Why ReactVision Matters (And Why Mixed Reality's Moment is Here)
How industry shifts, developer traction, and firsthand experience convinced me XR's time has truly arrived
“Do people actually care about mixed reality?”
This is probably the most common question I’ve been asked over the past 6 months—by friends, colleagues, and my parents.
It’s a fair question. The hype cycle has been all over the place. Remember Google Glass? Magic Leap? Even the term “mixed reality” feels like it’s still settling into its final form.
But my short answer is: yes—people do care.
And not just because I care. In this post, I wanted to lay out the data and experiences that have led me to that conclusion, with a bit of context from my own journey building ReactVision.
From curious to obsessed
I’ve been interested in AR/VR since 2014. Like many in tech, I’ve dipped in and out of the space over the years, playing with new headsets and following the product drops. But something shifted for me in September 2024.
That’s when I tipped over from “this is cool” to “this is inevitable and I want to be part of building it.”
I’d been playing with the Apple Vision Pro and it absolutely blew my mind. Genuinely magical. Around the same time, Snap launched Spectacles 5 along with their new operating system, SnapOS, which has an Android-based kernel and immediately got me thinking about how ViroReact could run on it. Then Meta showed off their Orion glasses, which, while still in development, were getting great early reviews.
All of this came in quick succession, and it wasn’t just Big Tech either. Suddenly, I was seeing smart glasses startups cropping up all over the place. After years of talk, 2024 felt like the year mixed reality hardware actually moved forward in a meaningful, visible way.
The blog post that kept growing
Around the same time, my app development company Morrow, published a blog post:
“How to build an augmented reality (AR) app with Expo and ReactVision (formerly NativeVision)”
We expected it to get a little traction, especially with devs who follow our work.
But here’s what happened: even after we stopped promoting it on social media, traffic just kept growing. It’s now our second most popular blog post across everything we’ve written in that time—and it’s still being shared on X, Reddit, and dev forums.
The ReactVision data
So in December 2024, I made the decision to go all-in on this. We took over ReactVision, the home of open-source XR dev ViroReact, with a clear mission:
Make it the best cross-platform developer tool for AR/VR, period.
When I stepped in, ViroReact was sitting at a stable 1.7k–1.9k monthly downloads. Solid, but quiet.
Fast forward to today:
March: 21k+ downloads
April: 20k+ (with days still to go)
The Discord is growing weekly, and we’re seeing more activity, feedback, and experimentation from devs around the world.
And this is just for mobile AR/VR support. We haven’t even launched Vision Pro or Quest support yet (it’s coming). But the demand is there.
So… do people care?
Yes.
Because they’re building.
Because they’re searching.
Because they’re already here—they’re just waiting for the tools to catch up with their ideas.
Mixed reality might not be mainstream just yet, but the early signs are very real. If you build dev tools, like we do at ReactVision, you start to notice where attention is going. And right now? A growing number of developers really care about building immersive things—and they’re doing it in React Native.
So yeah, people care. And it’s only just getting started.
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If you’re one of those developers already building in this space, come hang out in the ReactVision Discord.
And if you’re not building yet, maybe this is your sign.