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✈️ The pilot of the plane died because of Apple Vision Pro. Bloomberg reported a tragic incident that occurred in July…
What is compelling about this story is not so much the tragedy itself (remember Woland and his statement about death), but rather the logic of the genre.
✈️ **Airplane pilot died because of Apple Vision Pro ** Bloomberg reported on a tragic incident that occurred in July 2024 while filming an immersive video for Apple Vision Pro. British Paralympic athlete and pilot Claire Lomas has died in a plane crash over the desert in Jordan. There was a 3D camera on her ultralight plane, the material was filmed for the Adventure project - the very videos that Apple uses to explain why the world needs Vision Pro at all.
What is compelling about this story is not so much the tragedy itself (remember Woland and his statement about death), but rather the logic of the genre.
VR sells safe risk. Sitting at home, you put on a helmet and a moment later soar over the desert on a glider, hang over the abyss on one hand, jump into the water from a cliff 27 meters high, watch the volcanic eruption from the front row. At the same time, you don’t spend a ton of money and years of your life on training, organization, transfers, insurance, and so on. The most important thing is that you are not risking anything except the cleanliness of the space around you (in case you get motion sickness). Technology neatly brings you a safe extreme experience right to your sofa 😌
But this magic has an unpleasant underbelly: only the viewer has the sofa. It seems to you that you are almost flying, almost falling, almost standing on the edge of an abyss. The brain believes, the body tenses - the wow effect has been achieved. But for this “almost” to work, someone had to do everything for real: take off, go out on a route, carry equipment with you, work in the heat in the desert or freeze the butt somewhere on a seven-thousander. Bonus: deadlines and production behind you.
The aviation part here is especially close to my heart. I love flights, gliders, simulators, this feeling of air and space. So I understand very well why Apple wanted this particular episode. Flight is an almost perfect demonstration of immersive video. There is no need to explain to the user why 3D and 180 degrees are needed. He puts on the headset, and the body understands everything itself.
For business, this suggests a rather unpleasant conclusion. The more platforms demand real presence, the more content creators will have to go into real danger. Mountains, deserts, aviation, diving, extreme sports - everything that VR sells well usually doesn’t play well with a strict Excel spreadsheet on risks.
Neuroslope can be a lifesaver for such wow scenarios. Generated a desert, an airplane, a beautiful camera turn - no one crashed, the insurer didn’t cry, the lawyers didn’t turn grey. There’s just a small problem: as soon as the viewer realizes that it’s synthetic, all the “I was there” magic quickly turns into “I was drawn beautifully.”
It's a strange fork in the road for the future of immersive media. Reality gives a real wow effect, but creates an unreasonably high risk, the price of which is human life. Generation is absolutely safe, but takes away the feeling of authenticity. It looks like the most valuable content will come from where technology enhances the real-world experience without turning people into consumables for a pretty picture. Golden mean. Whoever reaches it first will win 😑