Some people think that we are what we remember. I mean, we get tons of information every day. But we only “save” a small part of it; only the ones that have some impact on us; the ones that make us smile, cry, get scared, etc. So what if there was a way to save all those moments? What if I told you that there is such an app? The Wist: Immersive Memories app allows us to store old “memories.” Of course, you can watch them whenever you want. All you need is a smartphone with AR support or a VR headset.
The app comes from Wist Labs, which launched this new app a week ago. The company’s co-founder Andrew McHugh also posted a video of a memory he captured with Wist: Immersive Memories.
It’s hard to watch the clip and not get excited. The clip shows McHugh talking to his wife and baby. The clip has been viewed over 900,000 times on Twitter.
Would You Like To “Re-Watch” Your Memories Again?
With the Wist: Immersive Memories, you can record videos of everyday moments. The app uses some of the sensors in a new smartphone model to capture 3D information from the footage. This allows you to turn any video into a VR video.
The app works quite well on iOS. Wist: Immersive Memories uses the iPhone’s LIDAR scanner. It calculates the depth information of a scene, the image, and the sound.
Your memories — how you remember them pic.twitter.com/eRwIK6xYTF
— Wist: Immersive Memories (@WistLabs) February 21, 2023
You can then view your memories using a VR headset or mobile AR.
In a way, it’s like shooting a video. But watching it later won’t give you an immersive experience, will it? So the app uses the capabilities of the new phones to take 3D videos with you. Later, you can use a VR, such as Meta Quest 2, to watch it again. It’s an ideal device because it supports AR in pass-through mode.
You can even visit the place where it happened and replay it as an AR hologram.
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“Sometimes we try to capture these memories with photos or videos. These act as memory anchors, allowing us to travel back to those moments and the moments around the anchor,” Wist Labs co-founder Andrew McHugh writes in a Medium blog post.
“Photos and videos are great to look at, but they don’t give you the same experience as being there again.”
Dystopian
As you can imagine, there are many films that feature similar technologies. For example, something identical can be found in an episode of the dystopian Netflix television series Black Mirror.
The episode, called ‘The Entire History of You’, is about a future where we have access to a memory implant that records everything we do, see, and hear. This allows us to relive our memories whenever we want.
Another example is the science fiction film Minority Report. In it, Tom Cruise can replay memories of his dead wife and child.
This reminds me of a scene from Minority Report. pic.twitter.com/nor4YF6SVO
— Peter Kuhar (@pkuhar) February 23, 2023
But, says McHugh Wist: Immersive Memories is more like the scene in Harry Potter. In it, Harry uses a magical object to relive his memories.
“We’re at a beautiful moment on our timeline where 3D capture technology is being embedded into consumer phones via new sensors and software. The tech is early, but available,” McHugh writes.
“The right combination of this new tech can allow us to capture immersive memories: spatial moments in time that you can step back into. And, the right design and engineering can make this as easy as capturing a video. We can make a pensieve real.”
The app is available for iOS and Meta Quest 2, but soon another device will be able to display your memories, Meta Quest Pro.
