So far the most compelling experiences I’ve had while wearing an Apple Vision Pro have leaned heavily into the immersive abilities of the device. The Immersive Videos are fantastic, but where things really get interesting is when the immersiveness is derived from my own memories. Spatial Video is very cool, but I’m still trying to find my way with how best to record them, but I have absolute clarity about how to record for the other immersive memory experience, Panoramas.

I am a very avid hiker. I am never more at peace than I am on the top of the mountain. The wilderness is my happy place and whenever I leave it, I always long to return. In the visionOS Photos app there is the ability to wrap your panoramic photos around you in a way which gives you a strong sense of being back in the spot the photo was taken.

I love this. For years I’ve been capturing panoramic photos from my favorite scenic overlooks, but the experience of viewing them was always a bit underwhelming. If you look at them on your iPhone/iPad they are nice but completely lack any sense of scale or wonder. The best approach I’ve found so far is to have them printed large scale and then mounted on the wall. My walls are littered with these prints and I’m very fond of walking up to them and standing a few feet away to “take in the view”.

For example this print of Ben Nevis is currently on the back wall of my office.

I capture all of these panoramas on my iPhone (the above image was captured with an iPhone 14 Pro and is printed five feet wide). What became clear very quickly after starting to make large prints of iPhone photos is that resolution is king. The iPhone camera is amazing for its convenience but up until recently the limit of 12MP captures made making compelling large format prints really difficult. But starting with the iPhone 14 Pro we can now capture images up to 48MP, so now we have 4X the pixels to play with.

The iOS Camera app has a default mode for recording panoramas. This is a very clever bit of UI which guides you to sweep your camera across a landscape in a level fashion. The result of this is very good for a quick capture, but unfortunately right now these panoramas are limited to roughly the width of a standard 12MP capture (you shoot panoramas vertically so sensor width becomes the height of the panorama).

Looking at these iPhone panoramas on a Vision Pro is lovely, they have barely enough resolution to give a good sense of being back at the place where the image was captured. However, after the initial WOW! factor has worn off I started to really notice the fuzziness of the presentation. Presenting an image which is around 3900px tall at a conceptual height of about six feet tall just isn’t enough resolution to really feel immersive.

Thankfully because of my aforementioned photo printing experience in addition to having countless standard iOS panoramas, I also have countless super-resolution iPhone panoramas too.

I continue to capture these in the iOS Camera app but instead of using their panorama mode, I just use the regular old camera mode to record a sweep of several individual 48MP photos which I then later stitch together. The results are amazing. That Scotland photo above ended up at 25,326px × 6,609px, or 167 Megapixels. When viewed on a Vision Pro the effect transitions from good to “woah, I’m back in Scotland”.

Last summer I went hiking to the top of Helvellyn in the English Lake District. While I was up there I took two panoramas (well actually I took dozens 🤫, but I’ll show two here). The first was recorded using the standard panorama mode on the iPhone. It ended up being 13,986px × 3,788px (53MP).

Full Resolution (53MP)

I then also recorded the scene as 20 full resolution 48MP photographs. Holding up my phone in vertical mode and slowly turning around, making sure that each photograph slightly overlapped the previous.

I then merged them together in Photoshop using their “Photomerge” feature (though there are countless tools which can do the merging).

The result is an image which is 41,062px × 7,395px (304MP!).

Full Resolution (304MP)

You won’t be able to see the difference in this article view, but if you click through on each of those images you can view them at full resolution and the difference is, quite literally, massive. (If you have a Vision Pro, I’d really recommend tapping through and then saving them to your library and trying it yourself, the difference is really difficult to appreciate until you are in the actual immersion)

This approach was made all the easier in iOS 17 with the addition of the ability to capture photos in the “HEIF Max” format which avoids the added complexity of handling RAW photos. I’m sure that the truly ‘best’ version of this would be to use “ProRAW Max” images, but so far I’ve found my inability to expertly process those to mean the ultimate difference in quality is fairly minimal compared to the default Camera app image processing magic.

Loading up this new super-resolution panorama on my Vision Pro and then swiping between the two (you can swipe phots in the visionOS Photos app by pinching your fingers and flicking them), the difference is meaningful. With this much resolution the panorama feels more like an “Environment” than a photograph. The rocks look sharp and the horizon clear. It really feels like I’m back on this windswept mountain peak.

Here’s a 100% crop comparison of a tiny section in each image. On the left is the super-resolution, on the right the regular iPhone panorama. As you’d expect there is essentially twice the information. In many respects this is the “Retina” screen equivalent.

There are two other great benefits of this approach:

• Each individual frame is now a full, regular photograph in your photo library and so can be used on its own for sharing or wallpapers. I use the Photo Shuffle lock screen wallpaper system and it regularly shows me images which are middle frames from panoramas.
• The framing is much more flexible. You can just keep turning around as long as you like, whereas in the iOS Camera panorama mode it has a limited horizontal range. I often will record a full 360º view of the scene. I’ll then end up cropping this down but I can make that decision in the comfort of my office, rather than having to make it on a wind-buffetted, cliff edge.

There are also two big drawbacks:

• You have to be much more careful about the capture in the moment. You need to overlap the frames and keep your camera level, otherwise the results are going to be lackluster. I’ve several times gotten back from a trip only to discover that a panorama I captured is wonky. You also really want to take the time series very quickly to avoid things shifting between frames. To alleviate this I typically will record a quick one with the Camera app’s mode (for safety) and then switch to grabbing the individual frames. Also, the “spirit level” overlay you can turn on in the Camera app is your friend here to keep you from drifting up or down.
• You now have work to do in your office after the trip. Photo management is rarely fun, so if you go down this path you’re adding a chore to your life.

A little pro tip I have for anyone who is interested in trying out this approach is to record a ‘marker frame’ before and/or after the section of panorama frames. Otherwise, what will happen is that you’ll end up looking back through your library at a bunch of very similar photos taken from the top of a mountain and struggle to know which images need to be stitched. My approach to this is to take a photograph of my fist right before and after the series. This is logistically very easy to do and then when I’m reviewing my photographs these ugly markers will always jump out to me help me find the frames I’m looking for.

And hey, if you start to pursue this on your next wilderness trips you’ll also end up with photographs you can print in large format and put up on your walls. While I love the immersive feeling of looking at these photographs in visionOS, there is nothing to beat beauty of classic, analog art on your walls.

I would be delighted (and not at all surprised) if this kind of capture came in iOS 18 or the iPhone 16 Pro. It seems highly likely that Apple will do whatever they can to ensure that the panoramas they are collecting will look as awesome as possible in visionOS.

Here are a few other full-resolution images if you’d like to try ‘em out:

From Stybarrow Dodd

Full Resolution (126MP)

Ullswater

Full Resolution(57MP)

Ben Nevis

Full Resolution (167MP)

Blackwater Reservoir

Full Resolution (96MP)

Or if you’re wondering how this technique would apply to a 12MP capture series (where I just took regular old photos). Here is one from the top of Loughrigg, where I forgot to turn on the 48MP mode. It is still, I think, better than what a Camera.app pano would look like but doesn’t quite have the sharpness.

Full Resolution (50MP)

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I’m delighted to announce that I have brought on Stephen Hackett to help me with my apps. He will be working on customer communication, marketing and generally creating space for me to focus on the programming oriented parts of my work.

Something that’s been rattling around my mind recently is the phrase “Independent as in Freedom, not Independent as in Alone”. For so long I think I have been conflating those two ideas in my head. Which has not been serving me well.

I am extraordinarily proud of being an “indie”, it is a meaningful part of my professional identity. As such I held on too long to a sense of needing to do it all myself. But I’ve grown in this regard and I am extremely excited about what Stephen and I will be able to accomplish together.

My personal definition of being an “indie” has grown and been improved upon. It isn’t about being alone, it’s about the freedom to choose your own path and then walk it in the manner aligned to your own values. That part of the indie life I don’t expect to ever give up, but I can walk that path with others and expect the journey to be all the richer as a result.

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Earlier this year I released a major update to Pedometer++ which included a complete visual redesign of the app and brought workout tracking to the iPhone. This update represented a movement towards making Pedometer++ your best companion for outdoor walking adventures.

Today I’m releasing version 5.3 which completes this movement by rounding out some of the missing features from the v5 update. Specifically this update adds Route Planning and Offline Map Management.

I am a very avid hiker. It is my favorite activity and simply put it is my happy place. Because I’ve spent so many hours hiking I’ve developed a number of very strong opinions about what features are important for hiking and how best to build them. These features are built from the perspective of how I plan and track my hikes, developed with the benefit of countless adventures.

Route Planning

While you can continue to import GPX files from external sources into Pedometer++, I wanted to also create a method for planning the routes directly in Pedometer++.

I tend to use GPX files when I am new to an area and want to benefit from other people’s experience. There are numerous hiking trail resources online which publish the best routes in an area and are a valuable way to get familiar with a location.

After walking in an area for a while, however, I find that I typically want to start striking out on my own routes and find new places and hidden gems. There are a number of ways to build a route planner but my favorite method is to boil down a hike into a few key waypoints/viewpoints and then backwards plan a route between them. This is exactly how I’ve built the route planner for Pedometer++.

You simply tap on the locations you want to visit and it will use the Mapbox Directions API to find the shortest route between them. This typically serves as a great starting point for a route. While not necessarily the ‘best’ route, these automatic routes can make it super quick to plan a hike. I’ll often then tweak the automatic route to my tastes based on terrain, access or trail popularity.

Because this planning system is so straightforward and automated it was even possible to add it into the Apple Watch app as well.

I’ve found this super helpful for when I’m actually out on a hike and want to quickly consider an alternative path. Rather than pulling out my iPhone and looking there, I can just tap “Plan a Route” on my wrist, tap a couple of waypoints and very quickly get a distance/route estimate for the possible detour. Then if I like the option I can simply save the new route and use it for the rest of hike, or until the detour is complete.

Offline Maps

Another important feature being added in this update is the ability to more widely download maps for offline use. Rather than just being able to download the map tiles for a particular route you can now download maps for a wide area before you head off on a hike.

This works great for situations where you may be entering an area with limited connectivity. The maps on your iPhone are automatically available on your Apple Watch (as long as your iPhone is within range of your watch).

Ordnance Survey Maps

In the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey maps are the gold standard for outdoor navigation. They provide rich detail for walking routes and rights-of-way. Thankfully they are offered as an API which other apps can make use of and so I’ve been able to include them in this update.

This is also available on your wrist during workouts on your Apple Watch.

Visual Refresh

Lastly I’ve also done a lot of work to improve the visual design of both the iPhone and Apple Watch apps. The old design was feeling a bit “heavy” and cumbersome. I wanted to bring forward a design which felt more modern, clean and intuitive.

On the Apple Watch side of things I had done a partial update this September to bring the app more in line with the watchOS 10 design language. This update completes that work and fully embraces the new layering and visual aesthetic of watchOS.

I hope you enjoy this update, which is available on the App Store now.

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