They Created a Monster!

Encounter Dinosaurs director Andy Jones wants your first face-to-face encounter with a dinosaur to be as riveting—and as realistic—as possible.

“We’ve seen dinosaurs on-screen before, but they’ve never been right there with you in your space—you staring at them, them staring at you,” Jones says of the Apple Vision Pro experience, which transports you to the Late Cretaceous Period (66 million years ago), when dinos ruled Earth.

Created by Apple’s Emmy® Award–winning Vision Products Group and executive-produced by Fairview Portals founder Jon Favreau, Encounter Dinosaurs is a huge leap in the evolution of interactive storytelling. Here, the creatures don’t simply roar and run away; they get up close to you, explore your space, and react to your every movement.

“These aren’t creatures of fantasy or make-believe,” says Jones. “So our goal was to bring them back to life.”

Jones and his team tackled a Tyrannosaurus-size challenge first: Figuring out how to make these long-gone creatures behave as they did millions of years ago. “They weren’t monsters. They were animals on this planet, like all other animals that have come after them,” says Jones. “We were fascinated by the idea of, ‘How did they really live?’”

Jones—who worked with Favreau on the 2019 film The Lion King—took visual inspiration from the real world. “Jon and I have always been fascinated by natural history documentaries—especially the Planet Earth series,” notes Jones. “That was our holy grail for making these animals look as realistic as possible—the shooting techniques, the camera placement, the style of cutting.”

The Encounter Dinosaurs team also consulted paleontologist Darren Naish to help them understand how animals behaved in the Late Cretaceous Period. “He answered questions on the science behind them—what they could and couldn’t do, and what current-day animals they most resemble.”

You can see their attention to detail first-hand when you meet “Izzy,” a curious baby Isisaurus.

Though an adult Isisaurus could grow as long as 60 feet and weigh up to 15 tons, a baby Isisaurus was no bigger than a small dog, Jones and his team learned. So they studied puppies and baby giraffes to capture Izzy’s restless energy.

“Some animals can walk when born but are still clumsy, and this environment was rough,” he says. “We wanted that struggle to come across.”

And because the Isisaurus had hollow bones—a trait shared with modern-day birds—Izzy’s sometimes-awkward movements were modeled on the way some birds skitter across the sand.

“The Isisaurus is a super-difficult animal to animate,” Jones says. “Because it had four legs and it couldn’t really run or gallop, Izzy has this fast-moving walking gait—which is kind of silly but also kind of cute.”

Izzy’s charm is intentional—Jones didn’t want Encounter Dinosaurs to be too terrifying. “Dinosaurs can be scary, and we wanted a character that makes you want to move closer,” he says.

There are, of course, bigger beasts to be discovered in Encounter Dinosaurs, like the much bigger—and much hungrier—Rajasaurus.

A towering carnivore whose name translates as “King Lizard,” the Rajasaurus stood over 7 feet tall and weighed more than 1,600 pounds. In Encounter Dinosaurs, the creature makes a dramatic entrance—sticking its head into your space and looking you directly in the eye.

To craft this mighty (and mighty intimidating) dinosaur, Jones and his team took inspiration from killer whales, which don’t physically resemble a Rajasaurus but share its innate curiosity.

“The Rajasaurus has never seen a human,” says Jones. “This is a quite intelligent creature, so he’s not going to eat it right away. We liken it to the way killer whales come up to a swimmer and just follow behind them: What is this? Is it food?”

Thanks to ground-breaking head, hand, and body tracking, the creature also responds to how you move—backing up when you approach and inching forward if it senses you retreating. Get too close, and it might even snap its jaws.

“That interactivity elevates the realism,” says Jones. “When the Rajasaurus comes into your space, your brain knows it’s not there, but you believe it is. The experience plays with your senses.”

Encounter Dinosaurs comes installed on Apple Vision Pro, and can be downloaded from the App Store.