I was looking through Apple's App Store when I spotted something called Out There with a five star rating across 121 reviews.Given how small the market is for Apple Vision Pro software that's actually quite a significant number of ratings. On Quest 3, where it launched as a room scale application in 2024 during Meta's push toward Horizon Worlds, it found just 24 ratings after one year on the store.I downloaded and watched the five minute experience. And then I watched it three more times, moved more by Vanessa Williams' voice on each listen. Creators Wilkins Avenue Immersive deliver a full three-act tale here that feels like a successor to last decade's Henry from Oculus Story Studio.I'll walk you through the achievement and ask that you make time for Out There soon on your headset of choice.Act 1: Storybook & Song To PortalThe opening act of this story begins with swirling lights and a spinning storybook opening on its own to reveal in melancholy song a family broken by space. The curtain opens into this world with a child left behind. 0:00 /1:06 1× Out There on Apple Vision Pro. Capture by Ian Hamilton. Act 2: The World As It IsAre three walls, a roof, and a floor enough? The framed pictures of family caring for this child sing that it is. We see through the fourth wall, though, a bit like The Doctor from the fireplace, and from a perspective outside her world through a portal we dare not cross, we feel what is out there for her just beyond. 0:00 /0:13 1× Out There On Apple Vision Pro. Capture by Ian Hamilton. Act 3: The World As It Must BeVanessa Williams' soaring voice picks up this story into its final act, revealing to us what the lost child already knows. The world must be larger than this. She breaks the fourth wall and soars into our space, uplifting us rather than scaring us the way a giant creature does in Encounter Dinosaurs. 0:00 /0:42 1× Out There on Apple Vision Pro. Capture by Ian Hamilton. Quest Versus Apple Vision ProOn Quest 3 and Quest 3S, Out There is built a little differently so that "users can move through the scene, interacting with objects and characters." It's a room-scale project, and it works with both hand tracking and controllers. I asked my colleague Don Hopper to jump in and capture video so you could see the difference in execution. 0:00 /0:58 1× Out There on Quest 3. Captured by Don Hopper. Was Don's experience of this story any better because he was inside the scene on Quest 3? Or was mine better because I was always outside of it on Apple Vision Pro? It's too easy a way out to both sides this by just saying each approach has its benefits.The themes of this story presented first as a storybook and then as a portal hit exceedingly well in visionOS. Both Out There and Encounter Dinosaurs follow the same basic three-act story structure in roughly the same amount of time, featuring interaction so light you might not even realize it's there.To me the lesson from Henry to Out There is that a story in virtual reality need not take up your whole environment to be just as impactful. Whether starting in a black void or your physical environment on the outside of the headset, building up a digital world piece by piece is a much more comfortable journey than suddenly swapping out all the rules all at once.