Red Bull and Jonathan Griffith Productions have released Touching the Sky on Quest, now letting you follow wingsuit base jumpers in the European Alps and a paragliding team across the Himalayas in Pakistan in an hour-long immersive documentary.
Captured using custom-built 3D, 360 cameras, the documentary lets you accompany wingsuit and base jump athletes Fred Fugen and Vincent Cotte, who take you on two wingsuit flights in the Italian Dolomites.
“The biggest challenge was in freefall, to fly with such a camera,” Fugen explains in a Red Bull blog post. “It took a lot of work to collaborate with the drone pilots who were in the helicopter. You had to adapt and synchronise together to do the jumps and freefalls. We didn’t have much training together [beforehand], so combining our skillsets was challenging.”
The documentary also features Aaron Durogati and his partner Matthias Weger as they paraglide across the Pakistani Himalayas, who aimed to get as high and deep in to the highest mountains on the planet.
“Flying in Pakistan is quite extreme because the mountains are huge and take expert technique to manage,” explains Durogati. “The thermal flows are unique to those in the Alps. If something happened there, you’re by yourself, and it’s unlikely that rescue helicopters can come to pick you up. In the Alps, you can almost always count on a rescue.”
You can watch the hour-along documentary for free over on Meta Quest TV, exclusively for Quest 2 and above.
If you’re interested in how it was all recorded, Red Bull has published a thirty-minute behind-the-scenes video, capturing the raw experience of what it takes to document such an amazing feat.
