A code leak in a beta for Reality Composer Pro 3 reveals Apple has used elements of a mysteriously cancelled game engine project known as “The Machinery” to make its 3D content tool.

Developing new products can always be made easier and faster by incorporating items from external sources. While Apple is like other companies in that it sometimes uses code from elsewhere, usually it’s quite good at hiding the sources.

A recent beta code delve discovered that there were traces of a long-cancelled game development engine used to produce features in Apple’s Reality Composer Pro 3. Elements of “The Machinery” have been uncovered in the RCP3 codebase.

There are at least 40 mentions of “the machinery” or “our machinery” in the binaries, which refer to the engine. Our Machinery was the company behind The Machinery, which worked on the project before it was terminated in 2022 for reasons unknown.

The team that worked on the engine was previously the makers of the Bitsquid game engine. Indeed, Our Machinery CEO Tricia Gray is now working on Apple’s spatial computing developer tools team.

The references don’t stop there. The way the project was structured is also a match to The Machinery, as well as how it handles assets and its database.

Developer Nicholas Alvarez was the first to find the code snippets. MacRumors confirmed the additions.

Ghost of The Machinery

The Machinery was another engine attempt, but one intended to be extremely flexible. It was intended to be “hackable,” with developers able to write their own plugins and build applications on top of the framework.

It also aimed to allow multiple people to work in the same project simultaneously. Then there was “The Truth,” which was a model for representing edited assets while still being worked on in real-time collaboratively.

While it was an ambitious project that launched in 2021, the effort ceased in the middle of 2022. It was a messy closure, with a demand from The Machinery to all licensed users to delete source code and binaries.

It was unclear at the time what exactly caused the closure. It’s likely that Apple acquired it quietly, as the sudden closure of the project and the following radio silence are good indicators of a sale.

It’s also plausible that Gray and any other members of the team that Apple may have hired are reusing code from the defunct engine.

What this ultimately means for RCP3 is unclear, but the use of elements of The Machinery bodes well for the project. It also makes sense, given that RCP3 is a tool for producing 3D content for the Apple Vision Pro and other Apple platforms.

If its plugin support and other flexible elements remain intact, it will make RCP3 a good candidate for more features and functions to be added in the future.