Why You Can Trust CNET Spatial Video: Our Biggest Questions About the iPhone 15 Pro's Immersive Feature
The iPhone 15 Pro will record 3D videos for Vision Pro. Will this make more people want to try recording spatial memories?
- Nearly 20 years writing about tech, and over a decade reviewing wearable tech, VR, and AR products and apps
It's your kid's birthday party. The candles are being lit. You quickly grab your iPhone 15 Pro to capture the moment. But, wait! Are you going to record that in spatial video for your future Vision Pro headset?
Apple's biggest new product, the Apple Vision Pro, isn't arriving until early 2024. But the Vision Pro was still part of the conversation during Apple's latest iPhone and Watch event. Apple's high-end AR/VR headset has bleeding-edge features and promises to be a complete "spatial computer" to redefine a recently resparked mixed-reality hardware landscape. One of its biggest -- and strangest -- features is its ability to record and replay 3D spatial video clips that can be viewed later like snippets of immersive memories. Apple's latest iPhones, however, will be able to record those spatial videos, too, months before the Vision Pro even arrives.
I wasn't sure if Apple would add a spatial camera feature to its iPhones ahead of the Vision Pro. (I actually thought it would happen after the headset's release.) But then again, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: If you want a spatial computer to be a great place for some sort of future 3D memories, don't you need to get used to capturing those memories in the first place?
What exactly is a spatial video?
Apple uses the term spatial video, but we're basically talking about an immersive 3D video clip. Google experimented with its own VR180 3D video platform for YouTube that was VR-compatible years ago, and even developed stereoscopic cameras for it. How Apple's spatial video platform works is a bit more mysterious, though.
Apple hasn't said if this spatial video format will be compatible anywhere else and, right now, it doesn't seem likely. But then again, we're still a ways out from Apple's Vision Pro launch.
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Do you need to activate a special mode to record these videos?
It's unclear, but I think it's likely. The extra processing to make a spatial video work seems to involve power that the iPhone 15 Pro has that other phones don't. My concern in that case will be whether you need to decide which mode you want before committing to a video recording. If I'm capturing a little birthday moment, am I choosing a regular video or a spatial video that's potentially only viewable on another device? Do I have to choose? And if I choose spatial, can I still share it with others easily?
How large are the spatial video files, and is there a recording limit?
Again, two big questions for me. Any limits on length obviously affect what you'd choose to shoot, while storage space could be a factor, too. Limiting the recording length would solve this. We'll find out soon enough.
How will spatial memories work with Apple's other Memories?
One final thought in my head: Apple's already in the memory business. Photos, the upcoming Journal app -- these are all memories. Apple has a Memories part of its Photos app, too.
Spatial videos are a whole new sort of immersive memory, but will they dovetail with Memories as they surface in Apple's own Photos app? Will we get automatically curated highlights?
I remember what VR180 videos felt like. They lived on YouTube, but they needed to be viewed in VR headsets. At least Google had its own cheap cardboard viewers for phones, though. Will Apple have another, more affordable way to enjoy these spatial video captures than its $3,500 Vision Pro?
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Will this be the beginning of a whole new change to Apple's cameras?
Apple's technology trickles down from its Pro models, and spatial video capture is bound to move across the iPhone line someday, too. That might require lidar sensors in other phones -- or maybe not. (Google figured out a way to bypass that.)
Spatial video capture was clearly the most peripheral of Apple's iPhone 15 Pro improvements and one that'll have the least immediate impact. But maybe this feature, launched now, is an early test that will be followed through in greater detail a year in the future.
So many questions, so few answers. We won't know more until Apple launches its spatial video recording feature later this fall. And even then, we won't really know the rest until the Apple Vision Pro launches in 2024.