As of this week, Apple Vision Pro users can set up a spatial Persona, which is a new version of a Persona that's designed to make it feel like you're interfacing with other people right in the same room. We thought we'd test out the spatial Persona feature to see how it works and whether it's an improvement over the regular Persona option.
Spatial Personas have a translucent background and include the head, hands, and top part of the torso to provide a more natural feel so that it seems like the people in the conversation are in the same physical room with one another. With spatial Personas, people can move about in their real world space, and that's reflected in the virtual setting. Persona location is the same for all people on a call, so if there are five participants, each one has a different location just as they would sitting together in a room.
If you look at or point to someone on the call, the other participants can see where you are looking or pointing. Voices are also directional relative to where each person is at.
Standard Personas show only a person's face and are limited to a small tile, but spatial Personas have a much more immersive feel. Apple has been improving Personas since the Vision Pro headset launched, and while there's still an uncanny valley feel to them, the visuals are much improved and overall less creepy.
Spatial Personas can be used for watching movies and TV shows together, FaceTime and other video calls, using apps like Freeform, playing games, and more.
As of right now, spatial Personas are live in visionOS in a beta capacity, with the visionOS 1.1 update required. Spatial Personas work with up to five participants.
