Apple Vision Pro and the Illusion of Endless Worlds
Apple Vision Pro has managed to capture the public's imagination with an experimental app called Portal Gate. For many, the experience resembles a real-life Stargate, a gateway to alternate worlds where mixed reality merges with fantasy. But how "real" is this journey and where does the magic stop?
The creator of the YouTube channel Vision Play XR is testing an app called Portal Gate on the Apple Vision Pro. Basically, the headset becomes a kind of "gateway" to other worlds: you open a portal, enter a 360° environment (in this case, a sunrise on the beach), and you can physically walk around your house while the virtual environment lights your way so you don't bump into objects.
What's spectacular is that the distance doesn't seem to be limited — he walked from the back door to the front door and the portal remained active, as if it were infinite. It's a kind of Stargate VR, where mixed reality meets imagination.
The environments are finite recordings, 360° loops, not procedural or interactive spaces. So you don't have the freedom to "sit" and build a narrative experience, but only to move through an immersive framework like a Stargate. It's a technical and aesthetic artifact, but not yet a living world. Basically, the experience is more of a portal demonstration than an actual journey through a continuous world.
Apple Vision Pro hasn't created a real Stargate yet, but rather an illusion of infinity. It's an important aesthetic and technical step, but it remains an artifact — a spectacular demo, not a continuous world. Still, for someone who savors and benchmarks such moments, it's a clear benchmark for future cinematic and narrative scenarios.
