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Apple overhauls Vision Pro Personas feature, now with much higher-quality 3D avatars

As part of visionOS 26, Apple is overhauling the Personas feature for Apple Vision Pro users. Personas are the 3D avatars the system uses during FaceTime calls when the user is wearing the headset.

When Vision Pro launched last year, Personas were widely criticized due to their uncanny valley appearance — and the whole feature was labelled as a ‘beta’ in the OS. Apple has been gradually improving the fidelity of the avatars with every release, and visionOS 26 takes the most dramatic step forward yet.

As shown in the above side-by-side comparison provided by Apple, visionOS 26 takes Personas to a whole new level of detail and quality.

Apple says it is using industry-leading machine learning to create advanced volumetric renderings of the user’s face and shoulders.

In visionOS 26, the sharpness of the captured imagery is much higher, bringing the appearance of the person much closer to life-like. The polygon count and texture quality has clearly been significantly upgraded. This means better reproductions of hair, eyelashes and skin textures.

The scope of the avatars has also been significantly widened, with the device now creating a full side-profile for the first time.

Despite the higher-quality output, Personas are still generated on device in a matter of seconds. Also new in visionOS 26, users have more control to customize how their Persona looks when they create it. That includes the choice of over 1,000 variations of glasses.

visionOS 26 will be available as a free software update for all Vision Pro users later this year.

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Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.