Gurman: FaceTime for Apple AR/VR Headset Could Rely on Memojis and SharePlay

[MacRumors]

Memojis and SharePlay could be central to the FaceTime experience on Apple's long-rumored mixed-reality headset, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Gurman, who often reveals accurate insights into Apple's plans, has previously said that Apple's mixed-reality headset will focus on gaming, media consumption, and communication. The headset itself is rumored to run "rOS" or "realityOS," internally codenamed "Oak."

In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman clarified what he expects from FaceTime in realityOS, proposing that it may revolve around two of the company's existing experiences: Memojis and SharePlay.

I imagine a virtual reality version of FaceTime where you can be in a conference room with dozens of people. Instead of seeing their actual faces, you'll see 3D versions of them (Memojis). I assume the headset will be able to determine a person's facial expressions in real time, making the experience fairly lifelike. I would also look for heavy use of SharePlay in the new realityOS, allowing multiple headset wearers to experience music, movies and games together.

Apple's work on realityOS has been rumored since 2017, but the existence of the operating system was finally confirmed this week when references to it were found in App Store upload logs and Apple open source code.

Apple introduced Memojis in 2018 with iOS 12, while SharePlay is a much more recent addition that arrived with iOS 15.1 last year. Speculation suggests that many new features Apple has released in recent years, such as ARKit, AR walking directions in Apple Maps, spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, and the LiDAR scanner, are destined for its mixed-reality headset in the long run, enabling the company to make users familiar with some of the headset's aspects and publicly iterate on them long before its release. It seems plausible that Memoji and SharePlay could also be part of this strategy.

Despite enthusiasm over Apple's headset project "approaching liftoff" this year, Gurman now believes that development issues are likely to delay the device's announcement until WWDC 2023.

Article Link: Gurman: FaceTime for Apple AR/VR Headset Could Rely on Memojis and SharePlay

 

[4743913]

I cannot wait to pay $2,000 for a VR headset just to play phone games.

 

[adamjackson]

I thought everyone knew Memoji was for our AR future. More AR hiding in plain sight.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Oh man, Memoji’s? I really don’t find them useful. Just keep it simple and let it be Face-ID. Memoji’s are seriously outdated now.

 

[erikkfi]

It’s going to put people in a virtual room as cartoon avatars but don’t you call it the metaverse.

 

[Marbles1]

>I imagine a virtual reality version of FaceTime where you can be in a conference room with dozens of people. Instead of seeing their actual faces, you'll see 3D versions of them (Memojis). I assume the headset will be able to determine a person's facial expressions in real time, making the experience fairly lifelike.

Why is this good?

Who wants this?

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Gurman: I imagine a virtual reality version of FaceTime where you can be in a conference room with dozens of people. Instead of seeing their actual faces, you'll see 3D versions of them (Memojis).

Why would you want to use Memojis in a professional meeting or in front of dozen of people?

Who wants this? Why? What for? So many questions. Just strange.

 

[breather]

Side note: How about you scan your face and a Memoji is automatically created based on the input.
I think this is key in order to have folks use Memojis more often, not everyone likes to create Memojis and not everyone does creates a true representation.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Side note: How about you scan your face and a Memoji is automatically created based on the input.
I think this is key in order to have folks use Memojis more often, not everyone likes to create Memojis and not everyone does creates a true representation.

Are you referring to this?

Apple Overhauls Leadership Page With Memoji Avatars for Execs Ahead of World Emoji Day

In celebration of World Emoji Day, which takes place tomorrow, Apple today updated its Apple Leadership site to introduce Memoji avatars for all of...

www.macrumors.com

 

[spartan1967]

With COVID slowly fading away, how practical is this AR/VR Headset that will be north of 90% of people being able to afford, much less justifying spending the money purchasing this gadget?

 

[Michael Scrip]

Will they have legs?

?

 

[SilentDoom]

Do you own a ps5? I don’t, but a lot do

 

[dbwie]

This sounds absolutely silly. So instead of looking at an actual camera and see the actual faces of others as we can now, I will have to look at Memojis of others through AR/VR headset and that will be a better experience? And, use of SharePlay will be better than someone simply sharing their screen with us using current technologies. It seems like putting on a AR/VR headset on will create simply a DIFFERENT experience, but not necessarily a BETTER one.

 

[jz0309]

if that is what Apple is really coming up with for this headset - epic failure!
Gurman, continues with his lame "predictions"

From a consumers perspective, other than gaming and porn, I do not see any use of AR/VR, from a biz perspective, very different, but definitely not using headsets for meetings, many other use cases are out there...

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I imagine…

Stopped reading there

 

[n0va]

Nobody wants this

 

[giggles]

Gurman: water coud be wet.

That said, I suppose Memojis allow for non-verbal communication via facial expressions but without showing your actual face (be it for privacy or because you’re messy at the moment).

To the people here who don’t see the point compared to early 2000s style regular video calls, I ask: why isn’t every profile picture on macrumors a picture of the user’s actual face? Why isn’t every phone call a Facetime call nowadays? Why does Facetime Audio exist? Maybe there are situations when you don’t want to share your face and room on video. Maybe 5 years from now the comment section of macrumors will have a link to a VR room where we will discuss the news while posing as mostly anonymous Memojis.

 

[contacos]

Memojis. First keyboard setting I turned off as soon as it was possible.

 

[anthogag]

With LIDAR a face can be scanned. A person's Memoji can be more life-like. This could be quite cool.

A dinosaur or shark Memoji resembling me, wow.

 

[MacHiavelli]

Wow, overwhelmingly unappealing.

3D TV, the Sinclair C5, Betamax, and so on...

 

[Le0M]

Omg... so basically a vr room with cartoon style people?
Can't they integrate these calls with an iPhone (or other) camera to reproduce a 3D version of yourself?
The headset's cameras would see your face and facial expression, and the external camera would see the rest of the body.
At least it would be a realistic representation of oneself!

 

[1rottenapple]

Oh man, Memoji’s? I really don’t find them useful. Just keep it simple and let it be Face-ID. Memoji’s are seriously outdated now.
View attachment 1958366

Right. It’s something you try 1-2 maybe three times and stop using it. Heck I bet you apple execs say the same thing. It showcases Face ID tech and nothing more.

I used it to chat with my SO niece and she thought it was funny.

 

[andrewxgx]

remember 3d touch? the thing that could easily be used for enhanced productivity navigation (think mouse right-click, drag and drop, stuff like that) but instead it was used for, uhm, quick actions i think?
having proper tech and inventions is one thing. using them properly is quite another. doing memojis with AR would just make this as useless as 3d touch in the long run.

 

[jz0309]

I hope that Gurman will switch his newsletter to this AR/VR format exclusively - then I don’t have to read or listen to this bull crap anymore…

 

[JulianL]

I agree with all the comments about how lame and inappropriate a bunch of people sitting in a virtual conference room interacting with a bunch of essentially cartoon characters would be especially in a professional setting. It's not even interesting to me from a novelty perspective but as a first step to being able to use FaceID-like 3D scanning and high-res cameras to create essentially photo-realistic avatars that reflect in real time the users facial expressions(*) maybe it's not 100% wasted effort. I don't know how long it would take for that technology to become widely affordable but when it does I can see that as genuinely useful.

(*) I assume there would also need to be inward facing cameras to see the wearer's eyes and surrounding area covered by the mask so that could be filled in on the photorealistic avatar and would accurately reflect the real-time facial changes in that area to the other participants

I remember being sceptical about the usefulness of video conferencing back in the early 1990s until I did a job interview with someone in California who was to become my boss using a professional conferencing facility at the company's UK offices and was surprised how much it enhanced the experience vs a basic teleconference. Maybe if/when we do get to full photorealism it could be interesting but I think we're a way off that for now. Perhaps whenever that happens we'll look back on Apple's first implementation and it will feel like looking at the original version of Leisure Suit Larry vs the latest version of Grand Theft Auto or whatever the sate of the art is in gaming right now.