Praise be, my visionOS 26 persona is significantly less cursed!
For several months, my Slack avatar was a screenshot of my incredibly cursed Vision Pro persona. My virtual avatar's head was cocked back, cackling into the pixelated void, her hair one solid unmoving block. It wasn't good — but it also wasn't the end of the world. Everyone else's Persona looked just as horrible, and honestly, it was funny. So I was skeptical when, at the WWDC keynote, Apple announced that visionOS 26 had improved the system's floating avatars.
And then I got to make one.
The process to make Personas hasn't changed, but the end result is vastly improved. (Full disclosure: The video you see above was recorded by Apple and provided to me after my demo.) It doesn't completely erase the uncanniness — the bottom half of your face is still more expressive than the top, it got my nose a bit weird in certain angles, and some microexpressions feel stiff. But hair looks more like hair now. You can see eyelashes and skin texture. It was even able to capture my nose contour makeup.
Side profiles have also been improved — something I noticed in a FaceTime with our old weekend editor Wes Davis, a fellow Vision Pro owner who also downloaded the visionOS 26 beta. Previously, if you turned your head to the side, you could look flattened, something akin to a PlayStation 2 era, non-cut scene video game character.
It's easier to tweak your Persona now, too. You can customize lighting, skin tone, and get granular with eyewear if you're a glasses wearer.
The biggest thing for me, though, is when I laugh and my eyes scrunch up, I no longer look like a caricature of myself. After spending a few weeks experimenting with AI image and video generation, I've been subjected to numerous demoralizing renders of my monolids. You might not know this if you're not Asian, but monolids aren't considered a desirable feature under traditional Western and Eastern beauty standards alike. I'll acknowledge that the fact they're often terribly rendered is a first-world problem. Nevertheless, it can be hurtful when blepharoplasties to reshape eyelids are an incredibly common procedure in my community. It might seem like a trivial thing to fixate on, but if the future is really meant to be lived inside headsets — I want my virtual self to actually look like me.
In my brief hands-on, I also got the impression that Personas in visionOS 26 are also much better at capturing a variety of expressions. I know that the average person isn't going to be winking, making goofy faces, or purposefully contorting their face as if they were a Disney cartoon. But, if you are that type of person, I can say I was impressed at how much better the new Persona system is at handling my facial gymnastics. (Alas, Wes' new Persona still has an unflappably weird mustache.)
But enough of my yammering, you can judge for yourself in the video above, compared to screenshots of my old Persona I've included below.
I got a few other demos in my hands-on. I yeeted myself to a virtual moon of Jupiter. I saw a few examples of improved spatial videos taken on action cams. Apple is still convinced we all want even better spatial photos. But aside from Personas, the other demo I was pleasantly surprised by was widgets. I stand corrected. In our liveblog, I mocked an ever-present virtual wall clock. Having experienced a demo, however, I can see the appeal of a permanent-but-editable wall panel where I can hang digital album art, a Reminders app interface, and maybe recreate my own smart home control hub. It requires conceptual buy-in that these kinds of virtual spaces are a worthwhile endeavor, but if you're already onboard? Trust me, you'll like the widgets.
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