Vision Pro’s system of hand gestures, and having a giant virtual display to play the games on was a treat, breathing new life into both.
Apple has touted the iPad’s console-level graphics since 2018 and featured many big name titles alongside Apple silicon Macs and the iPhone too.
That said, there are a lot of games that are not available in compatibility mode, including many big-name titles. I specifically looked for the iPad versions of Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, Alien: Isolation, and titles from the GRID and Asphalt racing game series, and none are available to play on the Vision Pro. This isn’t terribly surprising, but it’s worth keeping in mind because Apple has been pushing the console-level graphics and experiences of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac for years now. Perhaps the Vision Pro will get there eventually, but currently, what’s available is dominated by casual gaming titles.
Beyond the App Store
Game Streaming Services
One of the best ways to greatly expand your gaming options on the Vision Pro is with a streaming service, thanks to a fantastic visionOS app by Chen Zhang called Nexus⁺, which sidesteps a couple of big roadblocks to using big game streaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce NOW on the Apple Vision Pro.
In connection with its response to the DMA, Apple said that it will allow game streaming apps on the App Store worldwide. However, it’s unclear if that will ever happen. Microsoft’s Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said it won’t last week, and other companies like NVIDIA, which runs GeForce NOW, haven’t disclosed their plans, and even if both were interested, there’s no guaranty they’d make a Vision Pro app.
Another issue is that on the iPhone and iPad, Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce NOW require players to save their services as Home Screen web apps that can be run full-screen. However, that’s not possible on the Vision Pro.
Services available in Nexus⁺.
Nexus⁺ takes care of both issues at once. The app offers NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Afterplay, a web-based emulator that allows you to play locally-stored game files for Nintendo systems through the N64, Atari Lynx, Sega Genesis, and PlayStation games. The app also supports Discord, Mastodon, and Visual Studio Code, all of which work in a frameless browser with game controller support without having to save anything to your Home Screen. You can even add your own bookmarks to the app, making it a hub for any website you can’t or don’t want to run in a browser tab.
Harvest Moon in Afterplay.
The usual caveats that aren’t specific to the Apple Vision Pro apply to streaming games over the web. You need a fast, steady Wi-Fi connection for it to work, but if you do, the results can be excellent. Playing classic Nintendo Game Boy games on a big screen is a lot of fun and works well. If you prefer more modern games, GeForce NOW’s quality is excellent too, and although I’ve found that Xbox Cloud Gaming’s graphics fidelity is lacking at times despite a fast Internet connection, Nexus⁺ makes it incredibly easy to dip into the Xbox games it offers. Best of all, getting started doesn’t require any hardware except your Vision Pro, which makes web streaming one of my favorite options.
Cyberpunk 2077 looked pretty good via GeForce NOW over Wi-Fi.
Of the services, GeForce NOW’s top tier is the priciest at $19.99/month for up to 4K streaming at 120fps, but it looks amazing, and the performance is comparable to using the service on a Mac or iPad. Xbox Cloud Gaming is part of a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which is $16.99/month, and Afterplay is free for Nintendo Game Boy, DS, and SNES titles, with others starting at $5.99/month.
Remote Play Apps
If you have a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X or S, another option is to use a remote play app to stream your console’s games to the Vision Pro. Sony and Xbox both have remote streaming apps, but neither is available on the Vision Pro. However, there are a couple of good third-party apps that will do the trick.
The Last of Us Part I played remotely via MirrorPlay.
MirrorPlay is a third-party remote play app for the Sony
全新收購ps5. I’ve only tried it on my local network, but I’ve been impressed at how well it works. I set up a virtual
全新收購ps5 display using MirrorPlay on my Vision Pro and placed it right next to my TV to check for lag, and if there was any, it was imperceptible. The app didn’t work as well when I tried it from another floor of my house, but it’s still a good way to free up your TV if someone else in your household wants to watch it while you play your
全新收購ps5 with a Vision Pro, MirrorPlay, and headphones.
Starfield played remotely via OneCast.
The same goes for OneCast, a remote play app for the Xbox. Again, I’ve only used it on my home network, but connecting was a breeze, and the quality was good too. The free Xbox app works in iPad compatibility mode too, but I found it nearly impossible to interact with the UI and gave up in favor of the paid, but easy-to-use OneCast.
However, if you go the remote play route with your Vision Pro, I suggest getting a spare controller just for the Vision Pro because once it grabs onto your controller via Bluetooth, it doesn’t like to let go. You can go to the Vision Pro’s Settings app and use ‘Forget This Device,’ but then you’ll need to re-pair the controller the next time you want to use remote play.
NDI Streaming
The Kiloview N40. Source: Kiloview.
I had a lot of hope for the NDI codec when I first heard about it from developer Chen Zhang, who has an NDI monitor app available for visionOS called Vxio. NDI (Network Device Interface) is a codec that you may have heard about in the context of livestreaming online. The codec takes an HDMI video and audio output from any source and outputs it over your local network, where it is discoverable by viewer apps and other hardware. Best of all, NDI allows you to stream up to 4K at 60fps with lossless audio.
Federico playing Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth via the N40 using Vxio at night.
I have a fast 2Gbps fiber connection to my house and a Wi-Fi 6E mesh network that I figured would be a good candidate for streaming the HDMI output of my Ethernet-connected Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 to Vxio. And it worked – sometimes.
Using a Kiloview N40 encoder, I tried outputting both consoles to my network, connecting to the feed via Wi-Fi with Vxio, and although I had some luck a couple of weekends ago, the results have been spotty since, with framerate drops that ranged from distracting to unplayable. Ultimately, I decided to return the N40 because it was far too expensive at $700 for something that turned out to be finicky. Another downside of the N40 is that it needs to be connected to your network with an Ethernet cable, which is a show-stopper for anyone who doesn’t have a wired network near the devices from which they want to stream.
The magic of NDI is that the source just shows up automatically in Vxio.
In contrast, Federico has had a much better experience with the Kiloview N40 and a very similar network setup to mine, so I don’t mean to suggest that this is a bad solution for everyone. If you have the right network setup, Vxio works well, providing a quick way to connect to your NDI stream. The app also includes a menu option to open the device’s settings to tweak the encoding quality. Given the very different experiences Federico and I have had with similar setups, I’d suggest that anyone who decides to try NDI streaming should make sure they buy it from a seller with a good return policy and test your setup thoroughly before the return period expires.
Mac Mirroring
It’s impossible to capture well in the Vision Pro, but Cyberpunk 2077 looks great at Ultra graphics settings, with ray tracing turned on, delivering a solid 60fps, which is the Studio Display’s maximum.
As with a lot of activities with the Vision Pro, mirroring your Mac’s display to the Vision Pro is your escape valve, allowing you to accomplish tasks that the headset can’t accomplish on its own and enhancing others.
I’ve been happy with Nexus⁺ for streaming GeForce NOW games, but I’m also glad that I have the option to stream those games to the NVIDIA GeForce NOW Mac app over a fast, stable Ethernet connection, ensuring the highest quality stream NVIDIA offers. The Mac also opens up games that aren’t available on the Apple Vision Pro but are on the Mac App Store, such as Lies of P, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, Resident Evil 4, and Resident Evil Village or on other game storefronts like Steam. The Mac can run emulators for just about any console system you can imagine, which can be mirrored to your Mac too.
I’ve seen some reports of lag when mirroring a Mac to the Apple Vision Pro, but I haven’t experienced that on the faster Apple silicon systems. Some games like Resident Evil 4 are going to struggle on an M1 MacBook Air regardless of whether you’re trying to mirror the output to an Apple Vision Pro. However, if you’ve got the horsepower to play your games, using the Mac Virtual Display adds another layer of flexibility to your Vision Pro gaming options.
In the final analysis, the trouble with the Apple Vision Pro is its lack of ports. Unless you’re relying on the games available on the App Store, that means you’ll have to contend with some sort of wireless connection. And, although there are some fun games on the Vision Pro’s App Store, the selection is far more limited than on iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, so it’s worth casting a wider net.
Having tried as many options as I could think of, my current favorite is using Nexus⁺ to play games on the GeForce NOW and Afterplay streaming services because it’s the lowest-friction option. GeForce NOW is also designed for resilience under poor Wi-Fi connections. You still need fast Wi-Fi, but in my experience, it’s been the most consistent and easiest path to getting a game up and running.
I’m also a fan of MirrorPlay and OneCast. Neither performs as well as something like GeForce NOW over Wi-Fi, but on a fast network, both perform well enough for most games and don’t require any added hardware. For anything else that doesn’t
▲2023年ChatGPT帶動了AI熱潮。（圖／路透）
記者張家瑋／綜合報導
隨著時間進入到嶄新的一年，2023年除了AI人工智慧掀起一波波熱潮外，科技界也發生不少話題。Podcast節目《娜你知道嗎》主持人莫娜邀請了YouTube頻道「貝爾熊派」的貝爾，在本集節目中一起回顧2023年科技大事。
▲點擊收聽Podcast《娜你知道嗎》，回顧2023科技大小事。
莫娜與貝爾一致認為，去年整年關注度最高的話題就是ChatGPT。2022年11月OpenAI推出了ChatGPT，第一時間就吸引大眾目光，它誕生兩個月後，也就是2023年的1月，ChatGPT活躍用戶達到一億，成為歷史上增長最快的消費應用軟體。
回顧上半年，串流影音平台Netflix 2月宣布，「非同住用戶」共用帳號需要驗證。而4月由中華電信開發的「Xuite隨意窩」無預警宣布，將於112年8月31日全面終止服務，並刪除網站全部資料，結束了許多七八年生活的青春回憶。到了6月，蘋果開發者大會推出全新的頭戴式裝置「Vision Pro」，這款AR裝置結合了娛樂和工作的功能，可直接用手隔空控制、放大、縮小，目前預計將於2024年上半年發售。
▲莫娜與貝爾一起盤點2023年技大事。（圖／翻攝自娜你知道嗎）
進入下半年，Meta7月推出新社群平台Threads，僅用了5天該平台用戶數就破億，但不到一個月的時間，它的活躍用戶數卻急劇下降超過80%。至於被視為競爭對手的Twitter，執行長馬斯克(Elon Musk）宣布更換LOGO，將原本的「藍色小鳥標誌」改為「X」，為科技界帶來新的變革。
▲莫娜2023年親自參與了「2023年Snapdragon高峰會」。（圖／翻攝自娜你知道嗎）
每年9月登場的蘋果秋季新品發表會，也是科技界一大矚目盛事，2023年推出的iPhone 15，最大的特色則是全系列換上了Type-C。10月莫娜親自到夏威夷參與了高通的「2023年Snapdragon高峰會」，高峰會上發表了新的行動平台Snapdragon 8 Gen 3，與針對PC產品的Snapdragon X Elite運算平台。同月，微軟完成了對遊戲開發商動視暴雪 （Activision Blizzard）的收購，並且電信業遠傳與亞太宣布合併。
接近年底，串流影音平台Disney+在11月宣布漲價。12月
全新收購ps5推出新機型
全新收購ps5 Slim，同時台北寶可夢中心（Pokémon Center TAIPEI）開幕，也成為粉絲們的新樂園。
莫娜最後總結，2023年是科技領域充滿變革的一年，ChatGPT、各種新產品、新應用等層出不窮，AI技術更是持續演進，讓我們期待在新的一年中，科技界將帶來更多的驚喜和改變。
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