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Spatial Persona Feature Launched
This week Apple launched the much awaited feature of Spatial Personas originally announced in 2023 WWDC:
Back in WWDC, Apple announced that it is working on "Spatial Personas" that will allow Vision Pro users to "break out of the familiar FaceTime tile and feel more present, like they are gathered in the same physical space." Spatial personas will feature a transparent background, enabling them to exhibit enhanced movement and body language for a more realistic experience.
This week the feature was launched with many users giving it a try in visionOS 1.1.
Spatial Personas Technical Breakdown
According to Apple’s own spatial personas developer documentation, the feature is expected to work in one of three modes:
It will be up to each app’s implementation to determine the ideal experience. For example as it is currently implemented, the Apple TV app presents the content using the side-by-side arrangement while Game Room utilizes a surround arrangement.
Private Demo from Apple with Inverse
Shared from Inverse this week, Raymond Wong was invited to a private demo with Apple PR+Marketing for the new Spatial Personal feature launched this week.
Yesterday, Apple invited me to try out a demo of spatial Persona — from the comfort of my own home — with an Apple PR person and a member from Product Marketing. The addition to visionOS is part of the still-in-beta Persona experience, meaning it’s still a work in progress. But even with a few connection issues during my demo, it was a glimpse of how Vision Pro could bring people together to watch movies, play games, or collaborate on work.
In the Game Room app, you’ll be able to play board games with another Persona, and three others can spectate.
Time sort of melted away, and so did my sense of reality and space. For a little while, it felt like a friend came over to my cluttered upstairs office space. And then, he was gone. What can come next with this? My mind races to thoughts of collaboration, theater, art, improvisation. It's the vision of telepresence that Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has preached for years. But it's becoming very real on the Vision Pro right now…
FAQ demo on Spatial Personas
Great short video by Himels Tech demo’ing on the often asked questions about Spatial Personas. If there’s interest I will build out a section on my FAQ on this feature. But a quick summary on their findings:
You can move other participant’s persona by pinching their persona
Distance between participants are tracked throughout the session (in essence you will appear as moving in another’s room)
User will be prompted to share ‘Environment’ when new environment is selected
Mac mirroring screen can be shared
Video content in Apple TV app is shared in full resolution (i.e. both participants are able to view it at 4k). But this is as expected, because the underlying technology is SharePlay and video content is not relayed from one participant to another. It is streamed straight from the source.
A better visualization of what I mean when distance is tracked between participants:
Developer integrating with Spatial Personas (source)
It’ll be interesting to start tracking which app has created custom Spatial Personas experience throughout the beta of this feature! Here’s one example from Immersiv.io.
Walkthrough of the MLB App experience in Apple Vision Pro.
In the end, I was a convert. No longer was I simply watching a baseball game and scrolling through pages of graphs when I had some time to pull my attention from the screen. I was the game and the information -- I was the singularity itself. I had opted in to “The Matrix,” and it turns out that Neo was wrong: This was spectacular.
Note that it’s extremely difficult and complicated to capture a room at this level of fidelity, but once it is done (as shown here), it’s mind-blowing how immersive the experience can be.
Curious to see how personas will hold up in low light