SEPTEMBER 22, MONDAY

FLAT SCREEN 3D

For a year now I have been making spatial (3D) photographs and videos with my iPhone 16 Pro Max. Somehow Apple has found a way to make 3D videos by using two of the inch apart lenses on the iPhone.

I have been puzzling about how Apple does this since I started making these videos a year and a half ago and even whether spatial videos have the same impact as flat videos.

The biggest issue with spatial videos is how difficult they are to share. I only know of one high quality way of looking at these videos. It is on the Apple Vision Pro a pair of goggles with an advanced computer system inside and multiple cameras. It is a very high tech machine and very expensive, $3500. But until I bought it I couldn’t even see my spatial videos in 3D. I could see them on the flat screen of my iPad and they looked great there but they were no different on a flat screen than ordinary video. But when seen on the Vision Pro I was suddenly immersed in the videos. When I look at my spatial videos of the Indian wedding I attended in February a year ago I am right back there again surrounded dancers three feet away and bathed in immersive sound.

I have realized more and more that the Vision Pro is a marvelous device for an old man living along. When I look at my own spatial videos I can maneuver around from video to video simply by looking at prompts and clicking my fingers while even from my lap. It is magic. When I look at a football game on normal television on the Vision Pro the virtual screen in front of me is five feet away, ten feet high and fifteen feet wide and I can’t see anything around me in the room. I am totally immersed. It is great for normal television, streaming movies, sports and concerts of all kinds where I have a very front row expensive seat. But one slight problem is that while I can watch regular TV shows, there is still very little spatial content, because only the few people who own Vision Pros can see it. But as long as I stay in my own bubble the Vision Pro is marvelous.

The problem is sharing the videos that I make or what I can stream. Only one person can look at it at a time, we can’t sit side by side on the couch and share the experience. I am all by myself in my own cocoon which is fine when no one else is around but awkward if they are. And even when I want to share the experience by putting the Vision Pro on someone else’s head it is not that easy. First of all the other person has to go through a slightly complicated process of having the Vision Pro adjust itself to his or her eyes and face. Every person needs a new setup. And when the Vision Pro finally recognizes them there is the problem of maneuvering along by simply looking at a prompt and then clicking your fingers, which takes a little getting to. There is no keyboard, although a virtual keyboard appears when you need it.

So the final result is that I feel as if, at 88, I am living in the future in my own bubble with no one else able to enter my magic world. I can tell others how marvelous the device is and how intense the experiences are, but it is as if I have just returned from Mars. There is no way to convince anyone else what I am seeing.