Last August Patently Apple posted an IP report titled "Apple invents an HMD alarm system to alert a gamer they're too close to furniture that could Cause Harm." The patent related to techniques for alerting a user immersed in a VR game that they're too close to physical obstacles in the room that could harm them.

Apple's patent FIG. 3A below depicts a user device positioned at a safe distance from the physical objects in a room; In patent FIG. 3C, it illustrates that the user is headed for a collision with a desk when an alert will come in the form of a break in the game and a visual of the danger in the room the user is too close to.

Last year's patent was titled "Detecting Physical Boundaries" and credited three Apple engineers. The patent figures illustrated the user approaching an object (a desk) that could be of concern but didn't show us what the visuals would look like in the headset. In Apple's new patent application, we get to view what could be expected to be seen in the headset.

This past Thursday the U.S. Patent Office published another patent on this theme titled "Inserting Imagery from a Real Environment into a Virtual Environment" that was filed by an entirely different Apple team of ten engineers.

Once again Apple's filing notes that "techniques provide the user with an enhanced degree of safety by, in some exemplary embodiments, providing imagery of the physical object before the user comes into contact with the physical object."

Apple's patent FIG. 2 below first illustrates an example of a real environment and FIG. 3 illustrates a VR environment; FIG. 4A and 4B illustrate a transition occurring in the headset. As the user gets closer to a physical object, like a desk in this scenario, the headset will begin to present the realworld into the game that's a warning and depending on how close the user is to the object, the image could very light to almost a solid view.

During the transition, Apple notes that the audio of the game will diminish as part of the alarm system warning a user of being too close to a real-world object.

For deeper details, review Apple's patent application 20210192802.

Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.