Skyglass lets you shoot virtual productions in real-time with your iPhone

While it might have just been a pipe dream for all but the most elite Hollywood studios just a handful of years ago, virtual production has come to the masses very quickly. Now, it’s gotten to a point where you can do it on your iPhone.

Skyglass is a new app for the iPhone that lets you track your subject and composite them into a virtual AI or Unreal environment in real-time. It keys the subject out from a green-screen background or can even use AI to remove an environment from your shot if a green screen is not available.

Skyglass is certainly not going to be competing with Hollywood any time soon. It won’t even compete with studio solutions like those we see from companies like Mo-Sys, whom we visited last year at IBC 2022. But it will allow small independent creators making content for YouTube and social media to get access to a technology that has thus far been out of reach of most wallets.

The app lets you use AI to generate full 360-degree backgrounds based on a prompt, letting you create pretty much any environment you wish. Alternatively, you can use your own full 3D environments created for use with Unreal Engine, streamed directly from the cloud. And it’s all composited in real-time.

YouTuber Luke Edwin took the app for a spin to show us its features and how it performs.

I don’t think people will be rushing out to buy this for their studios any time soon After all, most aren’t shooting client videos or short films with their iPhones. But for social media videos and YouTubers who want to try and set a specific tone for certain videos – or just parts of a video – it looks like a potentially valuable tool.

Price and Availability

The Skyglass app is available to download now in the Apple App Store. Whether it will eventually come for Android or not is unclear, but at the moment, it’s iPhone only. The app itself is freely available to download, although a subscription is required to make any real use of it – the free version has a watermark.

The company offers three monthly subscription plans, from $4.99/mo to $24.99/mo, which allow varying degrees of tools and ability. Naturally, to use your own Unreal Engine environments, you’ll need the $24.99/mo plan, but for many social media creators and YouTubers, the $4.99/mo plan will probably do you just fine.

You can see a full comparison of the apps and find out more on the Skyglass website.