Porsche’s Apple Vision Pro App lets you customize a 911 Spirit 70 in mixed reality — and proceed to order it if you have the $250K to spare.
The Porsche 911 Spirit 70 is a limited edition model of the 911 meant to pay homage to the 1970s. The company says it “captures the vibrant flair of the 1970s and then wraps it in the unmistakable form of a contemporary 911”, and plans to make just 1500 units.
Prospective 911 Spirit 70 buyers can customize the exact color of the car’s exterior and interior on the website, in store, or now, for the first time ever that we’re aware of, in mixed reality.
Trying out Porsche’s app on Apple Vision Pro, the vehicle appeared to be close to real scale (though not full scale), and thus it didn’t fit in my room, inducing the common mixed reality depth-conflict effect wherein an object should clip through your wall but doesn’t. And while you can rotate the virtual 911 Spirit 70, you can’t resize it. If you can afford a car that starts at $250K, you probably have a room big enough for it, though.
Another oddity of the app is that it won’t let you stick your head through the window to closely inspect the interior, despite it being fully modeled in very high fidelity. Attempting to do so will bring up an “Oops, that’s too close” message and make the entire vehicle temporarily invisible. This is a baffling decision. Ideally, I’d even want a mode where I can sit in the interior.
Another thing to be aware of is that the app is far more than just a spartan configurator. The process of customizing the car brings you through a series of videos from designers of the Porsche 911 Spirit 70 explaining their inspirations and decisions, though you can skip them after a few seconds.
Once you’ve configured the car, you can either proceed to the ordering webpage via Safari, with your choices passed through, or save your decisions to a card in your Apple Wallet to show at a Porsche store.
While we don’t expect many people to actually buy a $250K limited edition vehicle this way, it is an interesting example of how physical products could be sold using mixed reality.
