Apple's Vision Pro Headset Is Also A 3D Camera
Apple has taken the wraps off its long-anticipated mixed-reality headset, a product we now know is called the Apple Vision Pro. This wearable spatial computer, as Apple calls it, features a massive amount of tech packed into what is ultimately a very slim and small package, at least relative to the competing models on the market. One of the notable elements that'll arrive with the Vision Pro is Apple's first 3D camera, which the company says is able to capture videos and audio in a way that can only be truly experienced using a headset like the Vision Pro. Unlike your iPhone's camera, the 3D camera on the headset can, quite obviously, record 3D video and pair it with spatial audio.
This results in a life-like experience that makes videos more immersive, allowing users to, in a way, actually re-experience whatever was recorded rather than passively consume it through a screen. Contributing to this immersive effect is the spatial audio, which means that sounds will seem to originate from their natural locations in the environment around you as captured by the hardware at the time the video was recorded.
Apple Vision Pro brings life-size images to your living room
According to Apple, all of the videos and photos captured using the Vision Pro's 3D camera will offer a more immersive experience compared to content captured with ordinary content. That's not to say that you can't experience your existing Photos library with the headset, however, and Apple notes that panoramas can be viewed wrapped around the user — though only if those panoramas were captured with an iPhone, by the sounds of it.
The content appears within large windows placed in the user's own environment, meaning the videos are watched on a large virtual screen that, in a way, is like a huge living painting positioned in one's living room or office. These videos can be played alongside other apps available on the Apple Vision Pro, and they include expected controls like the ability to scrub through the videos, pause videos, expand photos to larger sizes, and similar. To no one's surprise, the camera and headset both play well with other Apple products like FaceTime, as well.