A Saturday Night Double Feature In Quest & Vision Pro

True3D showed Insidious to Quest 3 headsets in a New York City screening room. Then I came home to watch 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple in Apple Vision Pro.

First I was dancing my way around The Metropolitan Museum of Art with my AirPods Pro in and then I was holding my little one’s hand as he walked around in his socks.

That’s when I started to second guess my plans for the evening.

It was around 3 p.m. and I had purchased a ticket for 6:30 p.m. to a sold out showing of Insidious in a New York City screening room hosted by True3D in Quest 3 headsets.

I still had to eat, make it home, say goodbye to my family and take a train across the city to see a movie from 2011 that I remember being pretty scary, but not scary enough to really want to see again in headset. Still, I’d never had the social experience of seeing a movie in a theater while wearing a VR headset, it seemed like an interesting idea, and I’d already paid for my ticket.

I tried to evade my duty to Good Virtual Reality by planning to replace my ticket with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. I’d already purchased The Bone Temple from Apple with a loosely scheduled plan to view it over the weekend with a Vision Pro-owning friend in the same time zone. As I left the museum with my family, I texted my friend to ask if he’d want to watch it in a few hours so that I could skip the trek across Manhattan and stay at home with my family instead. He was up for the movie, but he had to prepare for an incoming Blizzard and couldn’t commit to a specific time.

So I ate, made it home, and delayed my decision until just after 5:40 when I was pushing my ability to make the last train that could carry me to my movie near Times Square.

Ugh. Fine. Let’s go to the movies. Let’s go see the stars.

Watching Insidious Wearing Quest 3 In A Movie Theater

Here was the scene at the theater:

At the bar, the True3D organizer I spotted with his Quest 3 said he had to get a permit to sell me fresh popcorn. So I bought two beers instead, took them into the screening room, and sipped them up to the 10-minute intermission after the movie’s biggest scare.

I don’t get the chance to take a lot of photos like those in this post, so my kudos to True3D for doing something with VR I’ve never seen attempted in this way before.

The most interesting piece of True3D’s effort here is the promise of three versions of the movie. It was neat to see people who have never experienced hand tracking in VR before get acquainted with their virtual hands as they made their selection.

True3D offered the standard version of the film as well as one that promised a countdown to each of the jump scares. There was also a scarier version that was simply teased as “more immersive.” I picked that one and noticed the film’s frame change its aspect ratio and size a couple times. Sound came through the theater speakers and I found myself turning the volume down on the headset to avoid any surprises. In retrospect, I think that effectively outsmarted True3D’s attempt to increase my immersion and fear with surprises through the headset’s audio channels. Another nice touch offered here was that the movie also played in sync on a projector at the front of the theater, allowing people to take their headset off in the case of bugs, discomfort, or to go to the bathroom and still keep an eye on the movie as it plays in sync with everyone else in the theater.

I pulled the headset off before the final scare and looked at the roughly 15 people who were gathered in headset alongside me as the credits rolled inside their headsets. I was sweating, and others mentioned being warm too.

I stopped off in the bathroom, which appeared to have some vomit in the sink, and then put my AirPods Pro back in. Listening to the soundtrack to Blade Runner: 2049 I walked past Times Square to the subway.

Watching 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple In Vision Pro

It was after 9:00 p.m. when I got home. I grabbed some leftovers from the fridge and my wife asked to finish the last 20 minutes of the Star Trek: Starfleet episode we started together.

While we were watching, my friend texted to see if I was still available to watch the new fast zombie movie. If he could wait till we finished Star Trek I’d be ready. So as we finished the episode, I grabbed one of our high-output battery packs, pulled out its retractable cord and started charging Vision Pro in its Belkin bag.

It was after 10 p.m. and time for the second feature to begin. I put a pillow behind my head on the couch, reclined the seat, pulled a blanket over me, downloaded The Bone Temple locally to my headset, and waited for my friend’s call.

I recapped for him the Insidious experience and we debated whether we were going to watch the movie in a virtual cinema or out on the moon Amalthea orbiting Jupiter. The virtual cinema was nice, but my friend also enjoys the sun eclipsed behind Jupiter as a backdrop for a movie theater too, and that’s where we landed.

During the movie I took a break by muting myself, then I got out of my seat on Amalthea and made my way to the bathroom. I also went to the kitchen for a drink and then sat back down on Jupiter’s moon. The definition of “break” here is different than the physical movie theater because I only looked away from the movie for a couple seconds and my friend didn’t even know I left.

I was so drawn into the movie’s narrative I found myself blasting my personal AirPods volume during the final act at nearly 1 a.m.

Quest vs. Vision Pro For Watching Movies

On the survey True3D offered after their Quest 3 experience I complained of the visual quality and told them they needed to incorporate Vision Pro into their offering. The difference in quality between the two presentations was like watching a YouTube video in a place with strangers and vomit present, and watching a film in a place of my choosing with people of my choosing and comfort of my making. There is no contest here.

I didn’t mention it on the survey but, even with the provided disposable face masks, I’m not convinced there’s a future in using someone else’s headset like rented bowling shoes. People should be able to bring their preferred system and batteries to events like this to tap into some kind of social connection. People should be able to go to community events like VR Villa and enjoy whatever they want with whoever they want using the headsets we brought.

Platforms aren’t built to allow that kind of interoperability, at least not yet, and my heart goes out to anyone trying to make something interesting happen in this space without their direct assistance.