Apple Vision Pro’s Persona feature gets collaborative

Much like the headset they were designed for, Apple’s Personas are largely a work in progress. The original version of the beta avatars was: Is “nightmare” too strong a word? A later update made them more palatable and true-to-life, and Apple says it’s continuing to work on 3D captures.

The company launched “space” Personas on Tuesday for Vision Pro headsets running visionOS 1.1 or later. While the feature was previously limited to chat platforms like FaceTime and Zoom, the new version is designed to bring an extra sense of collaboration to the headset.

The spatial aspect always departures with FaceTime, but Apple’s proprietary video conferencing platform now serves as a gateway to other apps when combined with SharePlay. From there, users can select the space character option, which uses the Vision Pro’s built-in sensors to place the Persona in the room with them.

Spatial audio, on the other hand, additionally places them at a specific point in space relative to the Vision Pro user.

In the video example shared by Apple, two Personas flank a window featuring Freeform. Overall, it approximates the feeling of people collaborating on a project around an office conference table. In this case, however, this conference table constitutes the user’s home office.

Is the effect neat? Yes. Is it scary? And yes. Vision Pro users will continue to do business in the uncanny valley for the foreseeable future. This just comes from being an early adopter.

In addition to professional collaborations, this feature can be used to watch movies and play games together. It supports up to five users at a time.