After But a few key improvements stand to make it more widely appealing.
Nobody looks forward to an eight hour flight. Whether it’s sleeping or reading or working, people want a way to pass the time and distract themselves from the noisy cabin, turbulence, and the general feeling of being packed into a metal tube like sardines.
The seat-back screen–with its selection of movies and TV shows–offers minor refuge from this chaotic environment.
I’m someone who really appreciates ‘cinematic spectacle’–you know, the movies that have the direction and action that really deserve a big screen and great audio.
While the movie selection on a plane is usually not half bad, over the years I have regularly avoided watching some movies I actually
wanted to watch, because I felt they deserved much more than the experience I’d get from a small, low quality seat-back screen.If only I could somehow bring my own movie theater on the plane.
Well, it turns out that’s a thing now.
Vision Pro on a Plane
Using a Vision Pro combined with AirPods Pro 2 on an international flight was a phenomenal experience viewing that can reasonably be described as bringing your own movie theater onto the plane.
While there’s still some obvious ways to improve the experience of using the headset on a plane, I was blown away at how it managed to make me practically unaware of the plane I was on.
This whole thing really only works well because Apple has done a few things to make sure the use-case is not just theoretical, but actually considered from end-to-end.
For one, Vision Pro has a special tracking mode called Travel Mode (not to be confused with Airplane Mode) which allows the headset to keep the floating screen locked in place in front of you even though the airplane is moving. The The The The The headset’s HDR capability combined with micro OLED (which offers true blacks) really makes videos shine.
But none of this would matter if it wasn’t
easy
to find and transfer high quality video content onto the headset.
Luckily it was as simple as opening the Apple TV app before my flight where I downloaded
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)–at 4K resolution with surround sound, HDR, and in 3D
–for offline viewing on my headset.Lost in the Best WayWhat’s crazy is that despite being stuck in a plane in an economy seat, this was the best way I’ve ever watched Mad Max on
any screen
. It Air With In fact I have to admit that I was so lost in the film that I forgot to capture and screenshots for this article!But I wasn’t completely unaware… on purpose. The Vision It When It It In Not only could these be permanently powered through a tether, but passengers wouldn’t need to carry a bulky case with them onto the plane to get a great movie watching experience.Although hand-tracking worked incredibly well considering how dark the cabin was, Vision Pro would occasionally give me a ‘Tracking Lost’ message when I shuffled around a little too much–likely a limitation of Travel Mode. Apple It If The This makes it more difficult for someone to get your attention (like a fellow passenger who wants to politely interrupt you so they can get out of the seats and to the bathroom).
And of course there’s battery life. The Although that means I had another hour to squeeze in a show or two, only being able to watch one full length movie on an eight hour flight is an obvious and unfortunate limitation.
And yes I could have brought a big external battery and plugged it into Vision Pro’s battery to extend the runtime, but now we’re talking about adding more bulk, wires, and juggling to the equation.