Spatial video is just Apple’s term for a stereoscopic 3D video. Here is my hands-on review of Vision Pro’s spatial video feature.
One of the Vision Pro’s features is the ability to capture “spatial video” that would enable you to relive special moments. Apple was vague about what spatial video actually was but they did show supposed demos that show a change in perspective as you look at it from one side or another. This effect is called parallax and is something that traditional 3D cameras cannot do.
Unfortunately, Vision Pro doesn’t actually have parallax. I tried out the Vision Pro and found that there is no such effect. When you move side to side, the image just appears slightly skewed, but the perspective does not change.
Spatial video is just a regular stereoscopic 3D video, the same as the ones you’ve seen many times before at theaters, theme parks, and gaming consoles such as Nintendo 3DS.
Do you need an iPhone 15 Pro to capture spatial video? Older iPhone models can capture 3D videos and 3D photos if they have lenses that are side by side (not diagonal). To capture 3D videos on an older iPhone, use i3DMovieCam. i3DMovieCam records videos from two of your phone’s lenses simultaneously and saves them either as independent videos or side by side videos. You can view the side by side 3D video on Meta Quest.
It’s basically the inverse of 360 video. Granted, Apple LiDAR is trash for anything but little app games and diversions like this, but it’s fun to play with for a couple of minutes. Still, I’m excited to seem them advancing it – I presume for use with their upcoming iGoggles, but hopefully in a format that can be leveraged by more generic VR hardware.
Yes spatial video is specifically designed for Vision Pro. I think Apple won’t be interested in making it easy to view in a generic VR headset, but they might make it viewable in AR. If it is, then I’m guessing it’s not too hard to make a webvr app that can view the spatial video.