Alone in my living room

My Vision Pro has been collecting dust on my kitchen island for the last few months. I'll admit, I wasn't a fan when I first got one. To be honest, I'm still not. Until recently, the only use case I could see using it for was watching movies on planes.

That is, until I tried Spatial FaceTime. Basically, you put on the Vision Pro, call a few friends on FaceTime, then tap a button to put it into "Spatial" mode.

I was sitting in my living room and suddenly, on the couch across from me, my friend Faisal's ghostly head and ethereal body appeared. Sure, he looked like a very highly rendered video game character, but it was unmistakably him. Then Chris joined. Again, a perfect digital representation.

What astounded me the most was the eyes. It's just insane. They move around perfectly, and you can make full natural eye contact with the people around you as you talk. It felt so much more personal than a Zoom call. We actually ended up hanging out and talking in my living room for almost an hour, and when I took off the headset I was shocked to realize that…I was sitting alone in my empty living room. My brain freaked out. It felt like they were there. Sure, they were weird ethereal ghosts, but it really felt like we were all sitting in the room together.

I can see so many amazing use cases for this. Hanging out with my kids or girlfriend virtually when I'm on the road. Playing board games with friends. Eventually, I'm sure there will be incredible ping-pong and tennis games. Imagine a virtual bar or social hangout where you can just walk up to people and start conversations. I think this could actually be a bit of a breakthrough—it just feels so much less lonely than texting and so much more intimate than a Zoom, where you're just a box on a screen and you can't make eye contact.

It's not quite there yet. This future is coming in a few years, but it was a really amazing taste of what's to come. I highly recommend you go check it out (you need the latest version 1.1 OS and to redo your Persona).

Originally published in the I used to dress terribly issue of Never Enough.