We're pretty excited about the new Godzilla show on Apple TV Plus, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and it looks like early adopters of the Apple Vision Pro headset have even more reasons to be excited about it. The forthcoming Apple TV Plus show has reportedly been shot in an "immersive 3D" format for a possible Apple Vision Pro release.
According to FlatPanelsHD.com, the aspect ratio in the first-look images that Apple has been sharing are 21:9 rather than the 16:9 you'd expect from a normal TV show for normally sized screens, which could be Apple's way of hinting at the 3D format. And according to the Screen Times podcast earlier this year, Apple has been shooting Monarch in the stereoscopic 3D format that the Vision Pro supports.
What would Godzilla look like in Vision Pro?
According to Apple, the Vision Pro headset supports "180-degree high resolution recordings with Spatial Audio", so there's the possibility to deliver more immersive video experiences than just looking at a static screen.
Apple has already demonstrated some 3D video on the Vision Pro. It showed off clips from Avatar: The Way of Water to press during this year's WWDC to demonstrate how the Vision Pro handled stereoscopic 3D video.
There's no doubt that the hardware can handle it. But the big question is what content Apple and its partners are creating for it. And right now I think it's more likely that any Vision Pro content will be additional content – the VR equivalent of DVD extras – and/or a large virtual screen rather than entire shows filmed in extra-wide 180-degree format.
I'm not being sniffy here, because I think Godzilla movies are a lot of fun. But equally the audience for them is relatively small, and when you consider the extra complexity and cost of shooting an entire series in stereoscopic 3D I'm not convinced it makes any sense to do it. It would be an enormous investment for very little return, and I'm not sure that's something Apple would do – especially at the moment when the total number of monster movie fans using Vision Pro is roughly the same number of buildings that Godzilla and pals tend to leave behind after their battles, ie zero.
