Apple readies iPhone 15 Pro Spatial Video recording for Vision Pro with new iOS 17.2 beta

If you're planning on treating yourself to a new $3,500 Vision Pro in 2024 you're probably already thinking about how cool those Spatial Videos are going to be. Essentially 3D videos that can be viewed on the Vision Pro headset, they're set to be pretty impressive. The headset can record them using its stereo cameras, but that's less than ideal. Thankfully, the iPhone 15 Pro is going to be capable of capturing Spatial Videos as well, and it's now a step closer to doing that.

Spatial Video support is now part of the latest iOS 17.2 beta, allowing people to capture the 3D videos using little more than an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max. The iOS 17.2 update is currently in its second beta and we can expect a couple more before the release is ready for public availability. But we're getting there, and those who are already running the iOS 17,2 beta 2 update have been sharing how it works.

Once enabled in the Settings app, capturing Spatial Video is done via the existing Camera app. The iPhone prompts the user to turn the video into landscape mode and from there everything works in much the same way as capturing any video does today. The files are saved in 1080p at 30 frames per second and one minute of video takes up around 130MB of storage space.

For those wondering, the Spatial Videos can be viewed back on standard devices, so you won't need a Vision Pro to see them. However, viewing them on other devices like the iPhone means you will simply see the normal 2D version instead.

With that in mind, there is a school of thought that it might be worth just capturing all of your videos in Spatial Video from here on out, so long as that 30 frames per second, 1080p format isn't something that will be a problem for you. If you do go that route you'll already have plenty of Spatial Video content ready to go when your new headset arrives.

Unfortunately, we don't yet know when that will be. Apple hasn't given anyone a concrete release window for its mixed reality headset and has instead simply said that the device will arrive in early 2024. That leaves plenty of scope for wiggle room, but we can be pretty confident that a release will happen within the first few months of the year. That is, unless Apple misses its release date - we're still waiting for the AirPower charging pad, after all.