The Ultimate Quest: Touching the Sky VR

“The camera to film in the air had to be a maximum of 10 metres away from me, maximum. So, there was no way we could shoot from a helicopter.” Aaron Durogati is explaining how they shot Touching the Sky VR, a unique 360-degree virtual reality film that features paragliding and wingsuiting in Chamonix, the Dolomites and the Karakoram.  

The film stars Aaron and Matthias Weger flying paragliders, and wingsuit pilots Fred Fugen and Vincent Cotte and took three years to make. The producer is award-winning adventure filmmaker Jonathan Griffith, and the film was made for Meta – yes that Meta, the one that owns Facebook and Instagram – for their virtual reality ecosystem Meta Quest. That means you need a Meta Quest headset to watch it. Some 20 million people own a Meta Quest headset (they start at about €300) and although it is a pretty niche way to watch a film it is also completely amazing and immersive.

It is the third adventure feature film made exclusively by and for Meta, by Jon Griffith. The first was about Everest and the second an award-winning climbing film, The Soloist, shot with big-wall climber Alex Honnold, of solo El Capitan fame. Griffith, it turns out, is an evangelist for VR/360 films and his enthusiasm is infectious.

“Touching the Sky was a huge project,” says Aaron, “and I have to honestly say when Jonathan came to me with the idea, I saw it a bit like a job. Then he showed me...