I’m balancing on a tightrope, 3,000 feet above the Nordic fjords. When I look into the watery abyss, my abdomen flutters. So, with a few flicks of my index finger, I swapped Scandinavia for Pangea, where I’m playing with velociraptors that come within inches of my face to smell me and size me up. Next, I find myself at a current sanctuary for dehorned rhinos, so close that I can trust the majestic creatures’ individual eyelashes (plus, do rhinos have eyelashes?).
I haven’t been playing around the world with a passport and a DeLorean. I’m in Culver City, California, using Apple’s Vision Pro headset to move around. Earlier this month, the tech monolith invited me to one of the first screenings of its original studio content made for the system. My experience was overwhelming and moving, followed immediately by great anxiety about the implications the system might have on filmed entertainment and our broader social and cultural norms.
On a sleepy post-Oscar weekday, I was ushered into an Apple office filled with soft beige fabrics. I was fitted to the system by a person with the concierge doctor’s bedside method, locking the headset in place with single and double loop bands. I was told that the Vision Professional’s burden should be distributed evenly between my forehead and neck (unimaginable, paradoxically, given the devastating effect of years spent staring at an iPhone).
After a full facial scan and brief orientation, I soon caught the rhythm of the mixed reality machine. An ideal reproduction of my vision appeared in the headset, along with an apps menu. Something I checked instantly became selectable. My index finger and thumb served as {hardware}.
My eyes were the cursor arrow and my fingers were the mouse, it was set. VisionPro was introduced to tech bloggers and is now gorgeously displayed in Apple stores around the world, but this was the first time the company showed off its original content to the press. This included immersive shorts shot with proprietary cameras, which deliver stunning panoramic views with palm-sweating depth and legibility.
The original Apple Immersive “Pterosaur Seashore”.
The first content presented to me was “Avatar: The Approach of Water” by James Cameron. I was walked through steps to watch the film in theater mode, which recreated the theatrical experience with alarming accuracy (I even chose my “seat,” dead center in the style of a digital movie theater, as I do at any physical AMC location ). I’ll spare you the superlatives, but watching Cameron’s Na’vi species fly past my face on the back of a whale made me dizzy. It evoked some of my earliest memories of going to the movies and brought with it a new form of wonder. I was warned endlessly, especially as a reporter defending the film industry, that digital reality will shift paradigms – and I watched every risk dissolve because the technology simply wasn’t there. there. At Professional Visionary, it seems that this moment is closer than ever. People say that technology has existed in different or superior varieties, especially competitor Mark Zuckerberg in his dubious assessment of the Apple system, but as a lay person? No, it was not.
I then watched a studio session with Alicia Keys where she mixed her song “No One” with Daybreak Penn’s iconic reggae track “No No No”. My proximity to Keys left me a little breathless (she has wonderful skin, by the way, which immediately made me think that the experience is going to go to the necessary very comfortable being viewed in this tremendous high definition medium – hydrate!). Lost in the music, it occurred to me that I was sitting between Dominic and an Apple publicist, swaying and humming in a silent room. Only I can hear the audio. This made me uncomfortable, but it was nothing I or any other client couldn’t overcome. It also occurred to me that, someday, an industry like air travel could be reshaped by technologies like this. Rows and rows of people trying to escape the hell of modern flying by wearing headphones, dancing or playing games or watching MMA on a dead, silent plane while the crew appears to be on. I shared this situation with the CEO of a manufacturing company this week, who gave a straightforward response: “We are one step closer to becoming the fat Wall-E bubble people who sit in recliners and watches TV all his life. ” That won’t happen tomorrow, however, mainly because buying the system means shelling out almost $4,000. It is significantly cheaper to look at the seatback screen.
After the Nordic highliner, the dinosaur playtime, and my time with the glamorous rhinos, I screened the first sports activity film shot with Apple’s immersive cameras. Following the Major League Soccer Cup, the film was shot in 8K 3D, offered a 180-degree view and came with spatial audio. As I watched a fixed camera erected on top of the football goal and saw the total discipline of the players vividly fighting for glory, I heard cash registers ringing. Vision Professional can and will instantly promote itself as an unprecedented viewing experience for professional sports. At the end of the film, the successful football team opened several bottles of champagne. A cork flew into the camera so instantly that I instinctively put up my fingers to defend myself.
Overall, I watched half an hour of footage. The system got hot, especially around my forehead, about halfway through. However, I barely saw that this could probably be a problem over time. What is immediately clear is the possibility of filmmakers creating fascinating content for such a sensory system – and, perhaps, how many will denounce it as the final downfall of cinema as we know it. I thought about the serene forests I “walked” through during my demo, zooming in on the raindrops hitting the tree leaves, and how transformative vision professional content can be for people living with conditions like PTSD. Could I ultimately address my concern about heights through an advertising solution?
Probably the most disturbing conclusion was a thought that also persists. After I kicked the system and got back to my life, the real world felt like a huge disappointment for a while. No improvements, no refinement and fewer perspectives. That’s good information for Apple, not so much for people stuck with the headphone jack.
