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Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware: Portable and with external cameras to allow for orientation and "mixed reality".

Maybe Apple is on the right track here, since the Oculus Quest has sold more units than all the other VR headsets combined. But there is one big difference: Apple's headset will be a very expensive premium product (apparently around 3000 USD), while the Oculus Quest costs just 400 USD.

I think consumers just don't want to spend a lot of money on VR. Except for the Quest, they are all far too expensive, and that's why they didn't sell. Apple just makes the problem worse by increasing the price even more.

John Carmack has made the same point repeatedly: VR is not a high price product category. If he is right, the Apple headset will fail. It may be more feasible to sell $3000 smartphones than to sell VR headsets at this price.

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> From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware

That's not really accurate. The rumours suggest optics at least as good as the Meta Quest Pro ($1k), possibly with a substantial move forward from there. They suggest resolution of 3k per eye, significantly above the Meta Quest Pro, and using Micro LED for a big improvement on the screen door effect, brightness, quality. Then there's the compute, with 2x M2s, this is quite possibly going to be able to run AAA VR games (if they're compatible with iOS) – the M2 is running some AAA games on things like the MBA, and this one has an M2 per eye.

These rumours might turn out to be rubbish, but they seem to be credible rather than speculation, and they would suggest a high price tag. If this was a Meta Quest Pro "Ultra" it might be >$2k based on Meta's pricing, so Apple charging $3k for it given their "tax" (and high production quality) feels about right.

You are misunderstanding what I said. Of course the Apple headset would have much higher quality components. But it is similar to the Oculus Quest in that it is a standalone device which uses external cameras to track the environment. It's easy to use.

My point was that it seems consumers don't care about expensive high performance VR headsets. They want something that is both easy to use and inexpensive: The unusually early Quest Pro price drop suggests as much.

It's like the Nintendo Switch: If it had cost substantially more, much better graphics, screen resolution etc would have been possible, but it almost certainly would have been a flop. The same thing seems to be true for VR headsets.

Do think that it is a valid point. But I have the feeling Apple is aiming at productivity rather than gaming since it is running rxOS with M2’s and doesn’t seem to include controllers of any kind (does have hand-eye control) which some games require for immersion (I.m.o.), but I may be reading your comment wrong.

May be far fetched but, it could be a monitor replacement for offices; got supplied with a mbp and 4 monitors, 2 for at home and on desk on location, some coworkers 6 in total; that monitors alone add up from € 2-3 K fairly quick (fairly nice 27” 4K displays). I’d gladly take the headset over the monitors if it’s not to heavy; The ‘AR’ mode could mean I would be able to see my laptop screen and keyboard and display the other screens using the overlay and switch between them (& other operations) using hand gestures/ moving my head/ looking somewhere. Would also save me a ton of space.

Edit: rxOS instead of iOS, the marketing material seems to mention day to day usage mostly

Apologies, that does all make sense!

You think 2x M2 chips could play a AAA game at 6k res (3k per eye) and 90+ fps?

There's a new OS (xrOS) [1] listed in the article in addition to talk about Apple's full hardware team working on a new chip for the headset.

I'm not sure what value there is on speculating at this level.

We have no idea what sort of gaming content they are planning for it in addition to the AR stuff. At that price point it's hard to tell what the market or usecases with be.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-01/apple-mix...

A single M2 chip is able to play a recent-ish AAA game and decent-ish settings, on ~2k at >30fps, while also running the whole game itself and macOS.

So for VR, foveated rendering could mean the difference between ~2k and 3k is a wash. And AAA games designed for VR tend to be a little more conservative on the graphics. And the chip will only theoretically have to handle half the other game work and no full macOS.

Combine that with Apple's continued Metal development, which is very capable if you're willing to do the leg work to take advantage of it, and yeah I think it'll get close.

> A single M2 chip is able to play a recent-ish AAA game and decent-ish settings, on ~2k at >30fps, while also running the whole game itself and macOS.

Doing the math to the OPs numbers. 6k vs 2k = 3x. 90 fps vs 30 fps = 3x.

That an extra 900% performance difference right there.

Reality, out the window.

3k (there's supposedly an M2 per eye). 2k->3k = +125%. If foveated rendering can half the necessary pixel count, that's pretty much a wash.

FPS alone is +200%, but games are running above 30fps already so it's less than that. Add a reduction in system load due to not running the full OS, potentially framework improvements as we usually see at WWDC, and slightly reduced graphical fidelity that is typical for VR games, and we're back to the same ballpark.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-air-m2-vs-macbook-pro...

The M2 doesn't even hit 30fps at 1080p. You also have to consider the power draw limits they set on these 2 chips placed near your eyes compared to a M2 running in a laptop with lots of heat dissipation.

Also, there is MetalFX for faster rendering time. Render at low-res, upscale to high-res.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metalfx

I mean they can, but at what power? You can't have 2x m2s next to your face each kicking out 6o degree heat at 20 watts.

If we ignore the biggest problem that VR has (power) then the second biggest problem VR has to deal with is heat dissipation.

> an M2 chip per eye

first, the definition on an M2 chip is very murky. There is a massive difference between an M2 targeted for small mobile, compared to a M2 found in a laptop.

A mobile can't sustain power draw of 5 watts for very long.

A headset can't sustain power draw of 10 watts for that long.

AAA graphics needs >40 watts of power. You can't have that next to your face without large amounts of cooling. Now, I'm assuming that Apple will offload graphics to phones/tablets/laptops in the style of oculus link. This solves a bunch of other problems like weight, size and battery life.

This is where Apple has the great advantage of course, not only does it control the entire vertical there, but they actually have a QA team, product metrics and leadership to make sure that the link will be seamless, easy and reliable. Meta will devote a team to it for a year, who will build a totally new system, sling it over the fence and move on to make sure that they get promotions. It never really worked of course, but it pushed the promotions metrics, and the leadership don't care about users, only moving a synthetic metric so they can be made VP of cables.

I digress.

However, for remote rendering to work reliably, you'll either need decent wifi(new time machine anyone?) or a decent quality cable. Wifi is a right shit to make work reliably at full throughput, if not impossible. so I'd assume cables would be the way forward (or some fancy 60gig networking stuff, but that seems unlikely)

> Micro LED for a big improvement on the screen door effect, brightness, quality

Nope. The screen is not actually the limiting factor, its the optics. The "barn door" and brightness is almost entirely down to the style of lenses.

I'm willing to spend a lot on VR, but Apple would have to absolutely blow everything else out of the water at that price point. I have no doubt that a lot of Apple enthusiasts will buy them, but they've certainly chosen a specific market.

You could buy a full Index kit, get the wireless upgrade for it, and then a full Vive Pro kit and its wireless upgrade, and have spent about the same amount of money.

Just with the rumor that the new Apple headset is sporting an M chip, it will likely blow everything else away in terms of potential. Apple will also be focusing on everything that isn’t gaming, meaning that XR people can finally get some work done in mixed reality. Compared to other companies, they don’t like gaming. They just put up with it because of the massive revenue.

Sure PCVR still might have better specs, but they’re primarily wired and that’s a huge con if you want to use VR for fitness and it kills immersion when you have to turn a lot. I’ve tried to mitigate this problem with hooks and pulleys on the ceiling. It didn’t help much and it caused additional issues.

You also still can’t do serious work with most of the existing standalone or PCVR headsets. Why? Because you need a minimum PPD of 35 (where 50 PPD is retina quality). To date, HP Reverb G2 and the meta Quest Pro are around 25 PPD. Only the PCVR varjo aero is at 35 PPD, but it’s wired, costs $2000, and doesn’t come with either the $600 base station / controller combo or the $3000-$4000 PC needed to power it

> You could buy a full Index kit, get the wireless upgrade for it, and then a full Vive Pro kit and its wireless upgrade, and have spent about the same amount of money.

You’re not accounting for the $2000-$3000 PC needed to run an Index or Vive Pro 2. Also both headsets are wired, and both rely on base stations. While they have the best tracking accuracy, they’re a pain to set up right and they’re one more thing you have to worry about. It’s not for normal people or even the average PC gamer. If it wasn’t for the lockdowns, I wouldn’t even have had the motivation to finish setting up my base stations. Until the pandemic hit, my PCVR sets where just languishing in their boxes. Self contained tracking is the way to go for normal people and most techies

The form factor for PCVR headsets is also terrible. It’s too intimidating for normal people to put a giant bucket on their faces. Even meta’s quest 2 suffers from this problem. This is yet another reason most people won’t even try modern 4th gen VR.

There are more downsides I can list. I'm very familiar with them because I still own both headsets including the wireless kit for the Vive. I also own the HP Reverb, the Quest 2 and Quest Pro.

As imperfect as they may be, my go to headsets are still from meta for now, mainly because of wireless which is why I’m excited for the new Apple headset

I'm willing to spend $3,000 on a device that I would want to use every day. The reason I don't spend that much on existing VR tech is that I don't want to use it.

I use my quest every day and if there is a better experience to be had for $3k, I would pay it. I was put off by the quest pro, it wasn’t really better (for my use case) and $1k?

In some ways, the quest pro is better. The headset is thinner and lighter. It’s much easier to mod for comfort. It has more RAM and a faster chip. Hand tracking is noticeably better. I didn’t think I would enjoy an open headset, but I like it much better than the enclosed quest 2, but that’s personal preference since I primarily use it to workout and I like having awareness of my surroundings like when I play normal flat games. I believe it’s new PCVR features like foveated rendering and desktop mirroring are also advantages over the quest 2

Surprisingly, what’s worse are the pro controllers. If you have hand tracking turned on, you will constantly lose controller tracking. Even if you turn off hand tracking, you will still lose some controller tracking in fast paced games like beat saber. I am constantly also losing haptic feedback. The original controllers are superior for gaming.

You can pick up the pro from scalpers on eBay for -$800 if you don’t want to pay $1000 for retail. at $800, it feels more like a fair price.

The screens are much much better, as is the form factor.

The rest isn't much better than a quest 2.

Most people don't have $3k of disposable income for a single non key purchase.

How big even is this market, at $3k? 50 million people worldwide?

Even with 50 million people spending $3k, that’s still a $150b market.

But there are lots more rich people in the world than that.

And they will spend more than the initial cost, because they will buy apps, Apple Care, and next year some will buy version 2 of the headset.

Next thing, you’ll tell me Apple wanted to charge $5k (inflation adjusted) for their new products in the 70s, and we know how that went. People simply don’t pay for new, powerful technology.

If you want to make it out like it was some huge success, remember IBM PC clones ruled the desktop market for decades, not Apple stuff :-)

Why do you think this current iteration is a consumer product? Whatever Apple comes out with, it's for developers and Youtubers.

Weeks before the original iPad was released, the very same people were speculating a starting price of $1000, this site, amongst others, collectively lost their shit. Release price? $500.

I’m not saying that it will be the same this time, but equally won’t be making statements based on what at the moment is a guess, educated or not.

The leaked exceptional price is also consistent with the leaked very low projected sales figure of of 900.000.

> I think consumers just don’t want to spend a lot of money on VR

And I don’t think Apple wants those people as customers, at least not initially.

$3000 for a headset from a company that sells $1000 monitor stands for $5000 monitors and $500 wheels for the computers doesn’t seem about right to me. In a year or two, the next generation of VR headset will be much better and still $3000 and you will be able to buy this one for, maybe, $2000.

There’s an awful lot of people who can afford $2k for a piece of hardware if it’s good enough.

All that said, I suspect the headset will be priced well under $3000.

The current best uses for VR are engineering and gaming. Given this is a consumer product, it won't be used for engineering, and given it's Apple, it won't have a big gaming library.

Apple will have to come up with something new for users to do for this product to justify a $X,000 price, almost regardless of how good the hardware is.

All the expensive VR headsets sold terribly, except for the cheap Oculus Quest. The lesson seems clear: When it comes to VR, people strongly favor price over quality. Which in turn suggests the Apple headset will fail.

VR is perhaps like the original Game Boy: Not very powerful, no color screen, but low price and long battery life. It sold a lot, unlike the competition.

Have people ever really had a quality vs. price choice? With all the computing power being discussed, the quality may be well beyond what has been available in any previous headset. Much lower latency with much higher resolution graphics. If that is the case, there is no existing applicable lesson concerning price vs. quality. You may still be right, but my point is that if the quality is pushed enough, the price/quality tradeoff may be much different.

I would say the current choice for high-end quality in the VR space would be a Pimax 8K ($1,387), a tracking setup and controllers (another $577 if you get the de facto standard equipment from Valve), at least a NVIDIA RTX 2080 with 10+ GB ($900, but you'll want something significantly more powerful to run anything beyond the bare minimum), plus of course the rest of the computer to keep up with that and extra-long cables and everything (add at least another $500-$1,000).

For comparison, the various leaks and analyst claims say that the Apple headset is going to have 3x or more the effective resolution of the Pimax 8K, with no dedicated space or desktop computer needed to drive it. That's a gigantic leap past anything that exists on the market right now, and at $3,000 it would be a significantly cheaper buy-in for anyone who doesn't already own a thousand-dollar GPU.

Isn't the top end of the market the Varjo VR-3/XR-3?

Apple's headset would be cheaper and even higher quality from what it sounds like.

The Quest Pro seems a better comparison: It sits between the normal Quest and the Apple headset in terms of specs and price. But apparently it didn't sell well (there was an early price drop), suggesting that an even more powerful even more expensive headset won't sell either.

> The lesson seems clear: When it comes to VR, people strongly favor price over quality. Which in turn suggests the Apple headset will fail.

That doesn't seem like the lesson to me. I think the lesson here is: VR is not good enough yet to demand a high price tag. And that's certainly my experience with it as well. It's a fun novelty right now, but not worth dropping a couple grand on. But if someone could push it, and make it, I dunno, twice as good, then I could be willing to spend a whole lot more on it.

+1 the tech isn't there yet. It needs to be able to replace my monitors and the visual quality has not been there yet. TBD on comfort and battery life. But I'd gladly drop $3K if it ticked all the boxes but not for a gimmick that I can only use for a handful of games.

Actually it was also that it was standalone and no wires.

Yeah, but it seems that wasn't decisive. The Quest Pro is also standalone, but fairly high in price, and it seems it didn't sell well. There are no official figures for the Quest Pro alone, but it received a strong price cut shortly after release.

The bottom line seems clear: People want a standalone system at low price. That's what the Quest 2 is offering, mostly. I think it could really take off if it was still somewhat cheaper and if it had a lot of exclusive "AAA" games. Say, like the Nintendo Switch.

There is an absolutely gigantic market for computers (and the monitors to go with them), it's almost impossible to do any kind of business without them.

VR is not there and maybe never will be.

> VR is not there and maybe never will be

I think that’s probably the ultimate truth at least as long as it requires glasses or goggles.

VR won’t be there, but VR may be here. Tens of millions of units are sold each year. That might be the right size of the market. It’s been around for 30 years now. In some ways it’s a mature market.

That reasoning feels a bit like saying only tens of millions of smart phones will sell because rotary dial telephones have been around since the 1890s. I think its very fair to say the Quest and PSVR and all their friends are a big leap from Nintendo's Virtual Boy or something. Enough we should consider it a different market for sure. The real issue is software still to this day utterly sucks. There is zero incentive for existing games companies to make content until the market is as large and easy to port to as the existing status quo. The difference with 3D accelerated screen base 3D games was the entire form of entertainment was new and clearly valuable. Too many business people think VR is just another medium for existing 3D games, which also means its being treated like a new console or something with respect to investment. The barriers to entry for plucky homebrew creating something of super high quality is also much much higher than the start of 3D games. Valve already demonstrated what the good end of experiences can look like, even on older gen of VR hardware, but also demonstrated it takes a seriously talented team given total freedom to produce the best with investment behind them. Augmented reality who knows, metaverse type VR who knows. But we haven't even seen the basic uptake of high quality AAA VR software because it doesn't exist regardless of how good a headset is. It's like if a smartphone could only act like an analogue mobile phone and everyone questions the hardware being important.

I wasn’t thinking of Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. I was thinking of the stuff from Virtuality. It was a visor with an LCD for each eye, 3d head tracking, stereo sound and it connected to an Amiga. It’s very much like modern devices in the same way that a PS5 is similar to the original PlayStation and other consoles from that era.

We got to where we are today by incremental changes to shipping products over more than 30 years. What VR people hope Apple can do is take the technology we have and make it work for people just like they did with smartphones.

(consider adding more paragraphs next time, otherwise it's hard to read)

Do people even buy those $1000 monitor stands, like really? Or is it just a highball so Apple can get better deals negotiating enterprise-size deals with larger companies buying in bulk?

Sure. But the XDR is meant to be a professional reference model - those stands are among other things built with magnetic latches so you can detach and pack up the screen and take it with you site-to-site.

To compare, Home Depot sells a $32 cordless drill and a $300 cordless drill (and more expensive rotary hammers and the like). They are not the same product and are not necessarily meant for the same people or the same uses.

Enterprises who are getting XDR monitors for employees when the Studio Display exists do so as a perk.

So is this about anchoring people at the higher price point knowing COGS will come way down?

Isn't the iphone 14 pro max 1tb version already $1600?

I think with respect to compute/GPU capability the Apple headset will be vastly superior. One of the major issues with the Quest is the lack of graphics quality that can be brought to the virtual environments. Unless you run it via Link to a PC with a top end GPU it is just a toy. Having VR experiences like the recent Unreal Engine provides is simply orders of magnitude away for Quest in the current state... Thats one major reason that this thing does not take off for FB

I don't think casual users care at all about graphic quality. Just look at how the Switch or Wii exploded over every other game console. Same thing for games like Roblox. Graphic quality is purely an enthusiast niche target. If you want mass adoption you need to fix comfort and nausea.

it is something different if your screen is only a few square centimeters or if you are in a virtual environment. At least I do not agree to your point of view. For example running something like MS Flight Sim with decent realistic visuals is absolutely impossible, forget any other sims that require high quality characters, nature or anything else with a high polygon count or AI rendering

The far bigger problem for VR is simply crispness of text and objects at a distance. High poly counts are relatively unimportant, there's a new Zelda game out with graphics that wouldn't have been amazing ten years ago doing pretty well that would probably run just fine on a quest.

You need a PPD of about 35 - 40 for reading comfortably. 50 is retina quality.

Even with the Meta Quest Pro, it only gets to about 24. The same goes for the HP reverb g2. For $1999, the Varjo Aero PCVR headset comes at 35 PPD, but at that price it doesn’t include the $3000 -$4000 PC to run it or the $600 base stations and controllers. It’s also wired to the PC

At $3000, i am guessing that the Apple headset will be 35 or higher PPD

> 50 is retina quality.

Something must be off here. My 4k 40″ screen at 30 inches distance gives 70 ppd. It works well for reading, but I don't think it fits "retina quality". Retina would be above 100.

BTW, half of that (35ppd) would be an uncomfortable 1080p on 40″. Which makes Quest Pro even worse.

The only thing I think might make it better is that unlike on static screens head motion could add a nice smoothing effect to the picture, which might potentially lower the required PPD.

The original Game Boy did sell quite well despite low resolution and ghosting. There were other devices with better screens and higher price. People chose the lower price and the worse screen. Is this also plausible for VR? The success of the Quest suggests: yes.

but at the time the market was different and the product at the time was an improvement over single purpose game toys by allowing changing games. Totally different story. Of course there is a low price market for lower resolution and compute... But there is a reason that retina displays on all device types are a thing too, usually at higher price points, at least initially. And economies of scale, manufacturing hardware depreciation etc. will bring these devices also to lower price points sooner or later.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is 40 years old by now. Despite massive improvements in computer graphics, it still seems to essentially be the niche product it always was. Which is consistent with the "graphics don't matter much" theory.

Graphics quality was the biggest punch line for Zuck's Metaverse demo

Not if you are rendering the Zuck - he is quite lo-poly in real life.

Problem is: Apple mostly ruined their relationship with Epic, Meta and even Valve. Whatever excellent VR tech they come up with will be mostly ignored by the game industry. Good part of iPhone / iPad success was due to the excellent apps ecosystem. Who gonna make VR experiences for Apple new VR ecosystem?

F2P game companies? I guess they won't be interested either because Apple will try to bite off a lot of profits from their ads by not letting anyone but themself to run targeted ads.

Let's see. Unreal Engine can build for Apple Silicon. So any game dev can make his choice himself. Unity and others are also there as good frameworks.

More importantly, Apple did not ruin relationsships with Media companies. I'd love to see some more VR concerts or other events. Meta totally failed at scaling this.

Majority of game development companies don't build their own tooling. Option to build a binary for ARM Mac is not sufficient to bring high quality experience to whatever proprietary tech Apple will put out there. And it's quite certain it's gonna be incompatible with Meta's offerings, wont integrate with other platforms, etc.

I not saying like Apple have no chances at all here, but building own gaming ecosystem is extremely prohibitive expensive even for large corporations. Both Microsoft and Sony spent a decades on building their console ecosystems as well as tens of billions of dollars.

Google and Meta both tried an failed miserably. Both Microsoft and Epic tried to compete with Valve on PC, spent billions and 5 years later their store is still dont have any real marketshare.

Most importantly Apple just can't really go out and buy some companies simply because Microsoft, Tencent and few other giants already own half of big players out there. So it's gonna be really really hard for them to create mass market product that can compete.

PS: I won't even start on fact that it's gonna be impossible to do it "in secret" for them this time. Competitors will be on them immediately.

> Google and Meta both tried an failed miserably.

Did Google really try?

The only way they could have convinced me it actually might be around 18 months after launch is if Alphabet spun out an entirely new company for it.

Launching it as Google Stadia was basically a self-fulfilling prophecy of cancellation. Few wanted to pay good money for product that was going to dissolve in a year or two.

The most important thing is frameworks. No joke, nothing is currently stopping Apple from making a headset that ships with support for Half Life: Alyx. If they support DXVK at a protocol level and ship a Wine runtime like the Steam Deck does, they could support Beat Saber, Tabletop Sim and VRChat without their developers even knowing.

But they won't. As-is, Apple's insistence on iron-fisting their ecosystem is hurting them greatly. It's the reason gaming on Mac died, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the reason inferior headsets outsell the Apple one 10:1.

They still would have to _license_ Half Life: Alyx (a Steam exclusive designed for the Valve Index) or Beat Saber (by Meta-owned Beat Games).

> It's the reason gaming on Mac died

Some gaming on Mac died because they are pinched by consoles on one side and custom-built gaming rigs on the other. The majority of their sold systems are battery-powered, and your first chance at a GPU power envelope of even 150W is the Mac Pro. Which, coincidentally, is also the only Mac left that has a dGPU option.

The real question is why so few developers take the effort to build and support their iOS games for iPadOS and macOS.

> They still would have to _license_ Half Life: Alyx

Nope. The user can license it, as long as the client is supported. And good news too, recent Steam updates have added support for ARM64 clients on Unix systems.

> Some gaming on Mac died because they are pinched by consoles

I mean, most gaming on Mac died because of inconvenient 32-bit lib depreciation and Apple's coincidentally unfortunate refusal to support a standardized graphics API. With Proton, Macs are a Steam Deck. Without them, they're a Steam Machine. They're not mega-powerful machines in the first place, but neither is my Thinkpad and it still plays nice with Wine.

> why so few developers take the effort to build and support their iOS games for iPadOS and macOS.

Now that is a head-scratcher. My best guess is that the market is thin, and the carrot at the end of the stick isn't big. It's much easier than porting a DirectX or Vulkan title from scratch though, that's for certain.

Valve has only made one VR game to date

I’m not aware of Epic making any VR games

Meta doesn’t make new games for other platforms even now. They’ve culled many od their own game studios. The only issue would be Beat Saber. Imo it’s still VR’s killer app. Still, there are plenty of passable clones and similar games that are good enough

The bigger issue is that Apple doesn’t like games. They never did. They only tolerate games now because of the revenue it brings in. Apple Arcade is a good start, but it still doesn’t convince me that they’re serious about catering to anyone beyond casual gamers

The other big issue is that market for VR and AR pre-Apple remains small. Because of that, there are barely any AAA games. I can count them on one hand. It’s also arguable if they’re actually AAA games when many of them are really dated games.

> Apple Arcade is a good start, but it still doesn’t convince me that they’re serious about catering to anyone beyond casual gamers

To be fair, a huge portion of the gaming market is casual gamers, and Apple does incredibly well there on iPhone.

Apple isn't going to make a huge dent in the console market because games have to be restructured to deal with touch controls vs controllers, and to have a revenue model that doesn't start out with a $60 purchase. For all the power of an iPhone, it also still lags a generation behind in graphics performance (because batteries, size, and heat)

There isn't a PC gaming rig market that Apple would make a dent in either. The baseline price of a modular Mac that could have a top-of-line dGPU is too high, and they won't sell enough of them to convince developers to port and support their titles.

There was never a big chance that Valve would port Alyx, or Meta would allow Beat Saber to be on another platform.

It would take an epically _good_ relationship to convince hardware platforms to port their platform exclusive titles over - just count all the Mario and Zelda games that have shipped for Xbox and Playstation.

Alyx works well on Meta Quest 2 and other non-Valve headsets.

Beat Saber is available on Steam and any standartized VR headset.

Even if not officially Nintendo games work on PC / SteamDeck and even Xbox via emulation. But that will never ever happen on Apple platform because it's gonna be proprietary, incompatible with anything and locked.

> I think with respect to compute/GPU capability the Apple headset will be vastly superior.

They still have the same issues that everyone else has: compute/heat/battery. Sure they have the vertical and are able to offload rendering onto ipads or laptops, but then you're basically tethered like the quest/vive/etc.

Running unreal requires a 300watt graphics card, plus ~60watt CPU. even assuming apple can quarter that, its still 90 watts. and not 90 watts of 37 degrees, its 90 watts at 65c. you can't keep that kind of heat next to your face.

> I think with respect to compute/GPU capability the Apple headset will be vastly superior.

Running unreal re

apple is all about ecosystem.

many little niceties you hardly notice but would immediately notice the loss of.

with vr and ar you are placing yourself directly within the ecosystem. (the os becomes your reality, if you will, extended… xr… wasn’t that clever of them…)

the iPhone long game shows apple’s willingness to creep slowly into lower cost tiers to preserve the brand value.

carmack doesn’t need to be wrong for apple to succeed. apple just needs to be patient. (and maybe get back to some fundamentals on the software, the operating systems fee like they are beginning to rot a bit.)

That is, if they develop and produce something nearly impossible - a wearable glasses-like (in terms of size and weight) headset that can project color images non-multiplicatively overlaying the reality in user's eyes. If they had somehow figured that out (I'm no expert, but I don't think anyone did - at least I haven't heard anything) and if there's a decent SDK then 3 grands is a discount price for such a device.

But if it's yet another VR headset, it won't work. Camera passthrough is a gimmick that even with most advanced eye tracking and fanciest foveated rendering provides merely a limited approximation of AR that only leads to headaches and eye strain. Despite the article's claims such devices won't be worn all-day on a regular basis.

Apple is also all about being a closed ecosystem, and if the open VR/AR/XR community struggles with content, then Apple is not magically pulling out ton of quality apps (of any kind) out of some hat. I assume its "killer" app would be some AR assistant that would provide various additional contextual information at a literal glance. And then maybe some AR/XR game, maybe something like Ingress/Pokemon Go on steroids. But for an assistant, it has to be smart, and Siri's intelligence is a joke... so I'm skeptical it will be worth the money at launch.

yet another vr headset that is measurably less awful while still not being good is still a massive advancement.

apple can afford to iterate, and their high end and business customers can afford to participate in that process.

it won’t be siri, but they wouldn’t be rolling it out if they didn’t have something that felt different.

Except that I'm pretty sure it won't work with anything but Apple ecosystem. No chance in hell it would work with existing SteamVR libraries or Oculus Stores.

And Apple's domain is currently entirely empty of any VR/AR/XR applications. While I expect Safari to get OpenXR^W WebXR support (IIRC it's still not there, right?), even if the hardware specs will be suporior, it is hard to call it an advancement (something that beats the existing user experience), when there's maybe only a few applications.

I think you mean WebXR in regards to Safari, not OpenXR.

Yes, thank you. I’ve edited my comment.

it is no harder to call it an advancement than it is to call it not one, given that it isn’t released yet.

again, this doesn’t have to be a successful device for apple to have made a successful entry. it just needs to do something different.

are you pretty sure it won’t?

I forgot this, but for a period of time Siri was a serious compeitive advantage for iPhone.

Really important to remember:

- Apple Watch: $447 at release (inflation adj); $250 today.

- iPad: $695 at release (inflation adj); $450 today.

- iPhone: $877 at release (inflation adj, carrier subsidized); $800 today.

Similar story with all of their products. Apple has a history of releasing new product lines with the "top end" expensive models (remember in 2017 when they released both the iPhone X and iPhone 8). Early adopters will be early adopters. It should also speak volumes that this is likely to be introduced at WWDC; the first iteration may be extremely developer focused, to help build the platform, with more consumer-oriented and priced devices next year.

Historically: It has practically never been a good bet to bet against Apple, even if all the logic says to [1]. This time could be different. I would not bet on it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U

The flip side of that as a consumer is all of those first generation devices we’re also quickly iterated in to the point where the second or third generations were markedly improved. I don’t think I want to spend $3,000 just to have the version that comes out the next year be significantly better.

> Historically: It has practically never been a good bet to bet against Apple, even if all the logic says to [1]. This time could be different. I would not bet on it.

Historically? What?! Apple had about 15 years of lukewarm products. Even during their initial phase many products were commercial flops.

Their post iPhone era is an outlier.

They’ve had plenty of lukewarm products in their post iPhone era as well.

And it’s not as if the original iPhone didn’t have its own issues that Apple had to quickly pivot from.

Plus there’s a lot of talk about gaming here but Apple don’t have a good track record for gaming: their games console was a massive flop. macOS isn’t seen as a gaming OS (I see more talk of Linux than is do of macOS) and Apple Arcade is yet another one of those lukewarm products. So I’m questioning whether this headset is targeting that market…and if it is, whether gamers would even take it seriously.

I’ll definitely be watching this piece of hardware to see what happens but I don’t feel confident that this will be “another iPhone”.

The price drop would have to be a lot stronger than that for their VR headset, considering that apparently people even find $1000 way too much, let alone $3000. The Quest is the only headset that sold substantial numbers (20 million) and it costs $400.

According to some rumors headset will have 2x M2/M3 chips so it will have a lot of computing platform.

If they provide some dock so that headset can be used Mac mini/ultra style as desktop + VR/XR is more like a bonus then this could still sell well.

This is effectively a reasonable graphics card per eye. Sure it's no Nvidia 4090, but the M2 is running recent games with very good graphics on Macs.

Combine that with foveated rendering, possibly implemented deep in Metal, and being careful about graphically intensive applications, and this could be high FPS on 3K resolution, and be a significant step up in immersion.

The current leaks and analyst claims are saying an 8K screen per eye [1], with some kind of advanced eye tracking and foveated rendering to keep the GPU processing requirements under control. PSVR2 has already shown that at least the foveated rendering part is totally practical even at a much lower price point.

[1]: https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-vr-headset

Foveated rendering doesn't seem to have a big impact, as it is only capable of momentarily reducing the resolution of half of the screen. It's very coarse.

eye tracking isn't really reliable enough to make foveated work well enough for users.

most hardware support foveation, its not that challenging to do in software. its not the magic bullet until you get low latency accurate universal eye tracking.

now that is an interesting thought, they would be more powerful than current MBPs... Screen Mirroring can already be done from MacOS to iPadOS for example. It would be super awesome if one could connect the headset to another Mac and use the screens / keyboard / touchpad of that device. Ideally it would allow virtual desktops to have quick access to both devices by simply swiping on the touchpad.

it's all a question of what you use it for.

If you use it for a high value application then a high price isn't a barrier. The fundamentals that are shifting here are: (a) Apple is going to push a massive increase in quality (b) Apple is accessing a different market - cashed up professionals

So the real question here is, does the increase in quality get it into a space where new high value applications become viable.

For me, it would only have to be equal or better than using a physical monitor and that would probably justify its value. The fact I could just go anywhere and a full multi-monitor setup with me would be enough.

It's a wild thing to go for, the demonstrated usefulness of VR/AR in business is still very niche. The vast majority of businesses will simply have no use for them, and those that do have a use for them will likely buy them in single digit volumes.

> The vast majority of businesses will simply have no use for them

That type of ultra confident assertion is the sort of thing that usually turns out to be the faulty assumption when breakthrough technologies happen. People struggle to imagine the future reality where something's value add is far outside their experience.

How many businesses have computer monitors? I'd say that's the number that have a use for an ultra high resolution headset that does the same thing. Is it better? I don't know. It has advantages and disadvantages. Is it worth the cost? I don't know. But if you are going to tell me they have no use for it then I'm going to strongly disagree.

>That type of ultra confident assertion is the sort of thing that usually turns out to be the faulty assumption when breakthrough technologies happen.

On the one hand, sure. On the other hand, beware survivorship bias.

Say Walmart finds a use for a VR/AR headset. I really doubt they are going to buy fewer than 10 headsets.

It seems like consumers just don't want VR/AR. We've had compelling experiences for a decade. But it seems like only a subset of console gamers, already a small population, care to buy a VR headset.

Part of it is that the cost to play VR - which is primarily the time cost - is too high for the experience you get out of it. For example, the only games that provides a true VR-only experience you can boot up on a dime are Beat Saber and VR Chat - other VR titles tend to follow the pattern of "<existing genre> but in VR". To add, you need 2x the processing power since you need to render the game twice, so you are going to take a hit in visual fidelity, AND you typically want 90fps or higher to avoid motion blur, which raises the bar for playing any high-fidelity VR game (at least until generalized foveated rendering APIs become available and headsets implement it).

This is a very uncharitable take. What about games like Holopoint or Pistol Whip?

Besides, in some genres, "X but in VR" can make for a very big difference. Space and flight sims - even very arcade ones - are a prominent example. The ability to actually look around and track enemy craft easily is huge - I wouldn't even consider playing something like Project Wingman without VR anymore, even though it is available.

There hasn't been any compelling reason that makes it necessary for me to use VR/AR. It's still at the "fun" category, which make it hard to justify spending much money for "fun". Especially when the low-end headsets is about the price of a phone or a (low-end) GPU, which undoubtedly can have more uses And play more games.

Consumers don't want VR/AR that requires wearing a deeply uncomfortable bulky headset, that means facing a significant chance of framerate- and tracking-induced nausea, and that isn't good enough resolution to use for even basic stuff like web surfing.

I would be very surprised if Apple releases a device that has those problems.

It's just not good enough yet.

I don’t think it’s wise to trust the rumored prices much. Even if the rumors are overall right because of multiple points of leakage in the supply chain, price would be one of the easiest information for Apple to keep secret.

In fact the rumored price may even be planted by Apple to create an anchor and make the product look cheaper once released.

"From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware"...

So a $3000 VR headset with a FOV that's still the equivalent of looking out of a periscope on a submarine. Fantastic.

PSVR2 is only $550 for an amazing headset and people still complain about the price.

Yeah. I think Carmack said even the Quest was still too expensive.

The PSVR2 has the additional problem that it requires a PS5. It's not a standalone system. That's like a Game Boy for which you need to own an NES. Or like a Wii U console, where the tablet controller wasn't a standalone system, and which flopped, in contrast to the Switch.

The Wii U had the bigger issue that Nintendo never actually made it clear to a lot of people that it was even a new console rather than some kind of weird tablet add-on to an existing Wii.

It really was poor marketing. A simple "Wii 2" would have done better. I'm also confused about "switch OLED". Is it just a nicer screen or more than that?

> I'm also confused about "switch OLED". Is it just a nicer screen or more than that?

Upgraded screen, more battery and storage, and identical everything else.

I'd pay $200 tops for a VR headset (not that I'd buy one even then...), given how jank the experience is, how much money I would spend to power and use the bloody thing anyway, and how quickly it will become antiquated.

Anything more for something that is essentially a short-lived toy is a fool's errand. Fool in this case meaning someone with more money than they know what to do with. I'd get better value from a Louis Vuitton handbag.

PSVR2 has already paid for itself for me, I’ve used it everyday since launch. Guess I’m just a fool with more money than brains!

I wouldn't say that. A For example, I think a 300 USD standalone gaming console could be the next Game Boy, or the next Switch, in terms of sales numbers. The benfit/price ratio just has to be good enough and it could really take off. Even with fairly primitive graphics.

$300~500 bucks for a game console sounds reasonable to me, downright cheap even since a gaming desktop or laptop would easily go into the 4 digits.

But with regards to VR headsets? Even $200 sounds too expensive if I were to be brutally honest, but I surmise going even lower would mean whoever makes the bloody thing won't even be able to cover the cost of materials so I'll compromise.

I meant a game console that is simultaneously a standalone VR headset. A Nintendo Quest basically. With exclusive Mario games.

There is the Quest 2 at that price. The problem is that it’s at least right now just not a great gaming platform. I played the crown jewel - half life alyx (by connecting to a gaming pc that can run it), and it was fine but quite awkward. The default movement scheme is one where you teleport around the room because walking is too nauseating I guess.

The thing with locomotion is that you don't actually have infinite space to walk - if you did, or if a 99.9% perfect multi-directional treadmill was available, then it wouldn't be that big of a deal to just walk throughout the entire level. So developers have to offer some other way to navigate levels and mostly-open environments, that either being smooth locomotion (hold a joystick in the direction you want to walk/are facing) or teleportation.

The better option, though it's very rarely offered, would be arm-swinging that moves you along in the direction you're looking like a cartoon character in an animation loop. Completely serious about that - you can look at the success of Gorilla Tag, where all motion is based on you pulling and pushing yourself around with your arms, and despite being a frenetic game with constant motion, motion-sickness issues are nigh nonexistent.

You can do this with the new PSVR2 Horizon game but I just use the sticks after I got used to the motion and don’t get sick now. That game already requires lots of arm motion for climbing though, so the arm wiggling animation stuff tired me out.

> It may be more feasible to sell $3000 smartphones than to sell VR headsets at this price.

Sure, now it is. But what about when the iPhone was first introduced? It didn't cost anywhere near this much money. For a new product category such as this it makes sense to start out with a cheap product so that as many people adopt it as possible, then you can begin introducing more expensive versions when you have the apps ecosystem to support it.

The original iPhone was cheaper than iPhones are today, but it was ridiculously expensive compared to every other phone on the market including smartphones. It was $800 after the carrier subsidy with a two-year contract. Most windows phones and blackberries and trios and comparable devices that had substantially more functionality at the time were between free and $200 with the carrier subsidy. The iPhone had a superior user experience, but very limited functionality and an extremely high price point. Obviously the functionality improved pretty quickly and the price point came down a bit, although it never really came down much, mostly everything else just got more expensive.

Apple has almost never started out with a cheap product. The only notable exception would be the original iMac G3, and even then it was significantly weaker than every competitor in its price range [1].

[1]: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9811/09/macvp2.idg/

Yeah, but Apple is doing the exact opposite here. They introduce their headset at an exceptionally high price.

I bought a quest, it made nauseous, it wouldn’t stay on my kids head, and ended up gathering dust until I returned it the last day possible.

I’m a pretty big fan of VR, and am currently developing a VR game in what little free time I have. I don’t think I want to spend that much. It would have to be such a huge, amazing leap forward and I don’t understand how it possibly could be right now.

It's just as well. Apple knows that this is not going to be a blockbuster product, but probably a lot of architects, engineers, doctors etc will buy the unit for work. I wouldn't be surpised if they don't focus on games at all.

If they don't use Bosch retinal projection, its going to bomb because no one with the money to buy it will want to wear that stupid shit on their head because they live the rest of their lives in comfort and luxury.

> It may be more feasible to sell $3000 smartphones than to sell VR headsets at this price.

Apple feels that eventually this class of devices will replace smart phones. It’s the same reason meta is betting almost everything on XR

Quoting wikipedia: "Positional goods are goods for which the satisfaction derives (at least in part) from higher pricing." High price is just part of the appeal of Apple products for many.

I'm willing to spend a lot to replace monitors/laptop screens completely for a headset that I can do productive work with.

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