Apple’s ‘RealityPro’ headset may be able to record extended reality scenes

Apple has been granted a patent (number 11521359) for an “extended reality recorder” that hints that the rumored “Reality Pro” will be able to record extended reality scenes.

About the patent

In the patent, Apple notes that augmented reality (AR) technology aims to bridge a gap between virtual environments and a physical environment by providing an enhanced physical environment that is augmented with electronic information. As a result, the electronic information appears to be part of the physical environment as perceived by a user. 

In an example, augmented reality technology further provides a user interface to interact with the electronic information that is overlaid in the enhanced physical environment. Apple apparently wants the RealityPro to be able to record such user interactions.

About the RealityPro

When it comes to the Reality Pro, the rumors are abundant. Such a device will arrive in 2023. Or 2024. Or 2025, Or 2026. It will be a head-mounted display. Or may have a design like “normal” glasses. Or it may be eventually be available in both. The Reality Pro may or may not have to be tethered to an iPhone to work. Other rumors say that it could have a custom-build Apple chip and a dedicated operating system dubbed “rOS” for “reality operating system.” 

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Implementations of the subject technology provide systems and methods for recording an extended reality experience in a way that allows the experience to be played back at a later time from a different viewpoint or perspective. This allows computer-generated content that was rendered for display to a user during the recording, to be re-rendered during playback at the correct time and location in the recording, but from a different perspective. In order to facilitate this type of viewer-centric playback, the recording includes a computer-generated content track that references resources for re-rendering the computer-generated content at each point in time in the recording.”