Apple Vision Pro isn’t slated to launch until early next year, but if you’ve got an iPhone 15 Pro you can already start capturing memories as spatial videos.
With the recent release of iOS 17.2 beta, Apple quietly added its first pass at spatial video capture for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
“Capture spatial video with remarkable depth on iPhone 15 Pro to view in 3D in the Photos app on Apple Vision Pro,” Apple writes in the update’s release notes. “Turn on spatial video capture in Settings > Camera > Formats, then capture spatial videos in Video mode in the Camera app.”
Enabling the mode adds a new Vision Pro icon to the Camera app. Tapping it instructs you to rotate the phone sideways into a landscape view and locks the capture settings to 1,920 × 1,080 at 30 FPS. This allows the phone to capture two video streams from different lenses, then the footage is compared and processed to add depth information to the final video.
An exaggerated example of spatial video playback on Vision Pro
When played back on Vision Pro, the headset’s stereoscopic displays allow users to see the depth as part of the video, but on an iPhone spatial videos play back in monoscopic mode and look no different that a regular video.
Although you don’t have the option to actually watch spatial video yet, it’s kind of nice that Apple is rolling out this feature ahead of the holidays, allowing people to start capturing memories of loved ones today that they might not see for another year.
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max and want to try capturing spatial video yourself, you can join the Apple Beta Software Program to install the iOS 17.2 beta.
