Recently, foreign media RoadtoVR shared the experience of using Apple Vision Pro when taking a plane, and said that the headset is the best movie experience you can get when you take a plane.
The original text is as follows:
After an eight-hour flight, I can say that Apple has largely implemented the Vision Pro use case of watching movies on airplanes. But some key improvements will make it more appealing.
No one was expecting an eight-hour flight. Whether sleeping, reading, or working, people want a way to pass the time and distract themselves from the noisy cabin, the turbulence, and the feeling of being like a sardine stuffed into a metal pipe.
The in-seat screen offers a selection of curated movies and TV shows, providing a small refuge from this chaotic environment.
I'm a person who loves cinema movies, those movies with direction and action, really deserve the big screen and great audio.
While the selection of movies offered by the plane is not bad, over the years I often avoided watching some of the movies I really wanted to watch because I felt that they deserved better for small, low-quality seat screens.
If only I could somehow get the cinema on the plane.
As it turns out, this can be achieved.
Vision Pro on an airplane
Using the Vision Pro with AirPods Pro 2 on international flights is an extraordinary movie-watching experience that can reasonably be described as bringing a movie theater to an airplane.
While there are still some obvious ways to improve the experience of using a headset on an airplane, I was blown away at how it made me almost forget I was on a plane.
Using the Apple Vision Pro on an airplane is really very effective because Apple has done a few things to make sure that the use cases are not just theoretical, but considered from end-to-end.
First of all, the Vision Pro has a special tracking mode called "Travel Mode" (not to be confused with Airplane Mode) that allows the headset to lock the floating screen in front of the user even when the aircraft is moving. Without it, the headset detects the plane's movement and causes the screen to fly away, or slowly deviate at best.
Travel mode managed to lock the screen perfectly in front of me, with no drift throughout the film. I put the screen in front of me and made it 20 feet big.
Then there's the issue of the quality of the display. When it comes to movie viewing, it's not just the resolution that matters. The headset's HDR capabilities combined with MicroOLED, which provides true blacks, really make the movie shine.
However, if it's not easy to find high-quality video content and transfer it to the headset, then all these advantages don't matter.
Luckily, it was as easy as opening the Apple TV app before my flight, and I downloaded Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) in 4K resolution, surround sound, HDR, and 3D for offline viewing on the headset.
Indulge in it
The crazy thing is that despite being stuck in an economy seat, this is the best way for me to watch Mad Max, and the quality is great. The 3D is better than what you see in a movie theater, and the contrast is good. Using the AirPods Pro 2 also gave me a very impressive audio experience, and I couldn't believe that the noise cancellation feature isolated me from the plane noise.
With high-quality video on the big screen, great sound with noise cancellation, and movies that are constantly in action, I was so immersed in audiovisual reality that I almost forgot I was on a plane. In fact, I have to admit that I was so fascinated by seeing that I forgot to screenshot and screen record for this post.
But I'm not completely unaware...... I did it on purpose. I didn't tune the immersion to 100% (which would completely envelop me and make me look like I wasn't on the plane at all), which meant I could still look to the side to see what's going on in the cabin, so I didn't need to worry about missing a drink when the flight attendants came over.
Not for everyone
My viewing experience with the Vision Pro on a plane is much better than my viewing experience on a seat screen or laptop.
But it's not a perfect experience, and there are a few things that need to be improved before everyone wants to watch movies on the plane in this way.
First, the obvious. The Vision Pro is large and even bigger in the box. At $3499, it's not the kind of device you'd cram into a backpack without any protection. The headset in the storage box takes up 80% of the space in my luggage.
When I was ready to take out the headset, I took the case out of my backpack, unzipped it and put it on my lap, then pulled out the headset and battery, plugged it in, and then put the case back under the seat, which was a rather awkward process. In the cramped space of an economy class seat, this is a bit cumbersome.
The only real fix is a smaller, more affordable headset. If they can finally give up the battery pack, so much the better. But in the meantime, it's not hard to imagine an airline offering a Vision Pro headset in a compartment for first-class seating. Not only are these permanently powered by tethers, but passengers don't need to carry bulky boxes on board for a great movie-watching experience.
Although hand tracking works very well considering the lighting in the cabin, the Vision Pro occasionally gives me a "tracking lost" message when I'm walking around – which may be a limitation of Travel Mode. Luckily, when this happens, Apple will thoughtfully pause the movie, and after three or four seconds, the tracking will come back and the movie will start playing again.
This happened a few times while I was watching the movie. Because I understand the techniques and challenges of tracking a headset in this worst-case scenario, it didn't bother me too much. But for the average person, if it happens multiple times, it can be quite devastating to the movie experience.
If you're using a headset on an airplane, visual and audio isolation is important, but it can make it difficult for others to get your attention. The perspective feature is certainly helpful here, as it is more difficult to see things from the corner of the eye due to a narrower field of view than the natural field of view, which makes it harder for someone to get your attention (such as wanting to politely interrupt your passengers so they can leave their seats and go to the bathroom).
And, of course, battery life. After watching a full two-hour episode of Mad Max: Fury Road, the Vision Pro was only 35% charged. While that meant I had an hour left to work with, it was a significant limitation to only be able to watch one full movie on an eight-hour flight.
Yes, I could have taken a big external battery and plugged it into the Vision Pro to extend the runtime, but now we're talking about adding more volume, weight, and cables.
Personally, I'm willing to put up with the hassle of watching a movie with excellent audio and visual quality on a plane.
But I realize that not everyone cares so much about how movies look and sound. For these people, Vision Pro isn't convenient enough to bring value to them. However, once it gets smaller (and loses the battery pack), this use case will be attractive to more people.