Spoiler: The Beard Is Still a Problem

I have long been a fan of Apple’s Spatial Persona feature in visionOS. I think it’s by far the best way to have a virtual meeting. When in FaceTime calls on the Vision Pro, it really feels like you’re sharing a space with the person you are talking to. You see lots of little facial tics and movements—the things you’re used to seeing in the people you talk to.

Well, this is the experience I have… It’s not so good for the people who talk to me.

Since the beginning of the Vision Pro, there’s been an issue with the mouth movement of my persona. Essentially, my persona’s mouth stays shut the whole time while I am talking; at most, there’s some jaw movement.

My expectation is that there is something the sensors cannot pick up because I am a bearded gentleman. I have raised feedback with Apple on this—actually on the day the Vision Pro launched (Feedback number: FB13577901). I have never heard anything more about this, and so far there has been no improvement.

I was very excited to see that there were more improvements for Personas coming in visionOS 26, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and install the beta on my expensive face computer.

Here is a before-and-after set of videos to give you an example of the quality of the personas and so you can see my non-moving mouth:

Additionally, here are some still images so you can get a sense of the fidelity improvements:

So unfortunately, my mouth will remain closed. BUT, the enhancements are staggering. Before visionOS 26, I was already very impressed with the quality—I didn’t realistically think they could take this much further. But I am astounded by how lifelike my persona looks now—with that one exception, of course.

Apple, please help my persona. He is very sick.