Over the last few months I’ve had the joy of helping beta test an app that was released last week – PhotoDome for Apple’s Vision Pro.
The developer of this app, and I are both members of a slack community focused on developing for the Apple ecosystem. He had posted a question to see if any one with the Apple Vision Pro (AVP) would be willing to test early builds. As an early adopter, obviously by the fact that I have the AVP, I immediately signed up.
Recently on my podcast Games At Work dot Biz, we talked about another application that I was a member of the TestFlight – Cassette. As I mentioned in that episode, I don’t tend to talk about apps that I am testing, unless the developer specifically asks for public feedback. I find that providing feedback to the developer is valuable, but publishing feedback about unfinished code is not.
Now that it is available, I can say that I really enjoy PhotoDome. Similar to the value of Cassette, it provides me with a way of find old memories that I haven’t seen in a long time.
It also provides a truly immersive experience with lots and lots of options for how you may wish to view the content. You are able to pick what content you want to see.
The developer did a great job of creating a sky box so that you can focus on your photos, or you can just be out in the void. In my view above, I picked a nice grid of various Christmas cards from over the years.
I think that people who don’t have a AVP may not understand the interface, since it is hard to describe, but PhotoDome allows you to get a random set of image, from various collections, and present them in multiple different playful ways.
You can have a simple grid (as you see above), moving lanes, random, and one of my favorite – bubbles. The bubbles bounce of each other, etc.
I am hoping for fully spatial video support for a total immersive overload!
I highly recommend, if you have a AVP, that you check it out. We are in the early days of creative new experiences in AR/VR, and supporting the developers who are willing to try this out is a way that we get more and more apps and experiences!. If you have picked it up, I’d love to hear about your experience with it.