I’m planning to buy myself one of Apple’s Vision Pro headsets eventually — once the price has come down a bit, in a future generation of the device. And a newly announced immersive Marvel experience that’s coming to the headset is a good example of why I very much want to get my hands on one.
The thing that piqued my interest from the outset about the Vision Pro is the way you can almost think of it as a modular high-definition TV. In other words, strap on the headset, sit anywhere you want, and you can then pull up a TV screen that offers dazzling color and fidelity — which you can also resize however you like.
The Vision Pro also makes that experience far more immersive than the act of staring mindlessly at a TV, with the Marvel experience I alluded to above offering a case in point.
The somewhat awkwardly titled What If …? — An Immersive Story is connected to the acclaimed Disney+ animated series What If…? which reimagines events from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The new experience is coming soon as a new app for Vision Pro, and it promises to let fans step into the leading role of a new story that transforms the space around them as they traverse multiple realities.
As the experience unfolds, fans will come literally face-to-face with multiverse variants of their favorite Marvel characters, in addition to learn the mystic arts while being tasked with harnessing the power of the Infinity Stones.
“What If…? the animated series as well as the comic book has always been about looking over the horizon into realities that have yet to be conceived,” executive producer Brad Winderbaum says about the new Vision Pro experience. “What If…? – An Immersive Story takes this one step further and actually allows you to visit these strange new worlds, not as a Watcher but as an actual participant. The creative work on this project is nothing less than stellar and we could not be more excited for fans to interact firsthand with some of their favorite Marvel heroes.”
This isn’t just an app that repurposes the Disney+ series, in other words. Using the Vision Pro’s spatial computing capabilities, viewers will experience both augmented and virtual reality as they play out this narrative adventure and interact with the world around them by using their hands and their eyes. Fans will step into environments that place them into new and iconic MCU locations, complete with stunning video and Spatial Audio.
Dave Bushore at Marvel Studios and produced by Shereif M. Fattouh at ILM Immersive, What If…? — An Immersive Story is, according to executive producer Jamie Voris “truly groundbreaking and unlike anything we’ve done before.”