I'll definitely be in the minority here but I'm not excited by this at all!
I'll give it a few years/generations but doing nothing for me.
Loving pretty much everything else Apple currently.
I'll give it a few years/generations but doing nothing for me.
Loving pretty much everything else Apple currently.
Obviously I don't buy every product Apple launches but up to now I could see me using every one of their products, even if I don't think it would make sense buying one because it's too expensive or I don't need it. The Vision Pro however is something I have doubts could be useful even if it works perfectly and despite its price tag.
The Index is $1000. Then some people get extra base stations which are $200 a pop. Then if you dance with full body tracking most people get Vive Tracker 3.0 which you need 3 for feet and waist. Add the $2000 gaming desktop I use for powering it and you're already at the price of the Vision Pro.
Except the Vision Pro is stand alone and has some really nice quality of life hacks that I haven't seen before in the VR space.
Also dancing in a VR rave is a pretty good workout and you get to meet tons of cool people. It sort of self selects for cool tech nerds. So far I've met a ton of amazing people through it.
As incredible as Apple's hardware looks, you are absolutely not going to have the kind of freedom you have with a piece of Valve hardware connected to your own PC. We'll be lucky if they even allow VR Chat on the platform.
It would be weird if they totally blocked VRChat cause it's the top VR app on Steam.
Even so I am not sure if we will see electronic prices dropping over time the way they have in the past. Probably the most important scaling in semiconductors was the price coming down from shrink to shrink and that seems to be over. That’s why the 40-series cards from NVIDIA don’t improve on the 30-series for performance per dollar.
Apple leads the world in powerful ARM SoC but they make high end parts that sell at high end prices and compete with Meta who is very concerned about selling price and sometimes willing to subsidize hardware in the hope they make it back on services.
And I mean it in the most positive way: if it ever works out Apple will come out with a better headset year over year, and build a community around it, XR will have made it to the mainstream. If it doesn't pan out will have a data point on what fails, and get other products that skirt around these issues while providing compelling features on the parts that matter, we have enough competition to have the concept survive.
Either way it's a win, and I salute Apple for jumping in the pool.
I suppose this is good for those people you see walking around texting as they wander into traffic. They might be able to like some Instagram posts AND look both ways before crossing the street. A $3500 headset is cheaper than a $100k spine replacement or whatever. (I just ... stop if I need to text someone while I'm out walking, and do my Internet shitposting when I'm not out and about. But I guess that's only me.)
That's fairly easily overcome—you just need to have a local facial recognition database, specific to your contacts, rather than querying some centralized one.
Perhaps the only time I actually felt like getting one was when I got hooked into Elite Dangerous, but these days I don't have time for it anyway... so, yeah.
1. Boot to Windows (Mac bootcamp)
2. Microsoft: It's been 6 months since you ran Windows. I need to force an update for 20 minutes!
3. Steam: LOL you need to update me too!
4. Find the device, the motion sensor/cameras in my cabinet, plug them in and position them in the room.
5. Display driver: Barf! Reboot computer.
6. Unplug/replug everything.
7. Oculus: Hahah new drivers, sucker!
8. Launch Elite Dangerous. Oops, somehow it's not in VR mode. Figure out how to change it in graphics settings...
By the time I got around to playing, I was already exhausted.
Most of it really feels like unforced errors though. As much as I am not at all excited about a $3500 device that's completely locked into Apple's restricted ecosystem, they are the kind of company to actually pay attention to those things and smooth out all the rough edges.
I'm really just hoping it brings more attention and effort into the wider VR ecosystem and we start getting better products and software support.
It's just, not worth it. The discomfort of the headset (in a number of ways) coupled with mostly underwhelming and/or limited experiences.
…in the consumer space. There have been some really incredible tools I've seen in industrial or medical spaces, and I think that's unlikely to change in the near term.
I've heard of it used in e.g. surgeries, for visualizing data like MRI scans, or building schematics for electrical/steam/wastewater/etc but don't know of specific instances where products are used.
This looks like a good overview of efforts in the medical space: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8455774/
And this looks like an okay high-level survey of use in manufacturing and construction: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240589631...
I used a Quest 2 as virtual monitors for a week or so of real work and it was uncomfortable and sweaty and I was isolated and had to keyboard and mouse by touch, but the viewing experience was amazing. And I do use my Quest 2 frequently for games and “workouts” and entertainment. So I’m solidly in the market for this.
But the main thing is that I want to try it, mostly for the AR. I’ll reserve any fanboy comments until I’ve tried it.
Someday, someone is going to get AR/VR right. This isn’t it, but it seems to be moving in the right direction.
I don’t have high hopes for free space holographic displays, a la Star Wars or Minority Report, but augmented reality fills the same niche (with many of the same drawbacks and benefits).
Like when the fellow walks up in frame perfectly between two windows and hands the viewer something.
Or the FaceTime call where the woman was talking to 3 other people – why weren't they wearing the goggles?
But these would be great on an airplane and probably other circumstances. I doubt I will be buying any time soon though.
Vision Pro uses an ML model to present you without the googles if you are using FaceTime.
The first FaceTime demo had actual people.
The second FaceTime demo showed the ML model and it lacked multiple people.
To me it wasn’t amazing.
I wondered about that too, but if you watch the whole announcement, they explain it. They create a 3D avatar of you for FaceTime.
Or maybe it dies an early death, like the Apple Newton. :shrug: