Question Can a Mac M2 connect to Unity with Oculus Rift now yet?

I have read this blog post that Mac m1 can be used for VR development without using bootcamp.

https://neerajjaiswal.com/how-to-setup-for-quest-2-development-on-mac-using-unity-without-bootcamp

I would like to know if anyone try that with an oculus rift?
and enclosed a pic of my MacBook spec for comments. thanks a lot!

 

They don't run VR on the actual mac, they just make android builds.
Mac never supported VR and won't anytime soon I'm afraid

 

If you've actually read the post you've linked, you'll see that it means Mac allows to build+run on target device only. Which means no "editor, press play and test" environment.
It's really unfortunate that Meta is choosing to ignore Mac drivers imo, especially as they're going to get direct competition from Apple themselves soon. But hey-ho. Been a Mac based developer for 10+ years and have to use a Windows laptop for my VR development

 

I think it's more on Apple's side than oculus. No other runtimes like steamvr work as well, which probably is because metal has no proper VR support (untill apple launches their own HMD, but even then it will probably be standalone and not via PC)

 

I wish it was possible, but for now we're stuck doing manual builds and pushing them to device. If you have a fast machine and the project is not too big, it only takes a few seconds so it's not too bad. But nothing beats the Oculus Link experience on Windows where you can just press play in editor and test directly.

 

Yet, Apple did showcase Oculus headsets paired with Macs a couple of years ago iirc. I wonder.

By the way, for anyone facing this issue in the future, this won't work on a Rift S but will on a Quest/Quest2/Quest Pro: make an android client build where all you do is take the Oculus integration inputs (head pos/rot, controllers pos/rot/inputs) and stream them out to a connected server. On your Mac, make a simple Unity server app that allows the Quest side to connect to it and receive that data.
Then allow that app to run in the BG anytime, and on your new VR unity project, you 'read' from the server at playtime.

So, pretty much, you're recreating a (laggy but helpful for dev) wireless oculus link that allows for pressing play and testing.

 

what about bootcamp?, if you install windows with bootcamp the play/test in the editor works? i do mobile dev on mac os, and vr on windows, but i wanna swap to mac completely.

 

Bootcamp doesn't support the latest Macs due to the new ARM architecture.

 

This is 100% an Oculus issue. Not Apple.

Oculus's founder had a huge beef with Apple for years, and refused to let their new systems work with Macs. Before the consumer Rift, their dev kits ALL WORKED FINE with Apple. I wrote something like 30 apps and games early on, on my Mac.

And my current batch of apps all ran on my Mac on SteamVR for awhile. SteamVR / HTC Vive is a different story. It worked really well on Apple for years, and then they stopped supporting it after one of the MacOS updates. The simple reason is the dude (or dudes) who worked on it didn't have time to fix some of the underlying issues after the MacOS update, and they were happy to let Apple take the blame for it.

I posted on the HTC Vive forums about how to fix the issue (I had to reverse engineer part of their code to get there), and they never acted on it. Without a lower level fix for the problem though, my solution was only temporary. So I also offered to fix it for free, just so I could keep using my Vive, but by then they'd written off the Mac platform. My public plea asking them to let me fix their problem is still on the forum, unanswered.

It's extremely frustrating to be a Mac user in the middle of all of this. I still do about 90% of my VR work on my Mac because I find it's just plain easier, most of the time. Obviously your mileage will vary and if you're used to Windows, MacOS seems alien.

But when I hit a roadblock on the Mac, it fails hard. Like every time there's a SteamVR update on the SDK side, something breaks. It's just plain infuriating. Right now my beef is with SteamVR, I just found out it's loading something in my Quest app even though it's not supposed to be on that platform. So I'm about to blow an hour going through their code, looking for mistakes in their platform conditions.

That Apple headset can't get here soon enough.

 

This is super close to how I'm doing it. This right here is a great place that Unity could step in and fix a massive gap in the toolchain. Surely they know how many Mac developers are out here making VR content.

 

If you could share out the code for this, that would be a great service to us Mac users