✈️ A pilot died while filming for Apple Vision Pro

✈️ A pilot died while filming for Apple Vision Pro

Bloomberg reported a tragic incident that occurred in July 2024 during the production of an immersive video for Apple Vision Pro. British Paralympian and pilot Claire Lomas died when her ultralight aircraft crashed over the Jordanian desert. A 3D camera was mounted on the aircraft, and the footage was being shot for Apple’s Adventure series—the videos the company uses to demonstrate why Vision Pro should exist at all.

What is striking about this story is not only the tragedy itself—remember Woland’s observation about death—but the logic of the genre.

VR sells safe risk. You put on a headset at home and a moment later you are soaring over the desert in a glider, hanging by one hand over a precipice, jumping into the water from a 27-metre cliff, or watching a volcanic eruption from the front row. You do not spend a fortune or years of your life on training, travel, logistics, insurance, and everything else. Most importantly, you risk nothing except the cleanliness of the space around you if motion sickness strikes. Technology delivers an extreme experience safely to your sofa 😌

But this magic has an uncomfortable downside: only the viewer gets the sofa. You feel as though you are almost flying, almost falling, almost standing at the edge of an abyss. The brain believes it, the body tenses, and the wow effect works. Yet for that “almost” to happen, someone had to do everything for real: take off, follow the route, lug the equipment, work in the desert heat, or freeze on a 7,000-metre peak—with deadlines and a production crew behind them.

The aviation angle is especially close to my heart. I love flying, gliders, simulators, and that feeling of air and space. So I understand perfectly why Apple wanted this particular episode. Flight is an almost ideal demonstration of immersive video. You do not need to explain why 3D and 180-degree footage matter: people put on the headset and their bodies understand immediately.

For businesses, this leads to an uncomfortable conclusion. The more platforms demand authentic, on-location footage, the more often content creators will have to enter genuinely dangerous situations. Mountains, deserts, aviation, diving, extreme sports—everything VR sells well tends to look terrible in a strict risk spreadsheet.

AI-generated content can be a lifesaver for such spectacular scenarios. Generate a desert, an aircraft, and a beautiful camera move: nobody crashes, the insurer does not weep, and the lawyers do not turn grey. There is only one small problem. As soon as viewers realize it is synthetic, the magic of “I was there” quickly becomes “that was beautifully rendered.”

It is a strange fork in the road for immersive media. Reality delivers a genuine wow effect but can create an unjustifiably high risk, sometimes measured in human lives. Generation is safe but weakens the feeling of authenticity. The most valuable content may emerge where technology enhances real-world experience without turning people into disposable props for a beautiful shot. The golden mean. Whoever reaches it first will win 😑