Image: Apple Apple’s Vision Pro headset will let you replace your face with a hyperrealistic avatar when you’re using FaceTime. As shown during WWDC 2023, you can scan your face

An image showing the persona feature in FaceTime
Image: Apple

Apple’s Vision Pro headset will let you replace your face with a hyperrealistic avatar when you’re using FaceTime. As shown during WWDC 2023, you can scan your face using the headset to create a digital “persona” of yourself that will appear during video calls.

Unlike the cartoony avatars you can make with apps like Microsoft Teams and Meta’s Horizon Worlds, it looks like Apple is aiming to create a virtual version of your face that’s accurate to how you really look. In the video Apple showed at WWDC, a user holds the headset in front of their face, allowing the device to scan it with “an advanced encoder-decoder neural network” that Apple says has been trained on a “diverse group of thousands of individuals.”


GIF: Apple

From there, Apple’s Vision Pro headset creates your digital persona, which can track your face and hand movements while you’re using FaceTime with the headset. It’s hard to tell how well this feature actually works from the video alone, but the persona looks fairly realistic, aside from an apparent lack of hair texture.

Either way, it seems like a viable solution to using FaceTime when you don’t have a camera pointed directly at your face (like you would when using the app with an iPhone or Mac). But I’m still looking forward to seeing how it performs when not in a controlled setting, and I have lots of questions about what you can and can’t do when scanning your face (like wearing a scary mask).

Apple’s Vision Pro headset is powered by the company’s new mixed reality operating system, called visionOS, and will cost $3,499 when it’s released early next year.


You may also be interested in this

Best iPhone Prime Day Dea…

Macworld If you’re in the market for a new iPhone, Amazon’s Prime Day sales might be a good time to find a deal—with a few caveats. In the U.K., you

Lionel Messi May Receive …

Soccer superstar Lionel Messi today announced his intentions to join MLS club Inter Miami. According to ESPN, Messi's proposed contract terms include a cut of revenue from new subscribers to

Today in Apple history: Y…

On June 2, 2014, Apple showed off OS X Yosemite for the first time at WWDC. Its design more closely resembled iOS than previous versions. (via Cult of Mac -

9to5Mac Happy Hour 438: H…

Benjamin and Chance talk all things Apple Vision Pro, from hardware design to its features to its real-world appeal. We also walk through Chance’s impressions of his hands-on demo experience

Are We Free From Price In…

Apple announced price increases for some of its subscription-based services on October 24, 2022, and again on October 25, 2023, but no such announcement has been made as the same

iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 P…

Apple announced its brand new products to the iPhone lineup at its ‘Wonderlust’ event on September 12 including… The post iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus: Everything You Need to

Deals: Apple Pencil 2 Dro…

The Apple Pencil 2 has hit a new all-time low price on Amazon today, available for $85.00, down from $129.00. The accessory is in stock and available to deliver as

Report details Apple’s ne…

Macworld Apple’s iPhone 17 lineup starts shipping this Friday, which means the rumor mill for next year’s iPhones is going to start churning. We’ve already heard reports that 2026 could
X

A whimsical homage to the days in black and white, celebrating the magic of Mac OS. Dress up your blog with retro, chunky-grade pixellated graphics to evoke some serious computer nostalgia. Supports a custom menu, custom header image, custom background, two footer widget areas, and a full-width page template. I updated Stuart Brown's 2011 masterpiece to meet the needs of the times, made it responsive , got dark mode, custom search widget and more.You can download it from tigaman.com, where you can also find more useful code snippets and plugins to get even more out of wordpress.