One of the immersive views is behind and underneath the basket.
I got to watch the first quarter of tonight’s Lakers-Bucks game from the front row by the scorer’s table. Except when I was suspended in the air behind both baskets. Or maybe in a concourse watching people walk to their seats, or occasionally right out on the court for the national anthem or a Laker Girls performance.
In other words, I was watching it in my Vision Pro during the first live Apple Immersive sports broadcast.
The experience overall was surprisingly… normal? The video just played, and it felt like watching any other Apple immersive video on the Vision Pro, other than the fact that it was happening live.
Clearly, Apple and its partners (including Spectrum SportsNet, the Lakers’ TV partner) have learned a lot from their first couple of years experimenting with immersive video. Unlike previous sports highlight packages, the live broadcast kept switching camera angles to a minimum. For most of the quarter, I watched either from courtside or from behind each basket. I found that I got the hang of switching perspectives when flipping from one basket to the other pretty quickly, and the view of the action was definitely better behind the basket. But seeing action from center court, courtside, also felt like a rare treat.
