I recorded spatial videos to view on Vision Pro and Quest 3 and you can download them

To help you experience spatial video — and I’d highly recommend that you try it — I’m making available for download some spatial video clips that I shot with an iPhone 15 Pro Max at CES 2024 and MIT Reality Hack, an XR hackathon at MIT Media Lab in January. 

Arguably, spatial videos and spatial photos are the best and most innovative feature of the Apple Vision Pro and could start a revolution in photography and videography. As I’ve said before, this could be the biggest leap in photography and video since the move from black-and-white to color. Viewing a spatial video is more like stepping into a scene than looking at an image or a traditional video.

Also: ZDNET’s Apple Vision Pro review: Fascinating, flawed, and needs to fix 5 things

Of course, stereoscopic 3D videos and photos have been around for several years, but Apple brought them into the mainstream with this implementation in the Vision Pro. We should expect others to jump on board. We’ve already seen it with Meta making it easy to watch spatial videos on the Quest 3. And it will be fascinating to watch what Samsung and Google do with their upcoming XR headset. We should certainly expect other smartphone makers to jump on board by integrating the ability to capture spatial videos and spatial photos, especially since Apple is using MV-HEVC, a 3D video standard that’s been around since 2014.

Since there aren’t a ton of publicly available spatial video clips, I decided to make my clips available for free download and you can grab the files below.

Spatial video clips you can download

• CES 2024, clip 1
• CES 2024, clip 2
• CES 2024, clip 3
• CES 2024, clip 4
• CES 2024, clip 5
• CES 2024, clip 6
• CES 2024, clip 7
• CES 2024, clip 8
• MIT Reality Hack, clip 1
• MIT Reality Hack, clip 2
• MIT Reality Hack, clip 3
• MIT Reality Hack, clip 4
• MIT Reality Hack, clip 5
• MIT Reality Hack, clip 6
• MIT Reality Hack, clip 7
• Vision Pro at Apple Store, clip 1
• Vision Pro at Apple Store, clip 2

Also: ZDNET’s product of the year: Meta Quest 3 is the quiet shocker of 2023

Watch spatial videos on Vision Pro

1. Download the spatial videos to your camera roll on your iPhone or Vision Pro (assuming you have photos syncing across all your Apple devices by default)
2. Open the Photos app on Vision Pro
3. Look to the left to pen the menu bar
4. Select Spatial 
5. All of the spatial videos you have captured or downloaded should be here, select one to watch
6. Once the video opens, select the immersive icon in the upper right corner to enjoy spatial audio and the full immersive video experience

Watch spatial videos on Quest 3

1. Download spatial videos to your iPhone
2. Make sure you have updated your Meta Quest 3 headset to software v62 or higher
3. Open the Meta Quest app
4. Tap Gallery on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen
5. Tap the upload button in the upper right corner
6. Select the spatial videos and tap Add
7. Put on Meta Quest 3
8. Open the Files app
9. Select “Spatial videos” from the menu bar on the left
10. Select the video you want to watch

Also: Meta Quest 3 vs. Apple Vision Pro: How accurate was Zuckerberg’s review?

Because the Apple spatial video format is limited to 1080p for now, the quality of spatial videos on the Meta Quest 3 nearly matches the Apple Vision Pro — although it doesn’t have the full immersive mode where it feels like you step into the scene and the spatial audio isn’t quite as good on Quest’s built-in speakers. Nevertheless, the implementation on Quest 3 is still terrific.