@manton provided a link to a critique of an NBA game created for the Apple Vision Pro. Ben Thompson’s frustration is that an immersive experience is destroyed by cutting between multiple cameras, whereas a single camera mimics what it is like sitting courtside. It’s a very perceptive observation: when you are actually present, you experience things from a single point of view: yours.
I am a low-level sports guy, and a very uninformed tech guy, but as a guy with a doctorate in theater, I instantly saw the possibilities for live theater. Put a single camera in a great seat at a show and just broadcast what it sees. Make the shot wide enough to encompass the stage and allow the spectator to focus where they want (but not do anything someone in the seat next to you couldn’t do – like, for instance, zoom in for a closeup) and broadcast the show. Now the person watching on their Vision Pro would truly feel like there were “there.”
Will theater do this? Doubtful, because we’re all locked into the “but that wouldn’t be The Same mindset.” But had such a setup been available in 2020, perhaps Broadway wouldn’t have had to shut down during the pandemic. And regional theaters, small and large, scattered throughout the country, could make their productions available on an equal basis to every other theater in the country, or the world!
Apple wouldn’t need to produce shows, all they’d have to do is sell the cameras, and perhaps provide a platform for posting.
Thompson is right: Apple has no idea what it has. It’s stuck thinking of Vision Pro as a TV instead of a keyhole!