AR & VR Development Company in San Francisco

Budget tracks the build, and the build is usually one of three: a scoped Apple Vision Pro spatial app proof of concept, a production Vision Pro or Meta Quest 3 mixed reality app, or a Niantic Lightship VPS location-based AR experience anchored across multiple Bay Area landmarks. Scope drivers include visionOS native development, RealityKit scene authoring, and TestFlight distribution. Bay Area AR and VR rates sit at the top of the North American range because the talent pool overlaps with Apple Vision Pro, Meta Reality Labs, Niantic, Unity, and VRChat, all of which pay senior spatial computing engineers Bay Area total compensation. We bill in USD on Pacific Time with fixed-fee proposals against a signed scope, not open T and M estimates.

California AB 1791, signed in 2024, requires VR and immersive technology experiences that target mental health, addiction, anxiety, depression, or therapeutic use cases to disclose clinical evidence base, follow informed consent patterns, and avoid claims of therapeutic effect without supporting evidence. SF builds a lot of mindfulness, meditation, and exposure therapy VR (Tripp, Healium, BehaVR patterns), and AB 1791 changes the disclosure surface. Our discovery phase runs an AB 1791 risk review when the experience touches mental health, with output including a disclosure script, a consent flow, a retention schedule for any biometric or affective data captured (heart rate variability, galvanic skin response, gaze patterns), and a documented escalation path to a licensed clinician where appropriate. For genuine clinical VR we coordinate with the client\'s regulatory counsel on FDA Software as a Medical Device classification under 21 CFR 880 and 882, which is a separate track from AB 1791.

Yes. Apple Vision Pro is a Cupertino product and the Bay Area is the natural distribution channel for enterprise visionOS apps. We build native visionOS apps with Xcode, SwiftUI, RealityKit, and Reality Composer Pro, Unity PolySpatial for Unity-based teams transitioning to Vision Pro, and Unreal Engine 5 for studios with existing UE5 pipelines. For SF enterprise customers we ship through App Store enterprise distribution, Apple Business Manager device enrolment, and Apple Configurator for managed deployment, with SSO through Okta, Azure AD, or Ping Identity, and audit logging that survives a SOC 2 Type II review. Performance budgets target 90Hz refresh with foveated rendering, and we instrument with Reality Composer Pro for asset profiling, Instruments for runtime profiling, and Xcode Cloud for build and test automation. Apple\'s developer relations team is twenty minutes south in Cupertino, which keeps our coordination loop tight on platform questions.

Niantic Lightship VPS provides centimetre-accurate visual positioning against Niantic\'s pre-scanned location data, which makes it the right choice for AR experiences anchored to Bay Area landmarks like the Ferry Building, Salesforce Park, Pier 39, Golden Gate Bridge approach, and Dolores Park. Lightship is headquartered in SF, the Niantic AR team works directly with developers on activation scoping, and VPS coverage in SF is among the densest globally because of Pokemon Go\'s Bay Area player base. We build Lightship experiences in Unity with the Lightship Unity SDK, coordinate location scans through Niantic\'s wayfarer program where additional waypoints are required, and design fallback behaviour for AR-incapable devices using 8th Wall WebXR (now Niantic-owned). Lightship ARDK also provides multiplayer AR for co-located experiences (multiple players at the same waypoint), persistent AR for content that survives between sessions, and semantic segmentation for distinguishing sky, ground, buildings, and people in the camera feed.

California\'s CCPA and CPRA classify biometric identifiers and biometric information as sensitive personal information, which means eye tracking from Vision Pro, hand tracking from Quest 3 and Vision Pro, body tracking from full-body VR rigs, face geometry from Snap-style filters, and voice prints from headset microphones all trigger sensitive PI handling, the right to limit use of sensitive personal information, and opt-out mechanisms that survive an Attorney General audit. SF developer-platform companies distribute nationwide so we also build to BIPA-conformant patterns for Illinois residents (Rosenbach v. Six Flags, In re Facebook BIPA established the liability template), with retention schedules of three years maximum, written consent before capture, and a documented destruction process. Our discovery phase produces a CCPA and CPRA data inventory, a sensitive PI flow diagram, a BIPA consent and retention schedule, and a privacy notice that satisfies the California Privacy Protection Agency\'s template guidance.

Yes. SF is the centre of social VR with VRChat headquartered locally, Rec Room maintaining a Bay Area presence alongside its Seattle base, and Meta Horizon Worlds creator partnerships running through Meta Reality Labs in Burlingame. We build VRChat worlds and avatars with the VRChat SDK on Unity, Rec Room rooms with Rec Room Studio, Meta Horizon Worlds experiences with the Meta Horizon Worlds Desktop Editor, and cross-platform social VR with VR-native multiplayer through Photon Fusion, Mirror Networking, or Normcore for shared spatial state. We also ship the underlying social primitives (avatars, voice chat with spatial audio, expression mapping, hand tracking gestures, full body inverse kinematics) for SF companies building their own social VR products. Cross-platform identity ties through OpenID Connect or the platform-native identity (Meta accounts, VRChat accounts, Apple ID) depending on the distribution surface.

Meta Reality Labs is in Burlingame thirty minutes south of SF, and the Quest 3, Quest 3S, and Quest Pro are our default for standalone VR and mixed reality work. We build Quest apps in Unity with the Meta XR SDK, Meta XR Interaction SDK, and Meta XR Simulator for in-editor testing, or Unreal Engine 5 with the Meta XR plugin, distributed through App Lab for limited release or the Meta Horizon Store for general availability. Performance budgets target 90Hz native or 72Hz with Application SpaceWarp, profiled through Meta Quest Developer Hub, Logcat, and RenderDoc. Mixed reality specifically uses the Presence Platform scene API and depth API for occlusion and physics interactions with the user\'s real environment, which is what separates a Quest 3 mixed reality build from a legacy Quest 2 VR-only port. For enterprise customers we ship through Meta Quest for Business with managed device enrolment, MDM integration, and SSO through Okta or Azure AD.

Meta unveiled the Orion AR glasses prototype at Meta Connect 2024 as the first publicly demonstrated full-AR glasses from a major platform vendor, with silicon carbide waveguide optics, a wrist-based neural interface, and the Meta Horizon OS spatial computing stack. Orion is a prototype and not a 2025 consumer product, but Meta has signalled that the design points to its long-term AR glasses roadmap, with consumer launch targeted later in the decade. We do not yet build for Orion directly, but we design SF customer roadmaps with AR glasses as a Phase 2 surface beyond Vision Pro and Quest 3 mixed reality, sharing spatial assets and interaction models that port forward when Orion-class hardware ships at consumer prices. For now, that means architecting against the Meta Horizon OS application model and Presence Platform scene understanding, which Meta has stated will carry forward to its AR glasses lineup.