Las Vegas Sphere Potential?

[fullauto]

U2 can be a dirty word around here, but having watched a couple of livestreams from the last two shows out of Sphere, my immediate thought was ‘this has to be filmed for Apple Vision.’

Could a show/event be filmed and packaged for the Vision Pro? Seems like a great opportunity. Are Apple involved with Sphere at all?

 

[zakarhino]

Could a show/event be filmed and packaged for the Vision Pro?

Yes, they can.

There was not much talk about this but Apple have actually designed their own unique ultra high resolution 360 degree camera system for capturing events for Vision Pro. They have already captured some of their Apple Music live artists events using this technology and are apparently in the process of using it for future Apple TV+ shows so that there's day one content at launch. One of the demo segments at WWDC for the headset was watching an NBA game courtside via this high res 360 camera, apparently the ambition is to broadcast NBA games live using these cameras.

The company behind The Sphere had to develop similar but distinct technology to capture ultra high res video for The Sphere, in fact they created an entire production company and facility just for making Sphere content. So there is certainly a crossover, the difference is that Apple's captures have to be 3D whereas the Sphere is 2D.

But consider that the environments in Vision Pro are entirely digital, they do not have to be played back on a physical spherical display. I think Apple are more likely to film artists on a set in a green screen studio and augment it with whatever content they want. It's likely cheaper and you can achieve a lot more with a fully 3D digital scene.

With that being said I would still like to see 3D captures of real Sphere events for Vision Pro because for me I prefer to feel like I'm being transported to somewhere real. You get the crowd too so it feels a lot more social and less isolating. Same reason we'll see Vision Pro captures for Coachella and other events, people want to experience the energy of the event just as much as seeing the artist.

 

[fullauto]

That’s great info, thank you for the insight!

Yeah I guess you have to think about a boundary for the user in the environment, so say you’re front row centre or general admission/floor, it’s going to have to be filmed from a few viewpoints to be immersive, you have say a meter or two boundary around you, so that would sort that out as far as user experience. You couldn’t walk around the show obviously.

Sphere and Apple Vision is like VR in sort-of VR. It could be spectacular. I had no idea about the production company, that’s pretty awesome. What a great place to work (photo/video guy).

I thought about the green screen and simulated crowd but compared to an actual show, or, combination of shows into a single show, that would be so cool to experience.

 

[Chuckeee]

With that being said I would still like to see 3D captures of real Sphere events for Vision Pro because for me I prefer to feel like I'm being transported to somewhere real. You get the crowd too so it feels a lot more social and less isolating. Same reason we'll see Vision Pro captures for Coachella and other events, people want to experience the energy of the event just as much as seeing the artist.

I’m not much of a sports fan. But I could imagine Attending some game where you could “walk” around the field in 3-D during the middle of the action.

Not for me but I could definitely see that would be very appealing for some sports fan fanatics