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Research: Depth-Reactive Interactive Visual System in Unity 6 on macOS Apple Silicon

**Date**: 2026-04-03 **Scope**: Hardware selection, SDK viability, rendering pipeline, fluid simulation, and reference implementations for building a depth-camera-driven interactive particle/fluid installation using Unity 6 on M-series Macs.

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# Research: Depth-Reactive Interactive Visual System in Unity 6 on macOS Apple Silicon **Date**: 2026-04-03 **Scope**: Hardware selection, SDK viability, rendering pipeline, fluid simulation, and reference implementations for building a depth-camera-driven interactive particle/fluid installation using Unity 6 on M-series Macs. Building a depth-reactive visual system in Unity 6 on macOS Apple Silicon is feasible but requires navigating a fragmented SDK landscape. The Orbbec Femto Bolt is the strongest hardware choice (identical ToF sensor to the discontinued Azure Kinect, macOS supported via SDK v2, $299). However, the official Unity wrapper is stale (v1.1.9, Nov 2023) and does not yet wrap SDK v2. The recommended workaround is the K4A Wrapper path or the LightBuzz third-party SDK. Unity VFX Graph works on Metal and supports millions of particles on M-series GPUs, though the Unity 6 editor still requires Rosetta. For fluid simulation, Keijiro Takahashi's StableFluids (updated for Unity 6) is the canonical starting point, and his Rsvfx project is the exact reference architecture for depth-camera-to-VFX-Graph point cloud rendering. Apple LiDAR via Record3D is a viable alternative/supplementary depth source with a proven Unity VFX Graph pipeline. ### Hardware Specs - **Depth sensor**: Microsoft 1MP iToF (identical to Azure Kinect DK) - **Depth modes**: NFOV 640x576 @ 30fps (75x65 deg), WFOV 1024x1024 @ 15fps (120x120 deg), WFOV binned 512x512 @ 30fps - **RGB**: 3840x2160 @ 30fps, HDR capable (81.1dB dynamic range, vs Azure Kinect's 45.6dB) - **IMU**: 6-axis (accelerometer + gyroscope) - **Size**: 115.3 x 40.3 x 65.0mm, 348g (smaller/lighter than Azure Kinect) - **Price**: ~$299 USD - **Connection**: USB-C (power + data) **Orbbec SDK v2 (recommended)** - Open-source, actively maintained (2,513 commits on main branch) - macOS support: confirmed for "M2 chip, OS version 13.2" (ARM64 native) - Supports Femto Bolt with full maintenance - C/C++ API, Python wrapper, ROS1/2, K4A Wrapper - **NO Unity wrapper for SDK v2 yet** -- this is the critical gap

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