Testing the New Apple Vision Pro Spatial Persona

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.

Related Roundup: visionOS 2
Related Forum: Apple Vision Pro

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Top Rated Comments

madmin Avatar
13 months ago
I aint afraid of no ghost
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Unregistered 4U Avatar
13 months ago

Exactly... it's another barrier, layer, that nobody wants.
There was a time when no one wanted mice.

There was a time when no one wanted virtual keyboards on cellular phones.

Those folks likely never got to the point of wanting one or the other, but the market grew to support the millions and billions that did want those.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
infiniteentropy Avatar
13 months ago
Ok, Apple, I'll be the one to say it:

Would you mind doing something useful with this hardware?
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
currentinterest Avatar
13 months ago
I own and love my AVP. I use mine 4 to 6 hours per day. These continual improvements and capabilities make it even more fun. A hat tip to Apple for striving for innovation across the AVP platform.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Tagbert Avatar
13 months ago

Features like this have existed for years on other VR/AR headsets, and it's the same issue here.

These types of interactions are meant to be in person. If you are trying to have these types of meetings and/or interactions, I would re-think just meeting in person.

FaceTime is simply that, seeing someone. Personas are not even that, it's just a hologram of you and makes the interaction feel even less personal than just a normal (real) video call.
Today, I was meeting with people in London, Rome, Oslo, Chicago, Seattle, and Bangalore. tonight I'll be meeting with Sydney, Chicago, and Dallas. How do you propose that I meet with them in person? I think you are over valuing the in person experience on a day to day basis. Sure that is value in meeting people, but it doesn't need to be for every meeting and frankly there are coworkers and customers that I expect I will never meet in person.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
vegetassj4 Avatar
13 months ago
I felt a great disturbance in Force Touch, as if millions of emoji suddenly got typed out in terror and were suddenly deleted. I fear iOS 18 Beta has happened.



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Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)