I finally had my first spatial persona experience, and it was pretty rad. A friend and I spent about 30 minutes playing chess, checkers, and battleship, in the Game Room app. Over those 30 minutes, it did genuinely feel like I was sharing the same space as my friend. I even found myself amazed at the fidelity of his 3D model “in the room with me,” which is a stark contrast from the “KILL IT WITH FIRE” reaction I had in the earlier days of normal personas.

The part that really resonated with me was how tangible he felt and how well my brain was tricked into feeling like we were genuinely hanging out, even if we were 1,000 miles apart. Moving around the digital game table and seeing him move around and observe all the subtle little tics that make us human made it feel far more personal an experience than I’ve had over video calls. I still think personas are very strange when locked in a box on a Zoom or Meet call, but when everyone is in headsets and our personas can act like real people, suddenly they click for me.

And let’s not beat around the bush here, I’ve been kinda down on the Vision Pro lately, but I found this to be a joyful experience. I felt like I had just hung out with my friend in a way I literally can’t get with existing software on 2D screens. I was positively delighted!

But it is worth mentioning that we never play chess, checkers, or battleship these days, and we likely won’t for a long time after this. As I've written about numerous times at this point headsets thrive on novelty, and this experience was particularly novel. I don’t think it’s super likely that will be having another spatial persona hang out in the near future, but this is exactly the sort of experience that I want the Vision Pro to give me: something that makes me feel genuine emotions and that I literally cannot do on the computers that I love so much already. Here’s hoping for more of these down the road.