Spatial video recording is coming to third-party camera apps, though they won’t be available on the App Store until iOS 18 launches for public consumption.
The new spatial media APIs in iOS 18 that will enable developers to adopt spatial photos and videos in third-party apps is discussed in a WWDC developer session. Basically, Apple has opened up the private API it used to implement spatial photo and video capture in the iPhone’s stock Camera app on iOS 17.2 and later.
Some third-party apps like Spatiality already offer 4K spatial video capture in high dynamic range (HDR) to provide more detailed shadows and highlights.
That being said, however, the vast majority of apps available on the App Store don’t offer capturing spatial media in the Vision Pro format. With the new API, developers using Apple’s public camera frameworks can quickly implement spatial video recording without doing all the heavy lifting themselves.
iOS 18: Spatial video recording coming to third-party apps
The API abstracts away all of the complexity of synchronization, camera calibration, encoding, and metadata writing. It can save captured stereoscopic media in Apple’s standard formats: stereo MVHEVC for video and stereo HEIC for photos.
One thing this API doesn’t do is enable spatial video recording on older iPhones. To capture proper stereoscopic video, you need vertically aligned cameras which Apple began adding to iPhones starting with the iPhone 15 Pros.
Also, you’ll need to be patient a bit because third-party apps cannot take advantage of the new API before iOS 18 is publicly available. Apple typically starts accepting apps built using the latest frameworks a week or two before launch.
Our take: More choices for iPhone photographers
This is a positive development for iPhone photographers as it will result in more choices for anyone interested in capturing stereoscopic media.
Apple’s Vision Pro headset can take spatial photos and videos out of the box. Folks without the $3500 headset can use an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max to capture stereoscopic images and videos (the stock Camera app limits spatial video capture to 1080p resolution, 30 frames per second and SDR).
And with the free Spatial Viewer app from Softorino, you can convert spatial videos captured with an iPhone into a format suitable for playback on Meta’s headsets.