I saw Apple’s Vision Pro for a third time in 2023. This time, I wasn’t looking at Avatar, or Apple’s test photos or videos. I was looking at my mom and sister at Thanksgiving, and my kids playing guitar and piano with my nephew, and me running after my son at the Museum of Natural History into the room full of luminescent rocks.
Apple updated iOS 17.2 this week, adding the ability to record 3D “spatial” videos if you have an iPhone 15 Pro. You won’t get a chance to see what those 3D videos look like on a Vision Pro headset until next year, but I did. Let me tell you how it went.
I already got to look at Apple’s own spatial video samples a few weeks ago, and even test-recorded one of my own. I was impressed back then, in part by the quality of the video recordings and partly by the Vision Pro’s excellent display. My second time around had its own level of uncanniness; this was stuff from my own life, my own memories. I was playing back experiences I had already personally lived.
Despite the “spatial” name, these videos are stereoscopic 3D, not full scenes you can move around in. I can’t get closer to these recorded memories, or view them from the side, but they do have moments that shine and others that showed me where spatial recording and playback have limits.
Dropping into my own life
My photos and videos were AirDropped over to a phone that had an account linked to the Vision Pro for my demo, but the cool part is that anyone who has a Vision Pro will already have their photo library — and everything else in Apple’s ecosystem — synced. It gave me a weird sense of familiar surprise to glance down and tap my fingers to accept an AirDropped set of files in a Vision Pro headset.
I looked at 10 of my own spatial video samples from dozens I shot, plus a couple of panoramic photos from Storm King Arts Center and southwest England, and some HDR photos of my family in the Meadowlands…
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