Apple Immersive Video & Spatial Computing
Apple Vision Pro
Apple Immersive Video
and Spatial Computing
July 2026
A lot has happened since the WWDC26 special edition I sent in June. There's been a wave of major brand launches and a small bevy of behind-the-scenes production stories, and it's exciting to have this much immersive video content to cover in one newsletter. A Paris Opera dancer walking through the halls of the Palais Garnier. Lamborghini's supercars at true scale in your living room. Ice Dive picking up multiple wins at the Telly Awards.
A new theme is brewing around immersive storytelling: a brand-new Hollywood role, a new academic book on narrative grammar, and hard-won lessons from the field are all pointing to the same conclusion. A new cinematic language is evolving around immersive film. There's a lot here, and I think we're going to keep seeing this wave of great content in future editions.
— Tim
The Big Story
A Star Dancer, the Paris Opera, and Ten Vision Pro Headsets
The Opéra national de Paris has opened a permanent Apple Immersive Video installation at the Palais Garnier — ten Vision Pro headsets in the Rotonde du Glacier, running July 1 through November 30. Directed by Matthieu Genre, the 10-minute, 180° stereoscopic experience follows principal dancer Bleuenn Battistoni through spaces normally closed to the public: rehearsal studios beneath the dome, costume fittings, and the rooftop above the opera house's famous domes.
Co-produced with INIT Lab, scenography by Tom Ducarouge, this is a rare case of a centuries-old cultural institution building Apple Immersive Video directly into its physical visitor experience, rather than treating it as a separate app or download.
Tickets are a €12 add-on to any Palais Garnier in-person visit. No home viewing options have been announced.
Paris Opera announcement | Sortiraparis review | YouTube teaser
Back to topFrom the Field — Productions & Creators
A New Hollywood Role, Built for a Medium With No Frame
Matthew Celia, co-founder of Emmy-winning immersive studio Light Sail VR, used a session at AWE USA 2026 to make the case for a new production role: the immersive supervisor. Just as digital filmmaking produced the DIT, and VFX-heavy productions produced the VFX supervisor, Celia argues immersive video needs someone whose entire job is thinking about the audience's experience before the audience ever puts on a headset. Real-world examples already exist — The Faceless Lady, The Boys Gen V franchise capture, and the Emmy-winning SNL 50th Anniversary Special live broadcast.
"The audience is the camera. Every single person in the headset is making their own shot, every second."
Read the announcement | Light Sail VR
A Narrative Grammar for Presence-Based Media
Cinema of Presence, a new open-access book by editor and stereoscopic/VR specialist Miłosz Hermanowicz, is now live, published in English and Polish through the Łódź Film School's vnLab. Drawing on Hermanowicz's own work in 3D and VR production, the book systematizes narrative tools for stereoscopic and immersive filmmaking: proximity zones, points of presence, continuity of presence, through case studies ranging from Gravity and Pina to Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder.
It's a rare attempt to build a genuine narrative grammar for presence-based media, rather than treating 3D and VR as a purely technical exercise — worth a look for anyone thinking seriously about Apple Immersive Video storytelling. Read the book
Writing the Rules of High-Altitude Immersive Production
Altitude101 co-founder Amaury Pierlot and director Antoine Baille gave IBC a rare, granular look at the production rules they're inventing in real time for KICK — three French freeriders building and riding a jump deep in the French Alps, ending in a double backflip, shot over two days on the URSA Cine Immersive. Camera height locked to seated eye level. Horizon always leveled. Roughly 10% of shots in motion. Five-to-eight second holds, because viewers need time to look around before the next cut.
"The most important thing is that in immersive, the 'fix it in post' rule doesn't apply."
The same studio applied those lessons to The Longest Day, an amateur triathlete's build-up to the Triathlon World Championships — reviewed by UploadVR as proof that immersive sports storytelling works well beyond simple point-of-view thrills, drawing a line straight through Real Madrid, KICK, and this film.
IBC article | UploadVR review of The Longest Day | Behind the scenes
Behind the BBC Proms — Directing Apple's First Classical Concert for Vision Pro
Director Ian Russell told CineD what it actually took to capture pianist Lukas Sternath's BBC Proms debut in Apple Immersive Video: five URSA Cine Immersive cameras covering the Royal Albert Hall, each producing roughly 16K of stereoscopic data, filmed live with zero retakes. At around 35 minutes, it remains the longest Apple Immersive title to date.
Russell had to unlearn decades of conventional filmmaking instinct — starting with directing a 70-piece orchestra without a single cut, and a one-meter minimum camera clearance that reshaped every camera position in the hall.
CineD interview | Watch on YouTube
Two New Narrative Shorts, One Lit by Candlelight, One Filmed Off-Road
Blackmagic Design published a two-part feature on Henry VIII in Warwick and Aspen Cowgirl, both directed by Keeley Turner and shot by Hugh Hou on the URSA Cine Immersive for the Spatial Film app. Henry VIII in Warwick placed viewers at a candlelit Tudor banquet inside Harvington Hall, lit only by fire, with classically trained theater actors in RSC costumes. Aspen Cowgirl followed riders on horseback through the Colorado backcountry, the camera mounted to an off-road Polaris RZR on a pursuit crane.
Part two digs into post — including how DaVinci Resolve's new immersive patcher tools were used to rotoscope fire alarms out of a protected historical site that couldn't be touched during filming.
Part 1 — Production | Part 2 — Post | Watch on Spatial Film
Celebrating America's 250th, Inside a Revolutionary War Battle
For the Fourth of July, Hugh Hou and Keeley Turner returned to Moore's Creek National Battlefield in North Carolina to film the 250th-anniversary reenactment of the 1776 battle that helped push North Carolina toward independence. Shot in 16K on the URSA Cine Immersive, scripted and directed by Keeley Turner, released free as an 18-minute film.
Watch on Spatial Film | YouTube VR
Also from the Community
- 🏆 Ice Dive Wins Gold and Silver at the Telly Awards — Adventure: Ice Dive picked up a Gold (Craft-Directing, Charlotte Mikkelborg) and Silver (Use of 360 Audio, Oliver Kadel) at the 47th Telly Awards — recognition across both picture and sound for a format where the two are inseparable. Gold win
- 🏀 Courtside in Apple Immersive Video — Amplium captured a Kawasaki Brave Thunders basketball game in Japan with the URSA Cine Immersive, bringing fans courtside in AIV. PetaPixel
Tools & Workflow
Colorfront Adds Live-Ready HLS Export to Its Immersive Pipeline
Colorfront Immersive Utility now exports HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) packages alongside its existing AIVU pipeline — same MV-HEVC encoding, same source video, giving studios both a packaged deliverable and a streaming-ready output in one pass. Multi-tier HLS falls within Apple's recommended 25–100 Mbps average / 50–150 Mbps peak streaming window.
"If you're making content for Apple Vision Pro, this is the tool you want!... Worth every penny." — Duck Grossberg, Founder, Gangway Digital
Read the announcement | App Store | Learn more
Real-Time Preview, From Mac to Headset — Two New Ways
Apple's new Spatial Preview framework, built into macOS 27, makes working with 3D as immediate as editing a PDF. Open a USD or USDZ file on your Mac and it appears on your Vision Pro in a volumetric view — step into an immersive view to see it at full scale, all without ever building a visionOS app. Edits on the Mac update in the headset and vice versa, with SharePlay built in for remote collaborative review.
"Every participant's view updates immediately, eliminating the back and forth of traditional asset review." — Apple
For editors and colorists working in Apple Immersive Video specifically, visionOS 27's new ImmersivePreviewRenderer — part of the Immersive Media Support framework — enables real-time previewing of AIV directly from a Mac during editorial or live production. A more accurate look at how content will feel at final delivery, in headset, while decisions are still being made.
Spatial Preview docs | Live production tools session
Fovii Wants to Be the Trusted Home for Apple Immersive Video
John Racine spent the last year working with AIV filmmakers and studios on productions shot with the URSA Cine Immersive, and kept hitting the same wall: extraordinary work exists, but connecting it with an audience on Vision Pro is harder than it should be. His answer is Fovii — a curated discovery platform built around human curation, cinematic presentation, and what he calls "emotional presence." The visionOS app is listed Coming Soon; film submissions are open now.
"There are amazing filmmakers creating extraordinary work, but bringing those stories to Apple Vision Pro and connecting them with an audience, is still far more difficult than it should be." — John Racine
Read the announcement | fovii.com
Also Worth Noting
- ✂️ AIVU Trimmer — A community-developed macOS tool for lossless trimming of .aivu files without re-encoding, preserving all Apple Immersive metadata. Also exports SBS MP4 for Quest 3 preview and rectilinear 16:9 for flat editing. (community-developed — evaluate before use)
News & Use Cases
Lamborghini Officially Lands on visionOS
Automobili Lamborghini launched its official Vision Pro app on July 6 — free, Vision Pro exclusive. Explore four current models (Temerario, Revuelto, Urus SE, Urus SE Performante) down to their powertrain, spaceframe, and Centro Stile design language; place a 1:1 scale car in Mixed Reality, or step into curated Virtual Reality environments with Spatial Audio engine sound design.
"We aren't just looking at the future of mobility; we are crafting the way people experience it." — Riccardo Bigi, Automobili Lamborghini
App Store | Official launch video | Himels Tech hands-on review
Two Stories Connected to the Disability Community
Apple's new Vision Pro wheelchair eye-control feature, launching this fall, is directly related to Northwestern University's Project DRIVE — an open Wheelchair Digital Interface built by Professor Brenna Argall's lab that translates Vision Pro eye-tracking into wheelchair drive commands. Apple integrated the existing academic research rather than building it from scratch, working alongside LUCI, LifeDrive Mobility, and Team Gleason.
Meanwhile, historian and podcaster Tom Betti wrote about a much more personal use of the same headset. An optic nerve injury at age five left him unable to perceive engineered 3D his entire life — until he put on an Apple Vision Pro at 45 and saw stereoscopic depth for the first time.
A quietly powerful account of how broadly spatial computing's impact can extend.
Northwestern Engineering article | Apple Newsroom | Tom Betti on LinkedIn
Southwest Airlines Swapped Foam Core for Vision Pro
Southwest's Technology Innovation team built MockThru, a custom Vision Pro app that replaces physical foam-core mockups with immersive walkthroughs of customer and employee spaces. At AWE USA 2026, the team demoed it live — walking the audience through AR models at life size, ending with a virtual jet bridge into a full-size plane placed in AR in the venue lobby. The full session video just posted.
MockThru overview | Full AWE session
Building Your Own Spatial Accessory for visionOS 27
visionOS 26 limited spatial accessory tracking to Apple-blessed hardware — the Logitech Muse, the PSVR2 Sense controller. visionOS 27 opens the door for anyone to build one. Developer John Haney dug into Apple's spec to find out what's actually required: a constellation of LEDs, an IMU, a Bluetooth chip — and documented what he still has to figure out to build one himself.
Read the blog post | WWDC26 session 283
Also Worth Noting
- 🎭 40 Headsets, One Synchronized Performance — OrangeCue powered a 40-Vision-Pro synchronized deployment for Lena Herzog's "Trinity — An Immersive Lament in the Age of Extinction" at the Venice Biennale — a novel use case for shared, large-scale headset installations in fine arts. Trailer
- ✈️ Vision Pro Used in Themed Entertainment — Disney's Soarin' Across America team is using Apple Vision Pro to mix music directly inside the physical attraction, replacing scaffolding and extra screens. A compelling real-world example of Vision Pro as a professional production tool. Watch (jump to 9:25)
📰 Also Worth Following
- Last Week in AVP — A weekly roundup of apps and content for Apple Vision Pro.
- Step Into Vision — Step into the world of visionOS development with SwiftUI, RealityKit, and ARKit.
📱 Immersive Content Catalog
For a comprehensive, curated guide to Apple Immersive Video content and spatial computing apps, explore the full catalog at:
New this month: two NASA 3D models (International Space Station, Earth with Clouds) on the 3D Models page, and an early, experimental "Immersive Catalog (beta)" — a 3D gallery view of the catalog you can step inside on Vision Pro.
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