Is there a way to use the simulator in Vision Pro?

FahimU80 · February 4, 2026, 7:35pm

Is there a way to run my Xcode project with the engine on a simulator? It currently only runs on an actual Vision Pro which I dont always have access to.

abray · February 4, 2026, 9:03pm

I don’t see why not… but I have never experimented with xcode simulators
You should be able to run the PulseScenarioDriver executable through a simulator…

Unity might also have a vison pro simulator… but I have not played with it

FahimU80 · February 5, 2026, 4:12pm

I changed the Sysroot from XROSPlatfrom to XRSimulator and still seem to be getting a build only able to run an actual AVP and not simulator? Also as a note, this is a native project using Apples RealityKit, not Unity.

Error: Building for ‘visionOS-simulator’, but linking in object file (/Users/fahim/Desktop/Academy Projects/RealisticALSTraining/RealisticALSTraining/Pulse/Libs/Simulator/libPulse.a2) built for ‘visionOS’

abray · February 5, 2026, 10:28pm

I assume you would build the VisonOS binaries
Then in XCode, switch to a simulator to run those binaries.
Pretty sure this is an XCode thing, not a CMake thing

FahimU80 · February 6, 2026, 1:35pm

It was a Cmake toolchain file issue. The current one I believe doesn’t work on simulator but there was an open source toolchain file for visionOS which I used and now its running on the simulator.

abray · February 6, 2026, 1:50pm

Interesting

Can you post a link to that toolchain

FahimU80 · February 6, 2026, 2:00pm

Of course!

These were also the set of commands I used:

`# 1. Go to the build folder and clean it
cd ~/Desktop/PulseEngine/XRSimBuild
rm -rf *

2. CRITICAL: Set the Global Platform Variable

This prevents the sub-builds (like absl) from crashing.

export _PLATFORM=SIMULATOR_VISIONOS

3. Configure CMake

Uses the ios-cmake toolchain with the VisionOS Simulator flag

cmake -G “Unix Makefiles”
-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/Desktop/ios.toolchain.cmake
-DPLATFORM=SIMULATOR_VISIONOS
-DDEPLOYMENT_TARGET=1.0
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=./install
-DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF
-DBUILD_TESTING=OFF
-DPulse_NATIVE_BUILD_DIR=../nativeBuild
-DPulse_C_AS_STATIC=ON
-DPulse_JAVA_API=OFF
-DPulse_PYTHON_API=OFF
../engine

4. Compile and Install

And I used make to install since its a Unix Makefile which also seems to be necessary because when I generate Xcode I had issues.
`

And then of course as an Xcode thing, you must set the Library search paths accordingly so Xcode knows where to look for the binaries.