Apple will soon allow users to upload their own spatial videos to Vision Pro demo units in hopes to really drive home the headset’s value proposition.
When it comes to plonking down $3,500 for Vision Pro, seeing truly is believing, as anyone who wants to buy Apple’s first mixed reality headset can sign up for an in-store demo. That is, anyone in the US, as the company still hasn’t announced when it’s launching Vision Pro internationally.
As reported by 9 to 5 Mac, it was discovered in the iOS 17.5 beta 2 software release that Apple will not only be serving up its regular slate of pre-loaded Vision Pro spatial videos during in-store demos, but also allow users to upload their own content soon.
Spatial videos captured on a prospective owner’s iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will be transferred to Vision Pro, which will notably have a limit to keep the whole process snappy. According to message obtained by 9 to 5 Mac, all files will be deleted immediately after the demo session for privacy reasons.
“We recommend selecting shorter videos and up to X items to ensure quick transfer times,” the message reads. “Your items will be deleted off of Apple Vision Pro at the end of the demo and will not be accessible to anyone else. You will have the option to delete your items on Apple Vision Pro at any time during the demo.”
It’s been widely rumored that spatial video capture will be a more prominent feature moving forward on successive iPhone models, reportedly arriving on a wider swath of iPhone 16 models in the near future.
Although we’re not expecting a specific announcement as such, we’ll be following Apple’s WWDC 2024 when it kicks off in June, which is said to showcase updates to visionOS in addition to the regular deluge of software feature updates for the company’s wider family of devices.
In the meantime, you can actually already watch your iPhone-captured spatial videos on Quest, as Meta has officially supported the MV-HVEC video codec involved in Apple’s spatial video capture.