Apple released “Spatial Personas” in beta public on Vision Pro. Now, the upgraded avatar system allows you to bring your friends into your living room. Apple Persona avatars for Vision Pro have been much discussed. It’s not important whether you think they are uncanney, or that they pass muster. One thing is for sure: this system has the most photorealistic avatar system available in any headset today. And now Personas is getting upgraded with ‘Spatial Personas’.
But weren’t Personas already ‘spatial’? Let me explain.
Sorta Spatial
At launch the Persona system allowed users to scan their faces into the headset to create a digital identity that looks and moves like the user thanks to the bevy of sensors in Vision Pro. While this was a great way to talk face-toface, it felt like the person wasn’t standing right beside you. And that’s not just because of the frame, but also because you weren’t actually in a sharing the same space as them–it’s not like they could walk right up to you for a high-five, because they’d be stuck in the window on your screen.
Face-to-face
Previously the frame made it feel sort of like you were doing a 3D video chat. With the new shared space, and without a frame you feel like you are standing next to one another. The ‘hanging out on the couch’ and ‘gathering around the table’ experiences were not possible with Vision Pro when it launched. The new system was demonstrated in a Vision Pro FaceTime with four users (although up to five people can be supported). It’s still a 3D chat, but you can only see the head, shoulders and hands. It feels much more personal.Spatial Personas Are Opt-inTo be clear, the ‘video chat’ version of Personas (with the frame) still exists. It’s actually the default avatar display when you start a FaceTime. While this may seem like an odd choice, it actually has some merit. We’re used to being able to see the person on the other end of a webcam in our everyday work. And even though this is more personal than an audio-only call, it’s still a step away from actually meeting with someone
in person
.
Spatial Personas is more like you’re actually meeting up in person, since you can actually feel the interpersonal space between you and the other people in this shared space. You’ll feel the difference if they get too
close
close. It’s like if you were to meet someone in person. You can either ‘video-chat’ or invite someone into your space to have a personal conversation. Just like regular Personas, you can use SharePlay while on FaceTime to watch movies and play games together (provided you both have a supported app installed).
Take
Freeform
for instance, Apple’s collaborative digital whiteboard app. If you launch Freeform while on a FaceTime call with Spatial Personas, everyone else will be asked to join the app, which will then load everyone in front of the whiteboard.
Everything is synchronized too. Everyone in the FaceTime call will be able to see the content you have added on the board and can watch live as you draw or add photos. And just as easily, anyone can physically walk up to the board and interact with it themselves.When it comes to shared movie viewing on Apple TV on Vision Pro, Spatial Personas unlock the feeling of sitting on the same couch together, which wasn’t quite possible with the headset at launch. Now when you watch a movie with your friends you’ll be sitting shoulder to shoulder with them, which feels very different than having a window with their face in it floating near the video you’re watching.It’s possible to stream many flat apps to anyone in the FaceTime call while using Spatial Personas, but for 3D or interactive content developers will need to specially implement the feature.
That’s somewhat problematic though because it’s difficult to know exactly which apps support Spatial Personas or even SharePlay for that matter. You have to scroll down to the very bottom of the page of the app to find out if SharePlay is supported (unless it’s mentioned in the description). And even then this doesn’t necessarily mean it supports Spatial Personas.
The Little Details
Apple also thought through some smaller details for Spatial Personas, perhaps the most interesting of which is ‘locomotion’.Room-scale locomotion is essentially the default. You can physically move towards a person, or an app. You can move the entire shared space closer or further away from you instead of moving yourself virtually. Well, instead of directly moving yourself virtually, you can actually move the whole shared space closer or further from you.
You can do this any time, in any app, and everyone else will see your new position reflected within
their
space, keeping everything synchronized.
Apple also made is so when two Spatial Personas get too close together, they will temporarily revert to just looking like a floating contact photo. I think this is probably because they want to avoid possible harassment or trolling (ie: you want to annoy someone so you phase your virtual hand right through their virtual face, which is uncomfortable both visually and from an interpersonal space standpoint).
The headset’s excellent spatial audio is of course included by default, so everyone sounds like they’re coming from wherever they’re standing in the room, and their voices actually sound like they’re in
your room
(based on the headset’s estimate of what the acoustics should sound like). The spatial audio will transition to the new environment if you choose to move into a more immersive environment, such as the Joshua Tree. This is because the surrounding rock surfaces are a very good acoustic match. It’s a magical experience to hear the audio fade between your room and an ‘environment’. Image courtesy of Apple. You could, for example, have users using an iPhone and an Android tablet at the same time (yes, you can ). In this case, SharePlay will work with all formats except non-Apple as long the app is compatible. The iPhone would receive a message if the app is not supported. This suggests that there are more updates to come.