Healium Biofeedback Meditation

August 2024 update: sorry, how can you claim that you’ve raised the resolution? Do you guys even use an Apple Vision Pro? The visuals are still terrible, you need to start from scratch and stop porting over these low quality assets from Quest or whatever platform you ported them from. There’s no way to get around it, no amount of upscaling is going to solve the issues with this app. It’s like owning a 4K TV and then watching VHS tapes on them. Another example of a developer who rushed to create an app which they either ported from previous low resolution apps on other platforms, or lazily used stock assets, without owning an Apple Vision Pro. I’m sure it looks good in their emulator but in the headset it’s low resolution. It’ll never compare to Apple’s immersive content but either developers should try, or not offer their apps at all. It’s too jarring to go from highly immersive, high fidelity of the experience of the headset into this app.

Mental fitness & emotional regulation training is a great use for augmented reality, and it’s apps like this one that are really starting to pave the way for an AR-centric future. The Healium app gives you the ability to finally master the art of stress control and management all in real-time. There’s an extremely handy tutorial when you first start the app, and the additional wearable component really brings your feelings and mental state to life in a way I’ve never experienced before! Incredible! Really recommend this to anyone looking to improve their mental resilience in a fun yet educational way!

I’m a veteran and saw this app in the Stories section today. Decided to try it out, and am coming away very underwhelmed. The Butterfly meditation is easily the worse of the two currently available. The leaves on the bush (tree? green twig?) pop in and out jarringly during the experience, and some only seem to exist when viewed from certain angles. Then, after hatching one butterfly (and several others that don’t hatch but just appear from nothing) the narrator’s voice starting pausing the spa music every few seconds like a train conductor, repeating the same phrase over and over again. That, and the fact that it’s never quite clear what you’re doing, are very frustrating. The other meditation, about the Solar System, is similarly vague about how it works. Are you “lighting up the universe” or is that light level the exact same at the end as it was at the beginning? Are you making butterflies grow or are they spontaneously appearing on a timer? My understanding from the Apple Story about this was that your biofeedback would produce an immediately visible reaction in the AR world. It’s what sold me on the app. Unfortunately, that great pitch is not well realized here. Hopefully the devs get an influx of cash and use it to flesh this app out. Right now it feels cheap, like it’s held together with spit and bubblegum.