Last week Apple released its highly anticipated Vision Pro “Spatial Computing” AR/VR headset and there is already a way for you to explore the Star Trek universe with it thanks to Roddenberry Entertainment.
The Archive arrives with Vision Pro
Roddenberry Entertainment first began working on a virtual archive of Star Trek content back in 2018. This effort eventually became the “Roddenberry Archive” which was previewed as a web portal last spring with over 4 million visitors in just 3 weeks. Now Roddenberry and their technology partner OTOY along with Paramount Game Studios have launched “The Archive” for the Apple Vision Pro, available now in the App Store.
The Archive in Apple Vision Pro App Store
Here is how they describe it…
The new Archive app immerses fans in nearly 2-hours of Star Trek spatial experiences built exclusively for Apple Vision Pro, allowing them to explore hundreds of fully realized locations, artifacts and unique items – spanning every Star Trek TV show and film across the franchise’s nearly 60-year history. With only gaze and touch, Apple Vision Pro users can transport themselves instantly through gorgeous immersive 3D environments traversing between different eras of Star Trek from The Cage pilot to Star Trek: Lower Decks. They can inspect each item on Captain Kirk’s shelf, take a seat at Quark’s bar on the Deep Space Nine Promenade, or launch a shuttle from the U.S.S. Enterprise-D’s hangar bay. With Apple SharePlay, a visit through the world of Star Trek can also become a shared social experience that can be live streamed with friends and family over FaceTime.
This walkthrough gives you an idea of The Archive experience…
“Through our multi-decade collaboration with OTOY, we have been working to push the frontiers of immersive technology to fulfill my father’s legacy, creative intent, and ideas in ways that can be experienced today and by generations yet to come.” said Eugene Roddenberry, President of Roddenberry Entertainment. “The Roddenberry Archive, as an immersive experience on Apple Vision Pro, is a remarkable milestone in realizing my father’s vision for the Holodeck. This release also fulfills one of my mother’s greatest wishes. She recorded her phenoms in 2008 before her passing, to have her voice live on in posterity. It is deeply moving for me to be able to have her voice now narrate portions of the archive” added Roddenberry. “I am also pleased that the archive can bring to life both published and unrealized influential narrative works from Star Trek’s rich literary history, covering my father’s one and only Star Trek novel for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 through the decades of books and comics that subsequently followed.”
Screenshot from The Archive (OTOY)
With The Archive there are several downloadable holographic Star Trek objects that users can place in their home environment using the augmented reality functions of the Apple Vision Pro. The various models can be “shrunk or expanded from life-size to dollhouse scales while rendering at a fidelity and quiescence never before possible on consumer hardware.”
Here is an example of the USS Enterprise D model…
“Today’s release of the Archive app for Apple Vision Pro marks a major step towards realizing Gene Roddenberry’s Holodeck” said CEO of OTOY, Jules Urbach. “Through Apple’s breakthrough Vision Pro spatial computing platform, we can bring audiences back in time as if they were there on set during the making of Star Trek for the first time, with full visual immersion and historical accuracy” added Urbach.
These two short videos show off OTOY’s technology at work with The Archive…
The Archive also includes concept videos and documentary films from recent Roddenberry Archive releases remastered specifically for Apple Vision Pro. These include previews of the unabridged interviews with George Lucas and Stan Lee exploring Gene Roddenberry’s influence on Star Wars and Marvel.
Screenshot from The Archive (OTOY)
The Archive’s latest release of navigable spatial content can also be viewed as a live 2D stream on the web at roddenberry.x.io. For a limited time, the complete experience is available for free on both the web and Apple Vision Pro. Later this year, OTOY and Paramount will offer users unlimited viewing time and a-la-carte access to all current and future immersive Star Trek 3D experiences released through The Archive.
Apple Vision Pro
The Apple Vision Pro is available now, starting at $3499.
Amazing, it’s getting closer to a holodeck
Computer: arch.
It certainly is! :)
All of a sudden it makes more sense why they were not very clear on what all this was for. It seems like the Vision Pro was the thing they must have been working toward…and of course they couldn’t announce before Apple did. Maybe Apple approached them after they saw what they were working on. I don’t know…It was always just weird how they didn’t seem to really explain what all this was for…a website on it’s own didn’t really make sense.
More a happy coincidence than anything else, The Archive was in the works long before Vision Pro was a thing even internally. :)
not the killer app for a $4000 device, but pretty close for the $200 Quest
Wish it was available to more devices. I’d gladly throw some quatloos at it
4k is a pretty small price to pay. I’m totally getting one when i sell my bitcoin for some profit.
The Quest 3 cost me around 600€, which still is a fair price considering what it isable to do. This would be great to experience on the quest.
Computer: End program.
This actually reminds me of the Oasis from Ready Player One. I wonder if Ernest Cline will get residuals.
ha no…VR was a thing before Ernie Cline
LOL that movie just showed up on Netflix. Got to watch it.
Released exclusively for a $3,500 headset… Thanks….for that.
+100
As the article itself says, the same content can be seen from any device at roddenberry.x.io. The only thing that’s exclusive for Vision Pro are the spatial streams.
that’s hardly the same thing – sure I can stick my face close to my 40in monitor and scroll around with the mouse, which is all that pulling up a browser in the Quest is like – but kinda missing the VR / 3d aspect of it. Ah well – if I really wanted it – I’d pay the $4000 for the headset. I don’t.
I would gladly pay $25 for a Quest version of the 3d content.
Exactly!
Buy bitcoin
Just Apple? Anything for metaquest/oculus?
You’re free to access the website from those devices! It’ll be a 2D stream but as you can see on the YouTube videos that’s the same as it is on Vision Pro. :)
Well dang. My first thought with Apple Vision is that I’ll never be able to afford it, and I don’t want to.
Now I’ll never be able to afford it but I REALLY want to! :-)
Looks like the most expensive scuba mask ever ;-)
Absolutely amazing! I love that I can visit the bridge of every Enterprise, hang out at Quarks, chill in Janeway’s quarters, or even spend time on the Cerritos! Awesome! 😎
Unfortunately it’s still $3500 lol. So I won’t be doing it personally anytime soon.
Too bad this isn’t the 23rd century yet because then Vision Pros would be free. 😂
LOL in the 23rd century we can all just replicate Vision pros. ;D
Very interested in finding out what those unknown literary treks are … the God thing? the time travel story of povil’ĺ’s? The cattlemen? I hope it isn’t the jfk thing, that sounded grotesque, don’t need a virtual reality depiction of Amanda Grayson gang raped by klingons.
Rod has a large number of his dad’s materials in the Roddenberry office that I had personally never heard of that I think should see the light of day if they indeed haven’t been put out there widely before – like Return of the Archons but with Pike. Rod has said anything connected to the pocket/IDW literally universe (his dad’s book was the first numbered pocket TOS novel) or that had an impact or inspired the lore should have a place in the Archive, and we have been working with Paramount to help with this effort too. The God Thing is definitely on our list too. Walter Koenig who just did an interview for the Archive had worked in this too.
Saw one of these commercials a couple weeks back that really tried to imply that life will just be so much more grand if you’re wearing one of these headsets 24/7.
No, thank you. I’ll pass.
As a Vision Pro owner, I checked this out. It’s got a lot of potential but it’s still incredibly buggy. Some of the VR environments are slow to load. I found several of the other rendered environments (like engineering) but it’s just a spheroid shape in front of my field of view. Not something I can zoom into or actually walk around inside of.
But there’s so much potential here!! Reminds me of the 90s with the Captains Chair and Omnipedia CD experiences.
Hoping they’re able to get some of these hugs ironed out fast.
*bugs*
Anyway, meanwhile, I gotta say the modeling, environments and renders are absolutely beautiful. It’s so cool to be able to see the changes between the Enterprise-D bridge over the seasons, and same with Engineering too. Absolutely phenomenal work on the quality.
Hugs definitely need to go ;-)
Wow thank you for the real world review. I imagine it will probably take awhile before we start seeing the real potential of that device. But the visuals themselves sounds amazing. I would love to just see every inch of the Enterprise D in that format being my favorite ship.
Just curious, what is your overall impressions of it? I think it’s look cool, but if I’m being honest it still feels more like a gimmick or an expensive tech toy than a real practical tool. But people said that about iphones in the beginning too.
Hey hey!
Overall impressions of the Vision Pro? I’m still on the fence honestly. It’s pretty cool overall, and the tech is absolutely impressive. (Though plenty of short falls. Apple’s marketing puts the best spin on it.) Overall, I’d say it’s just an expensive tech toy at the moment. Its biggest standout feature is it’s probably the coolest way to consume media (being able to watch Trek on a huge screen in a theater, or next to Paramount Mountain… errrr…. I mean Mount Hood) lol Also some great potential for playing games, for the same reason. (I can use a game controller and stream GeForce Now on it, which is pretty slick.) As for the productivity aspect of it, being able to have multiple windows wherever you want looks cool but in practicality, I’d far prefer my existing screen or laptop setup. I think Apples playing a long game with it though, so it’ll be in the hands of developers to build out cool apps and experiences (like the Star Trek archive) that’ll determine its success.
Wow thanks again! That’s kind of what I figured though. It does sound like it can be fun and a great way to view media, but for that money I expect it to cook me breakfast sometimes lol. I would love to try some games on it though. But it still doesn’t sound like it’s something you can’t do on a computer, it’s just a more cool way I guess instead of just a flat white screen
I think we’ll really know if it’s a real tool people will take seriously by the next five years.
Please send any bugs you encounter to help@otoy.com. We have also pushed out a recent update which fixes a few issues reported to us since launch.
The Meta Quest 2 and 3 will be getting an update, possibly as early as this week, that will add support for 3D spatial videos. Hopefully Roddenberry Entertainment will explore making it available on that platform as well as it is far, far, far more affordable ($299 for a Quest 2, $499 or $599 for a Quest 3 depending on how much storage you want and millions of the headsets have already been sold.
We are working on adding WebXR support to the web portal – which will bring some 360 3D content to other headsets.Also Phone XR for some content is in the works too.
Also do you get to walk around in 3d or just have to use your tea hand to move around. Seems limited for a 4k device not to be able to walk around.
there are multiple modes – you can walk around several ships and sets we download to the device, with more on their way.
I was wondering why the Roddenberry website that offered these tours went offline…
Now I know.
Well, I got to walk around the very faithful TNG bridge mock-up in Las Vegas, and actually sat in the Captain’s Chair in Jim Cawley’s TOS bridge in Ticonderoga. After those experiences bobbing my head for a better “view” wearing a pair of high-tech sunglasses holds little appeal. Of course, I’m old.