The slice of the world a lens can capture or a headset can show you, measured in degrees. Human vision covers roughly 200° horizontally; headsets show you a window inside that. The wider the field of view, the more the image surrounds you — and the more real estate you have to fill with story.
VR180 vs. 360
The two shapes of immersive video. VR180 fills the front hemisphere — everything you'd naturally see looking forward — in stereoscopic 3D, spending all of its resolution where the story lives and leaving the back half for crew, lights, and gear. It has become the dominant format for immersive storytelling. 360° came first and captures the full sphere, so the viewer can look anywhere, including behind them — total freedom that's unforgettable when looking around is the point, and unforgiving when it isn't. Neither is "better"; they're different promises to the viewer, and the right choice depends on the project.
Stereoscopy
Capturing and displaying a separate image for each eye, the way your own eyes see the world from two slightly different positions. Stereoscopy is what gives immersive film true depth — and it's also why everything in immersive production must be done twice and match perfectly between the eyes.
IPD (Interpupillary Distance)
The distance between the centers of your pupils — about 63mm on average. Stereo camera rigs mimic this spacing to produce natural-feeling depth. Get it wrong and the world feels subtly miniature, or subtly gigantic, and the viewer can't tell you why it feels off — only that it does.
Parallax
The way near objects appear to shift more than far ones when your viewpoint moves. Parallax is the foundation of depth perception — and the sworn enemy of stitching, because two lenses in different positions see near objects differently. Most of the "rules" of immersive camera placement are really rules about managing parallax.
Convergence
The way your eyes angle inward to look at close objects. In stereo immersive film, the placement of imagery has to respect natural convergence; force the eyes to converge somewhere the depth cues don't support and the result is eye strain — a comfort budget you spend at your peril.
Fisheye Projection
The ultra-wide, heavily curved image an immersive camera lens actually records. Raw immersive footage looks like a wall of warped circles — one of the reasons you can't judge an immersive shot on a normal monitor.
Capture & Stitch
Stitch Line
The seam where images from two lenses are blended into one continuous world. Handled well, it's invisible. Handled badly, objects tear, double, or ghost as they cross it. Knowing where every seam falls — and keeping critical action away from it — is core on-set discipline.
No-Parallax Point
The optical point in a lens around which a camera can rotate without near and far objects shifting against each other. Multi-lens rigs can't put every lens at this magic point at once — which is exactly why stitch lines exist and why near-camera action is dangerous.
Nadir
The point directly below the camera — usually occupied by the tripod. Cleaning up the nadir (patching the floor where the rig stood) is one of immersive post's signature chores.
Zenith
The point directly above the camera. Like the nadir, it's an easy place for rigs, cables, and lighting compromises to hide — until a viewer looks straight up. They always look up.
Resolution Per Eye
The honest way to measure immersive image quality. A "16K" capture sounds enormous, but it's stretched around the viewer's entire visual field and split between two eyes — what matters is how many pixels actually land in each eye's field of view. It's why immersive cameras need so much more resolution than the numbers on a flat-film spec sheet suggest.
High Framerate Capture
Immersive film is typically shot at high framerates — up to 90 frames per second — because in a headset, motion smoothness is a comfort requirement, not a stylistic choice. Combined with 16K stereo capture, it's what makes immersive media the heaviest in the business.
The Experience
Presence
The sensation of actually being in the place a headset is showing you — the moment your brain files the experience as a memory of somewhere you went, not something you watched. Presence is the entire point of the medium; every craft decision either protects it or spends it.
Immersion
Often used interchangeably with presence, but usefully distinct: immersion is the technical envelopment (how completely the image and sound surround you); presence is the psychological result. High immersion with bad craft still fails to produce presence.
Viewer Comfort
The discipline of keeping the audience physically at ease in the headset: stable horizons, smooth motion, respectful cuts, natural depth. In flat film a mistake costs you attention; in immersive it can cost you the viewer's lunch. Comfort is the final quality gate on everything we ship.
Vection
The false sensation of self-motion — when the world moves and your inner ear disagrees with your eyes about whether you did. Vection is the root cause of most VR motion sickness, and the reason camera moves in immersive film are planned with such care.
Agency
The viewer's sense of control over their own experience — starting with where they look. Immersive storytelling works with agency rather than against it: you earn attention with light, motion, and staging instead of commanding it with a frame.
Spatial Audio
Sound that stays anchored to the world as you turn your head — a voice stays with the person speaking, no matter where you're looking. Essential to presence. One field note from our decade of doing this: audiences rarely turn toward a sound alone; they wait for visual confirmation. Spatial audio supports attention beautifully, but it shouldn't lead it.
Delivery
MV-HEVC
Multiview High Efficiency Video Coding — the codec behind modern stereoscopic delivery, including Apple's immersive and spatial formats. Instead of storing two full videos (one per eye), it stores one eye plus the differences, making enormous stereo imagery small enough to actually play on a headset.
Spatial vs. Immersive Video
Two terms the industry now keeps distinct. Spatial video is stereoscopic 3D presented in a window — depth without envelopment. Immersive video wraps the imagery around you and fills your field of view. Spatial is a lovely photograph; immersive is a place.
Foveation
Concentrating image quality where the viewer's eye can actually resolve detail, and spending less where it can't — mimicking how the human eye works (sharp at the fovea, soft in the periphery). Used in both rendering and video delivery to make impossible pixel budgets possible.
Bitrate
How much data per second a delivered video is allowed to use. In immersive, bitrate is a creative decision: too little and skies band, detail smears, and presence quietly dies; too much and playback stutters — which in a headset is a comfort problem, not just an annoyance.
3DOF vs. 6DOF
Degrees of freedom — how many ways your movement is tracked. 3DOF responds to head rotation only (look anywhere, from a fixed point); 6DOF also tracks your position, letting you lean and walk. Immersive film is generally a 3DOF medium, which is why camera height and placement decisions are so binding: wherever the camera stood is where every viewer will stand.
Passthrough
The headset's cameras showing you the real room around you, with digital content composited in. It's the foundation of mixed reality — and a reminder that "in a headset" no longer always means "sealed off from the world."