I admit: I'm not a big spider person. So I'm glad I've never experienced the problems some researchers have discovered with the Apple Vision Pro headset.

Master of mischief Ryan Pickren discovered that Apple's WebKit still supports the old 3D model display standard, allowing him to render animated objects on the Apple Vision Pro (via Futurism). With a simple code, any website can be configured to have visionOS Safari treat a specific link as a 3D model rendering instruction and display it on the Vision Pro's high-resolution built-in screen as if it were in the room.

Pickren also found that a similar technique can be used to add spatial audio, making the sound effects appear to come from the animation itself. Bullying.

So what model was chosen from the vast array of options to appear in Apple's supposedly struggling VR headset? Slightly less terrifying (depending on your phobia) are the bat swarms. The more you know!

To make matters worse, simply quitting Safari was not enough to get rid of the offending beasts. The only way to reliably remove them from view (unless I ripped Vision Pro out of my face and screamed into the void) was to manually tap on each one. Touch and erase the horrifying virtual spiders. No, thank you.

Still, Pickren reported this exploit to Apple in February, and the company appears to have addressed the issue in the June visionOS 1.2 update. Apple also awarded a reward to the researcher who discovered the bug.

Eh. However, this attempt raises some interesting possibilities. Reminiscent of the old-fashioned jump scare videos that plagued early versions of video hosting sites (an example of which is not linked here), it is very well done, albeit very heart-breaking, on a 2D plane.

But rendered before your eyes, it appears to interact with the environment around you. Thank you, Ryan.

But it could be worse. Hardware mogul Dave James tells me that he stopped using MetaQuest 2 a while ago thanks to a very realistic and very large spider he discovered in his headset when he put it on his face.

It was. That possibility is now in my brain and, thanks to this article, in yours as well. Enjoy your next VR session!