Where to begin???
I’m behind on sending this. My first draft of this post started a few weeks ago. It was titled “The May Update.” Whoops.
It’s now the second week of June and I can already feel the month rushing away. WWDC kicked off Monday of this week (with a handful of visionOS announcements).
Next week, I head to Augmented World Expo (AWE), where I’ll be co-leading a roundtable discussion on Location Based Entertainment - fun! I’m sure the week will be filled with hardware and software announcements - new AI this and new AI that to accelerate something.
I’m most excited to connect (and reconnect) with the community of people building in the VR, AR, MR… XR space. I’ve found this to be an open, supportive group of creators and I can’t wait to be back amongst these friends in real life!
For me, May (and now June), have really been about building and storytelling.
If you’re just skimming this post, here are the highlights:
CONNECTOME is coming to Apple Vision Pro - imminently! Learn more here
I jumped through hoops to make eye-gaze hover states work on Apple Vision Pro! Scroll on for the nerdy details
I’m starting to show off Retro 3D - a new novelty app that turns your Quest 3 into vintage red and cyan 3D glasses - it’s kooky and launching soon!
I presented the launch story of CONNECTOME at the Seattle XR Conference on 6/6 and had the joy of meeting “The Grandfather of XR”, Tom Furness.
Oh yeah, Project Hydra: Iterations (VR) is ready for launch on the Meta Quest. This is a VR expression of my art series Project Hydra. I’ll share more when it goes live.
And now, keep reading for more details…
CONNECTOME is launching on Apple Vision Pro this month!
It’s coming! And I’m so excited.
My initial App Store page is in place and the launch build is ready to go. I’m just checking a few more boxes before I hit the publish button. As soon as I do, I’ll share that here.
BTW: My offer still stands: if you have an Apple Vision Pro and want to test early builds, message me directly. I always need a few more eyeballs on pre-release builds.
In the meantime, you can check out connectomegame.com/visionos to learn a bit more.
Leaning into “Immersive Art Experience”
From the beginning, I’ve referred to CONNECTOME as a casual game/immersive art experience. It’s always been less game and more experience though, and in most of the writing to support the visionOS launch, I’ve been leading with “art” and “experience”.
Here’s a snippet I shared recently:
CONNECTOME is an experiment. An artful experiment.
Experiencing CONNECTOME on the Apple Vision Pro with eye-tracking fulfills my original vision for this concept, asking the question “What if there were objects hidden and floating in front of you, and you could just scan the space to reveal them?”
This approach feels right and is intended to set expectations for a new audience.
Technical Highlight: Bringing Eye-Gaze Hover to Life
Eye-based interaction is probably the most defining characteristic of the Apple Vision Pro device experience. Seeing objects respond visually just by looking at them is not only one of those initial wow moments, it’s also a critical feedback mechanism that guides interactivity on the device.
Critically, when building a Metal app from Unity (the approach I had to take), eye-based hover visual feedback was not possible. Apple introduced the underlying API for Metal developers at WWDC 2025 — trackingAreasFormat and cp_drawable_add_tracking_area, alongside the per-frame stereo texture that drives system hover — but Unity has not implemented support for it. Unity has acknowledged the gap on their developer forum and confirmed no integration is planned.
CONNECTOME addresses this UX gap with a custom bridge. The bridge hooks into Unity’s compositor at the native level, registers tracking-area identifiers each frame, and writes the texture visionOS reads to render the OS hover effect. The result: when you look at a hidden geometry, the system reveals it — exactly the way Vision Pro users expect their eyes to work.
If you’re reading this AND you’re building for Apple Vision Pro AND you understand this problem AND you want a solution for this problem AND you’re willing to test and provide feedback, let me know. 😀
Announcing Retro3D! - Anaglyph Glasses Simulator
I’ve been sitting on this idea for a while. At first, it wasn’t possible. Then it was. Then I prototyped it… then I sat on it for almost a year!
But now I’m ready to talk about it - because it’s past time! And if I don’t get this out there, someone else will 😉
Retro 3D turns your Meta Quest 3 into a pair of old red/cyan anaglyph glasses. Like these classic cardboard ones:
The app tints the live passthrough camera feed, per eye, so the headset itself becomes the glasses. It’s not as good as the real thing, but it does work and I think it’s pretty “meta” to be able to watch old 3D content using a new 3D headset.
There’s quite a bit of this old content online - search for "anaglyph 3d" on YouTube or archive.org (or elsewhere) and you’ll find lots of interesting things. When you go down this rabbit hole you’ll see that people have been experimenting with 3D for a LONG time.
I first had this idea back in early 2024 while building CONNECTOME, then hit a wall immediately - there was no way to touch the Quest's camera feed. In March 2025, just a couple of months before I shipped, Meta released the Passthrough Camera API and I revisited the idea. I was able to build a proof of concept pretty quickly, then got busy with other things and kept pushing this to the side. I even made a “coming July 2025” trailer last year… it’s kinda over the top summer blocker buster themed 😜🍿
So now, almost a year later… I’m revisiting the idea so that I can finally get it out of my head and onto yours :)
👉 Wishlist it now before it goes live.
I’ll be demoing it at AWE next week in Long Beach (6/15 - 6/18, 2026). Come find me if you’re there!
Seattle XR Conference
Last Saturday, June 6, I presented Wearing all the Hats; Shipping CONNECTOME as a Solo Creator at the Seattle XR Conference. This was a gathering of Seattle area XR professionals, students, and aspiring creators.
My presentation description:
What does it look like to design, build, and ship a VR experience entirely on your own? In this talk, Grant Hinkson shares the story behind CONNECTOME, and the decision-making framework that made it possible. The prototyper's mindset isn't just about moving fast. It's about knowing which questions matter, giving yourself permission to play, and shipping work that has a genuine point of view. A talk for builders at any stage, on any team size.
My goals were simple:
Share my artistic journey and background that informed how I built what I built
Share the mindset and guiding principles I use to actually ship something as a solo creator (the Prototyper’s Mindset)
Surface the many aspects of shipping beyond building the thing itself (e.g. Social, Feedback & Playtesting, Publishing, Press & Coverage, Business & Legal).
I was fortunate to have an engaged audience - a group who asked really great questions and kept the conversation going after the main event.
I spoke with several people who shared that they want to do the same thing - create something for themselves, on their own terms. This is universal! I believe we’re all builders and creators who want to share - it’s a defining element of our species. Giving ourselves the freedom to do so is often the biggest hurdle…
Project Hydra: Iterations in VR
I’ve been iterating on the Hydra Series for many years now. What started as a Processing sketch to generate images for my drawing robot, ultimately morphed into a Unity-based animation. In fact, creating the Hydra in Unity was one of my first experiments when I began building what ultimately became CONNECTOME. But that’s a longer story…
Project Hydra: Iterations in VR brings the Hydra Series - 7x7: Complete Cycle to life in towering form above you in immersive space. This too is an art experience. The trailer provides a quick glimpse at the iterations of the base algorithm. Someday, I’d like to see these at life size, in the real world, projected holographically.
I’ll also be publishing this imminently on the Quest store as a free download. Maybe I’ll do the same for the Apple Vision Pro now that I have that figured out 🤔
Until next time!
Thanks for making it this far.
Grant