Apple patent involves ‘Avatar Spatial Modes’ on the Vision Pro

Apple has been granted a patent (number US 11968056 B2) for”Avatar Spatial Modes” on the Vision Pro. It involves enhancing the Personas feature of the spatial computer.

About the patent

The patent relates involves techniques and systems for providing enhanced representations of Vision Pro users in a multiuser communication session. In the patent Apple notes that some devices are capable of generating and presenting extended reality (XR) environments. 

An XR environment may include a wholly or partially simulated environment that people sense and/or interact with via an electronic system. In XR, a subset of a person’s physical motions, or representations thereof, are tracked, and, in response, one or more characteristics of one or more virtual objects simulated in the XR environment are adjusted in a manner that comports with at least one law of physics. 

Some XR environments allow multiple users to interact with each other within the XR environment. Apple says that what’s needed, when an XR environment is initiated, is an improved technique for providing usable representations in the XR environment.

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Avatars may be displayed in a multiuser communication session using various spatial modes. One technique for presenting avatars includes presenting avatars such that an attention direction of the avatar is retargeted to match the intent of the remote user corresponding to the avatar. 

“Another technique for presenting avatars includes a pinned mode in which a spatial relationship between one or more avatars remains displayed in a consistent spatial relationship to a local user regardless of movements of the local user. Another technique for presenting avatars includes providing user-selectable presentation modes between a room scale mode and a stationary mode for presenting a representation of a multiuser communication session.”