I went to the loneliest baseball game on Apple Vision Pro
A Verge writer tested Apple and Major League Baseball's new immersive broadcast feature on the Apple Vision Pro headset, watching a Boston Red Sox versus New York Yankees game as the first of four planned matches streamed this way. While the technology offered striking, intimate close-ups of players during pre-game moments, the writer found the format poorly suited to the length and rhythm of a baseball game, arguing that the sport's traditional slowness and the freedom to move around during play sit awkwardly with a heavy, immersive headset strapped to the face.
Once the game began, viewers were fixed to just two viewpoints beside each team's dugout, with no ability to follow action in the outfield, and batters' bodies often obstructed the view depending on which side they stood. A floating on-screen panel offering a conventional TV-style broadcast and player statistics ended up drawing more attention than the immersive view itself, since tracking the ball once it left the batter's vicinity proved difficult, and replays from new angles only partly compensated for the reduced sense of real-time action, such as during a near-home-run hit by Boston's Nick Sogard.
- Vision Pro streamed an immersive MLB Red Sox v Yankees broadcast
- Close-up pre-game views impressed but in-game angles felt restrictive
- Fixed dugout viewpoints made tracking live action difficult
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Apple Vision Pro is a headset that places digital images and video around the wearer. Major League Baseball, the professional baseball organisation in the United States, has been working with Apple to show some games in an immersive format, giving viewers the impression of watching from inside the stadium.
Baseball is played over many innings, with pauses between pitches and bursts of action when a batter hits the ball. A live broadcast usually switches between cameras around the field, while spectators at a stadium can look wherever they choose. How an immersive broadcast handles those pauses and lets viewers follow play across the field matters to whether the headset offers a useful way to watch a full game.