We Just Discovered How to Make People Care About Places They'll Never Visit

A month ago, I walked into Blackmagic Design in Melbourne, Australia to pick up one of the first URSA Cine Immersive cameras in the world. I was definitely the first in New Zealand to get one.

Looking at this thing sitting in a big box on their showroom floor - all 8K per eye, dual sensors, and cooling vents - I had a moment of doubt. This is a cinema camera designed for controlled sets and professional crews. I was planning to wade through lagoons with it.

I've been building toward this moment for three years, but I didn't know it would lead here.

How this started

In 2021, I was living in a motorhome, driving around New Zealand with a Canon R5 and too much gaffer tape. I had this idea that if I could capture places in stereoscopic video - real 3D, not the gimmicky kind - maybe people who couldn't travel could still experience the world.

My first attempts were terrible. I mean properly bad. Water drops on the lenses. Alignment errors everywhere. Files that took 18 hours to process for 3 minutes of footage that made people nauseous.

But I kept going. When Apple announced Vision Pro, I spent three weeks teaching myself Swift from YouTube tutorials and ChatGPT. Built an app called Explore POV. Launched with ten videos of New Zealand locations. Thought maybe a few hundred people would try it.

Apple HQ

Last year, Apple invited me to drop into their headquarters in Cupertino. They seemed interested to hear about what I was building.

I remember sitting in their conference room thinking I was massively out of my depth. Here I was, showing an app I'd cobbled together to the company that invented the device it ran on. They asked where I saw this going. I said I wanted to film the entire planet and let anyone experience it.

They seemed to like that answer.

The growth

Since that meeting, things went a bit mental. We hit 75,000 users on Apple Vision Pro. I filmed in 19 countries since last year - from the Dolomites to the Cook Islands, Morocco to Montenegro. Built up to 110 different immersive experiences. My apartment became a disaster zone of hard drives and batteries perpetually charging.

But the numbers aren't the interesting part.

The discovery in Dusky Sound

For months, Maria from Pure Salt and I had been scheming about something. Pure Salt runs conservation expeditions to New Zealand's most inaccessible places. We kept coming back to the same question - what if we could show people these places that almost no one ever sees? Would it change how they think about conservation?

We finally pulled the test together earlier this year.

Dusky Sound is one of those places you need helicopters and boats to reach. Few people visit each year. It's wet, it's remote, and it's absolutely pristine.

We filmed the conservation work happening there. Nothing flashy. Just people doing the hard work of saving species in a place most New Zealanders don't even know exists.

When Maria showed this footage to stakeholders - conservation officials, former government ministers, potential funders - something none of us expected happened.

"I don't want to come back"

A conservation officer with 30 years experience put on the Vision Pro headset. Watched the Dusky Sound experience. When it ended, Maria tried to take the headset back.

He wouldn't let her.

He sat there, just existing in that virtual space. A week later, he messaged her: "Still buzzing from it."

Government departments started talking about restructuring entire campaigns around this approach. Former ministers who usually talk about ROI and KPIs had emotional responses. Conservation groups that normally compete for funding suddenly wanted to collaborate.

That's when we understood what we'd stumbled onto.

The thing about caring

You can't protect what you've never experienced.

We've known this intellectually forever. But we keep trying to make people care about places and problems through PowerPoints and statistics. Show them a graph about deforestation. Give them numbers about species decline. Hope they'll act.

But our brains don't work that way. We form emotional connections to places we've been, not places we've read about.

When someone experiences Dusky Sound through high-quality immersive video - when their brain accepts it as real - they become a stakeholder in that place. Even though they've never physically been there. Even though they probably will never go.

Enter the Blackmagic

This is where the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive becomes important. Not because it's an impressive piece of kit (though at 8K per eye, it absolutely is), but because it crosses a crucial threshold.

For the first time, the technology disappears.

Previous VR cameras always reminded you that you were watching video. Resolution not quite right. Stitching visible. Colors slightly off. Your brain knew it was being tricked.

The Blackmagic, designed with Apple specifically for Vision Pro, changes that equation. The quality is so high that your brain just... accepts it. You stop being aware you're wearing a headset. You're just there.

Testing in paradise

I took the Blackmagic to French Polynesia straight after picking it up in Melbourne. Wanted to properly push it - bright sun, water, challenging conditions.

The camera is a beast to work with. Fans that sound like a drone taking off. Massive vents that I had to protect from salt spray with garbage bags and gaffer tape. Batteries that last 40 minutes if you're lucky. I looked absolutely ridiculous hauling it through lagoons.

But the footage. The footage is something else.

Standing knee deep in those impossible blue waters, watching the camera capture every ray of light, every ripple, I kept thinking about that conservation officer who wouldn't give the headset back. About what this means for places even more remote than Dusky Sound.

What's actually happening here

We're at a convergence point that happens maybe once a decade in technology.

The capture technology (Blackmagic) finally matches the display technology (Vision Pro). The ecosystem exists (75,000 users just on my app alone). The need is clear (conservation, education, healthcare all struggling to create emotional connection). And we have proof it works (major organizations literally restructuring strategies around it).

But more importantly, we've figured out what we're actually building.

We're not making VR content. We're creating empathy machines. We're turning statistics into places. Abstractions into experiences. Observers into stakeholders.

The messages that matter

I get messages every day that remind me why this matters.

A woman in her 80s who can't travel anymore but just "visited" the place in Italy where she honeymooned 60 years ago. A kid with severe anxiety who can finally "explore" busy markets without panic attacks. Someone with mobility challenges who messaged me in tears after "climbing" a mountain they'd stared at from their window for years.

But it's bigger than individual access. When a potential donor "visits" a conservation site they'll never physically reach, they don't just understand its importance - they feel responsible for it. When a politician "stands" in a forest that needs protection, those trees stop being numbers in a report.

The urgency

Here's what I think about at 3am: We have maybe ten years to get conservation right. To change how education works. To build empathy at scale. To make people care about places and problems beyond their direct experience.

For the first time in history, we have the tools to do it. Not in theory. Not eventually. Right now.

That conservation officer in Dusky Sound didn't need anyone to explain why the place mattered. He stood there - virtually - and he knew. Viscerally. Immediately.

What happens next

I'm heading to Europe next week with the Blackmagic. More places that most people will never see - not because they're exclusive, but because life gets in the way. Each location we capture becomes a place where millions can form emotional connections.

The question isn't whether this technology will change how we create empathy and drive action. That's already happening. The question is whether enough people will recognise the opportunity fast enough.

What would happen if everyone could actually experience the places you're trying to protect? The communities you're trying to help? The future you're trying to build?

They can now. Not in some theoretical future. Today.

The conservation officer who wouldn't give back the headset understood immediately. Major conservation organisations get it. The 75,000 people using Explore POV get it.

The tools exist. The proof is there. We just have to use them before it's too late.