Cosmos In Focus

Groundbreaking Mixed Reality Planetarium experience on Apple Vision Pro, premiering at SXSW 2025.

Atlantic Studios has launched a mixed reality experience that transforms your room into a virtual planetarium, offering an entirely new way to explore the cosmos. Designed for Apple Vision Pro, this immersive experience is a journey through the breathtaking discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope, and what they tell us about our own cosmic origins. 

This experience places users to the heart of the Milky Way, transporting them to distant parts of the universe to witness the births and deaths of stars, ancient galaxies, and the warping of spacetime itself. With spatial computing, the cosmos is no longer a distant spectacle—it is a fully interactive environment that users can navigate freely. 

‘Cosmos in Focus’ will premiere in Austin at SXSW 2025, accompanying a panel discussion on the use of immersive storytelling in science communication. This experience was created in a partnership between Atlantic Studios and the University of Sussex, with support from British Underground and the Royal Astronomical Society. 

The SXSW showcase is supported by Future Art and Culture: a major UK immersive arts showcase produced by British Underground and Arts Council England with partnership support from the British Council. 

Designing an Interactive Planetarium

A key aspect of the design process was to balance guided storytelling with open-ended exploration. Users can move through space at their own pace while also following a structured journey that highlights some of the telescope’s most significant discoveries. This approach ensures a seamless blend of education and discovery, avoiding information overload while maintaining a sense of wonder.

The challenge in crafting this experience was translating 2D, static images into an immersive 3D environment. By superimposing and animating these images, the experience allows users to feel like they are flying through space, with stars and nebulae stretching beyond the field of view, creating an expansive cosmic landscape.

The Apple Vision Pro’s ultra high resolution displays and intuitive navigation played a crucial role in creating a sense of presence. 2D mediums often struggle to convey the infinite vastness of space, but with this technology users can experience the cosmos in the most immersive way, short of being in space themselves.

Potential for Science Communication

Immersive technology has the potential to revolutionize how people engage with the subject of astronomy, visualising abstract concepts in tangible, easily digestible and interactive ways. By mapping the James Webb imagery onto their real positions in the Milky Way, we can put the images in context, and gain an accurate understanding of Webb’s trajectory through space.

The incorporation of interactivity gives audiences the agency to freely explore the areas of the cosmos and the telescope that they find most interesting. Combining high definition images with intuitive interactions and narrative storytelling, this experience offers a new way of visualising our universe, demystifying complex astronomy for broad audiences, inspiring the next generation of future astronomers.