The [Archive‪]‬ 4+

There’s no search, no real explanation of what the app is, just a hodgepodge of different windows and things, with UI that doesn’t make much sense. Sometimes you get text, sometimes a still image, sometimes something limited in 3D… a real random grab bag.

It has stereo images of all the Enterprise bridges, which is neat, and a 3D model of the TNG Enterprise. But I can’t figure out how to view that model in my room the way the app screenshots show.

Also, you can actually walk AROUND inside the TNG enterprise (and maybe others?)…. except it all happens in 2D within a window, when it should be all around you. It’s rendered in realtime after all. So it COULD be VR, and it’s not.

The walking controls are VERY difficult with gestures, and my gamepad is not recognized. Neither are keyboard arrow keys which would help. (“Teleport” style controls would be best if real VR is ever implemented anyway.)

There is the seed of something worth paying for here! But right now it seems like it must have been ported awkwardly from some other platform. That’s OK, I know it’s new, and it’s free! But I hope it gets an overhaul in future.

This is a brilliant idea, providing immersive views of beloved models and sets. And some of it works really well, but about half of the experiences, feel like they never made it out of beta. For instance, if you view the legendary starships, then you get the fully immersive 360 stereoscopic images. If you view the starship interiors section, they get incorrectly rendered as 180 stereoscopic images, looking squashed and distorted. Clearly, you know how to display it correctly in one part of the app, so it is dismaying that it is done incorrectly elsewhere.

Honestly, if you could just fix that part, I would give you a five star review for what content you currently have in place. Nonetheless, there are a lot of placeholder images through the slideshow that would be nice to either be hidden or to have the full content displayed. And of course, I would love to see more of the 3-D ship models in here as well. The original enterprise and enterprise D are fantastic but there are so many more I want to play with!

I’m giving this four stars because it is free and the idea is phenomenal. There is so much fertile ground within the realm of Star Trek so I’m a little bit confused as to why there is Batman and Star Wars material in here as well. I’m hopful that future updates will offer more immersive content that is specifically designed to work on Apple Vision Pro.