Apple Immersive Video takes Apple Vision Pro owners on the field for Super Bowl LVIII highlights.
A new 4-minute video from Apple features highlights from Super Bowl LVIII with the Kansas City Chiefs vs. San Francisco 49ers. Clips take you into the locker room, along the sidelines and even onto the field for practice and celebrations.
What Is Apple Immersive Video?
The Apple Immersive Video format is 180-degree video with 8K resolution, stereoscopic 3D, and spatial audio. It's served from the Apple TV+ subscription service with much higher bitrate than many other immersive video platforms.
We highly praised Apple Immersive Video in our Vision Pro review. It's not possible to cast or record Apple Immersive Video though, so you'll have to take our word for it unless you have access to a Vision Pro.
Unlike traditional broadcast media, Apple delivers these to Apple Vision Pro from intimate angles with the same sort of wide field of view high resolution stereoscopic 3D that startup NextVR was known for before it was quietly acquired by Apple in 2020.
The result is a jaw-dropping demonstration of the power of VR for anyone who might need to have their eyes opened to the potential of the medium as a vehicle to some of the world's biggest sporting events.
Are you ready to go to the Super Bowl in VR?
Super Bowl LIX?
Over the weekend, Kendrick Lamar announced he would deliver the "Apple Music" Halftime Show for Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans on February 9, 2025. Usher delivered the Apple Music Halftime Show for LVIII.
The Halftime Show is notably absent from the 4-minute Apple Immersive Video clip Apple just released, and the company hasn't announced anything for Vision Pro in connection with the musical portion of the Super Bowl. We'll have the latest if that changes, for now though, this view into the main event of Super Bowl LVIII offers a tantalizing tease of what could be in store for the future.
Broadcast rights for major sporting events are complicated and expensive, with access and costs negotiated on a per-region basis. NextVR was a pioneer here during VR's first consumer wave from about 2015 to 2019, with high quality streams made for VR featuring major sporting events, like weekly NBA games live as they happened.
Now backed by Apple's budget for the broadcast rights to major events and camera systems purpose-built for Apple Immersive Video, NextVR's technology could conceivably take you closer to a performance like Lamar's than anyone else can get, even from a $10K seat in the stadium.
As Apple likely readies a lower cost (and hopefully lower weight) follow-up headset to Vision Pro, its library of 3D movies as well as Apple's own high-quality Immersive Video format could emerge as a major system seller.
If you've got an Apple Vision Pro, the 4-minute video is worth your time to take a quick trip to the Super Bowl.
