A mixture. A VHS cassette. A lovingly rendered Apple II. These returns from the 80s and more are at the heart of For all mankind: Time Capsule, a new augmented reality app built entirely by Apple to help fans of its alternate history drama catch up on the important background story before the second season begins next week.
Augmented reality connections are not so uncommon, but Time Capsule is fascinating for some reason. For the first time, it serves as a surprisingly useful storytelling tool for one of Apple TV +’s most intricate applications. The series begins with a Russian astronaut taking humanity’s first steps on the moon in 1969, beating American rivals to the milestone in less than two weeks. From there, the remaining ten episodes dig into the personal, political, and scientific consequences of the United States’ second place, and don’t worry – we won’t spoil things here. That said, the second season begins a full ten years into that fictional future, which left many plot points and bits of character development for the app.
In Time Capsule, users progress through a series of character-driven moments centered around objects with augmented reality. The mix mentioned earlier, for example, is a collection of classic 70s compiled by one character and passed on to another. And the Apple II? It’s used to display ‘D Mail’ sent between characters years before email was used in our universe. (In For all mankind parallel history, investment in NASA has never diminished after a series of successful US lunar landings, and therefore personal technology has been developed and aging at a much faster rate.)
For Ron’s creator and executive producer, Ron Moore, augmenting reality was an obvious choice – the problem was figuring out what role it should play.
“We’ve been talking about an AR component in the program since the first season,” he said in an interview with Engadget. ‘I think it took us a while to figure out what the appropriate way was to use it in the show, so the idea of using it as a filler between the years of the two seasons was something that developed later . ‘
As it stands now, Time Capsule feels a lot like bonus material; a way of looking at parts of a story that are left untold due to time or production constraints. And that’s how these kinds of projects will continue to feel, Moore said until consumers are ready to accept AR on a large enough scale.
“It’s nice to give the audience a full meal” to the audience, and I could see if I continued doing projects, it could be a fun component of it, “he added, noting that AR shares can become of the ‘creative conversation’ from the earliest stages of production.
Beyond the obvious narrative value, however, For all mankind: Time Capsule is remarkable because of who made it. Instead of distributing the app to an external developer, Apple designed the app end-to-end with the support of the program’s writing team, which means an important first step in the AR content for the company. Apple has been developing tools for years to help app developers create their own clever augmented reality experiences, but to date, its own efforts have been relatively sparse – think of AR Easter eggs in announcements and an app that lets you measure real objects.
The fact that Apple has been working on AR companion content for its streaming applications is no surprise – Bloomberg announced the plans last year, noting that Apple originally planned to launch this type of auxiliary content in 2020 before being pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic. With that in mind, Apple’s approach is a little different from what Bloomberg’s story suggested. Instead of acting as a live companion to a real-time program, Time Capsule is a completely stand-alone experience – one that can be completed in about 45 minutes if you race, and one that will remain static as the season unfolds. Apple also declined to elaborate when asked if building AR content around its high-profile streaming programs would become the standard practice, so it remains unclear how many other AR initiatives the company has undertaken, or whether they will be better off with the concept. . Bloomberg describe.
After all, it is not difficult to be hopeful for what may come next. A steady stream of rumors and reports indicates that Apple is working hard on a mixed reality headset behind closed doors, and news about Time Capsule’s release is the clearest sign that the company is exploring a potential role as an AR content provider, not just the manager of a platform.