I've been playing fps/rts/rpg games through GeForce Now on a MacBook M1 and so far there's few obvious drawbacks - good internet required, slight input lag which can be annoying for some FPS games sure, and not all games are available yet - but for those who only play a few games regularly, it's also much better than running the game on an i3/i5 Windows laptop.
Every attempt so far has failed, spectacularly. What is promising about that?
After thirty years of desktop gaming PCs, I sold mine and just use GFN now. It's completely silent (no fan), minor lag (only matters for competitive shooters), and much cheaper than maintaining a high end gaming rig.
Compared to consoles, it has much better graphics, can be played anywhere where you have good internet, supports mouse/keyboard, ultrawide, 120Hz, etc.
Compared to the Stream Deck, it has much better graphics, much longer battery life (it's just streaming video, not rendering on device), and no heat or fan noise. I also sold my Steam Deck because GFN plus a streaming portable (Logitech gCloud) was way more ergonomic.
Did cloud streaming really fail, or is it just a niche? It's come a long way since OnLive. Stadia was a royal fuckup but not because of its technology; Google just had no idea how PC gaming culture works. Their competitors are still around and doing fine, if not making billions.
It is still a very useful tech that I use daily.
Remember it has full hand tracking. If you want to hold something e.g. a lightsaber or whatever, there is no reason not to. An inert plastic prop should work just fine.
And there is just no way that a lightsaber game could be good without haptic feedback, in a world where haptic feedback exists. And I think many other kinds of game.
YouTube guy MKBHD even called out the lack of haptics in his initial impressions video, not even for a game: the butterfly flew over to him in the Apple demo, and he held out his finger, and when the butterfly landed on it... nothing. And that was kind of jarring, he said. (And it would be.)
Haptic feedback is a big deal.
But again - there is no reason gamers can’t have a control, but it’s silly to use a game controller to interact with a computing environment when you can use your hands.
I don't think you need the haptic vibration function for interacting with floating menus and the OS, although again it helps for button presses, which is why all smartphones now feature haptic feedback.
But the other reason to use a controller in general-purpose OS use scenarios is precision. If you can directly touch something, then by all means that is the best. But if the menu to be interacted with is too far away, say 8 meters away, all current systems I have seen make you shout a beam out of your hand to the button or object, then do some gesture to click.
A controller is way more accurate for this, kind of how a mouse is more precise for most people than a trackpad. But even more so.
So on all of Meta's systems so far, the controller can more precisely highlight and click things at distance. And I think this holds true for all other currently-available systems as well.
What Apple Vision Pro is bringing that is new, though, is the eye-tracking. Supposedly, it is as good as, or perhaps even better, at selecting an object at distance. If so, then yeah, controllers wouldn't really provide a significant advantage for most non-game activity.
Why wouldn’t makers of light saber toys just add a buzzer? That would be far better than a game controller, and super cheap to add.
My kids indeed do have sword toys that vibrate and make sounds, so I have done this. And I'm sorry to have to report that it is... substantially less compelling than fighting Darth Vader in VR. (Perhaps not for them, though.)
When Apple’s ready they’ll release haptic gloves that smash that experience out of the park.
(Not holding my breath, though...)
And yeah, the Oculus controllers wouldn't nail the butterfly on finger demo, but if they had controllers, the demo would be a hawk landing on your forearm. (And that would work, even though it doesn't quite make sense that your palm would vibrate when a bird lands on your forearm... but haptic feedback is weird.)
There is no reason this is how it would play out.
That struck me as odd. (Obviously anyone can connect a bluetooth controller and give users some extra control, assuming this device supports open bluetooth for audio etc.)
It is one thing for Apple to claim that their latest gadget does not NEED any controllers for basic navigation and selection. Because they invested so much in perfecting a gensture based system. So far so good.
It is far more presumptious if they say they will NOT allow controllers.
When claiming credit for launching a new space called "spatial computing" -- it is very short-sighted / arrogant to state that a one click finger gesture is all you will ever need for all your comupting needs.
There are games obviously where multiple simultaneous actions need to be triggered. There are 3D modelling applications -- actually a great use case for a AR/VR HMD. And I am sure there are tons of other applications that can benefit from innovative and ergonomic approaches to interactions. Why would Apple go out of their way to say there will be no controllers.
Apple should ideally have an open SDK to allow third party wireless controllers. Knowing apple though ... they will probably sell $499 bluetooth earbuds and call them Apple Ear Pro or something.
However, VR controllers are different in that they need to be tracked as they move through space much more precisely than those console controllers support. But maybe third-party VR controllers can also be supported. I think nobody knows that yet.
But no word that I’ve seen on VR controllers.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10088/?time...
Good news!
Not really seeing that this time around.
It’s pretty bananas they’ve crammed an M2 into a headset with all the cameras, sensors, ML engines, and high res displays. The M2 chip alone (I have an M1 Pro) is still blowing my mind with the low wattage performance.
But much like the first iPhone, it is yet to be seen if it will stick. I do think it’s far more capable than existing VR headsets.
Maybe in a decade small thumb-drives will have an M2 chip equivalent built into them. To encrypt/decrypt data on the fly with zero latency on multiple GB/s data. Or whatever other application can gobble up that much compute power.
And, I don’t think they had a stand for the iPhone Magsafe either. Here’s the intro video showing it’s use with just the cable:
Both examples strike me as strange since using either without something to keep the charger in place is a joy it setup, possibly worse than trying to keep an 8 pin from falling behind your bed stand again.
Apple doesn’t choose not to make these kinds of things because they aren’t needed. It chooses not to make them to narrow their focus.
Apple had planned to be out of the display market as well.
I believe the Studio display and even the XDR are possibly the result of failing to meet original timelines for Vision.
The company continues to sit out home networking despite the success of AirPort Extreme and generally confusing and messy state of the market.
So it is no surprise to me they wouldn’t be trying to guess at controllers. They are working on a platform.
Apple should have made a standard gaming control that all games could use.
(IIRC though Xbox and Nintendo controllers can also be used.)
[0] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10088/?time...
You might. Flight sims are one of the most immediately compelling things to do in VR, and a controller is a huge step up from nothing.
I have yet to find a reason to buy and keep a VR headset as most things just feel so gimmicky to me. At this point unless you’re either tethered to a more powerful device to be able to do the heavy lifting for the headset or you have a standalone headset that can play some basic arcade like games. A single device that can be taken on the go and play new releases not made specifically for the headset would be amazing to me. Obviously until it’s released who can say what it will actually be capable of but if it has the equivalent power of a MacBook, when my mid 2015 MacBook Pro finally dies I’d honestly consider replacing it with the vision pro but wouldn’t run out to buy one to have in addition to the MacBook.