The number of people with a 3D camera in their pocket will soon reach hundreds of millions, as all iPhone 16 models can capture spatial photos and spatial videos.
Spatial video is Apple's term for stereoscopic 3D video using the Apple HEVC Stereo Video Profile format.
Currently spatial videos can only be captured by iPhone 15 Pro models and Apple Vision Pro itself, but all iPhone 16 models will be able to capture them. It's now a standard iPhone feature.
Apple also announced that iPhone 16 will be able to capture spatial photos. Previously only Vision Pro could capture spatial photos.
Exclusively, the iPhone 16 series also has Spatial Audio Recording in spatial videos, meaning audio will sound like it's coming from the direction of its source when the video is being viewed in Vision Pro.
David Heaney
Spatial videos can be viewed natively in Apple Vision Pro or Pico 4 Ultra, and the Meta Horizon app lets you easily upload them to your Meta account's cloud storage to be viewed on your Quest headset.
If you have a different VR headset, such as a native PC VR headset, you can use the iPhone app Spatialify to convert spatial videos to regular SBS 3D for viewing.
Platforms like YouTube don't yet natively support uploading spatial videos, though you can also use Spatialify's conversion feature for this.
David Heaney
At its WWDC conference back in June Apple announced an upcoming update to Final Cut Pro which will add support for editing spatial videos, including adding "immersive titles and effects", and Vimeo revealed it plans to natively support the format in future, alongside a visionOS app for viewing spatial videos.
