Marvel Is Making An Hour-Long 'What If' Mixed Reality Experience For Apple Vision Pro

The multiverse is the narrative backdrop for Marvel and ILM Immersive in exploring "What If..." on Apple Vision Pro.

The upcoming What If…? – An Immersive Story is described as a "Disney+ Original story coming exclusively" to Apple's platform in passthrough mixed reality, offering an hour-long experience. Teased as releasing soon with more details to come, Disney, Marvel and ILM are promising to take fans across alternate Marvel histories in both VR and AR up close with animated characters from the Disney+ series.

Disney has a storied history of using VR and AR technologies in a variety of ways, from teaming with The Void for Star Wars and Marvel VR walk-through experiences with incredible haptic effects, to immersive showrooms for visualizing rides, lands, and movies, to the Disney Movies VR app from 2016 and the recent home VR releases of games like Vader Immortal and Tales From The Galaxy's Edge. At WWDC23 last year, when Vision Pro was announced, Apple and Disney announced a partnership bringing immersive content based on Disney's brands to the headset.

Details are light still, but placing a Marvel fan at the center of a multiversal story with hand tracking certainly sounds intriguing. We'll be curious how much of the experience plays out in your physical room and how much happens in completely immersive environments, and we'll have updates about the app as soon as we learn a bit more about it.