Feel free to ask any questions here and I'll answer anything I can (e.g. no unreleased info, but maybe go into more detail about the kind of stuff that was shown to devs at WWDC). No blog right now but maybe in the future :)
The idea of looking at real screens in passthrough didn't even occur to me.
If you're wondering about passthrough it's pretty good for most things but is definitely missing the dynamic range of the human eye, which no video camera or display can really match yet. Like a super bright light might just show up as white and you can look directly at it no problem. Basically the same as what you get when you record a video and watch it back on your phone.
I'm sure as soon as it's released people will be doing that and reporting back though!
2. What about sleeping with it? VRC people do that, so they might be curious.
3. Is it usable outside?
4. What was the longest time you had it continuously on?
5. Have you ever dropped it? :D
2. Never tried sleeping with it... I don't see why it would be any worse than other headsets though.
3. I've never used it outside, but that was for secrecy and not technical reasons.
4. Honestly not sure, maybe an hour without taking it off at all but I've definitely been in it for the majority of a few hour spans many times. At the time the main blocker was the beta OS and not comfort or battery (I would keep the battery pack plugged into the charger most of the time).
5. Nope! We were all super careful with them because prototypes are expensive, much more so than the consumer product. It's not something you could just casually drop while using like your phone though.
4. So the battery can be charged while plugged into the headset. What happens when you pull the battery from headset? I am guessing insta black. Does it have some power-saving mode where only R1 is feeding images from cameras to displays without any computing possibilities?
This sounds like the battery can be charging while using the headset, right? Which imo makes the 2 hour battery life much more understandable – if you're stationary in the device most of the time then you only have to rely on the battery when you move. If you can plug in to charge when you're back at your desk/couch, it's not really a limiting factor (for the use cases Apple is pursuing).
https://daringfireball.net/2023/06/first_impressions_of_visi...
Either one of those statements can be right. Not both at the same time.
It's time someone with real measuring equipment looks at of these and gives a more technical review than just "wow Apple magic".
I'm not so sure. Human vision is only sharp in a coin-sized area at any time. If you fix your eyes on a single word in your comment you can't actually read the entire comment, for example.
In other words, you don't need 4k in your entire FOV you just need to ensure that most of the pixels are spent in the middle of the viewing area.
I believe that it would be possible to have the screens in the headset generate a very distorted image, where the edges are compressed to a small area of the actual screen and therefore low-res, while the lenses stretch this image to fill the viewing FOV. Kind of like anamorphic movie lenses, or even how wideangle lenses distort the edges more than the center.
I have no idea if Vision Pro does this but it seems theoretically possible at least.
I think what the OP means is that you'd have actually less physical resolution in the sides. Most headsets do this somewhat but not in a huge amount.
meaning a couple 4k screens can be rendered in the visible area without a noticeable difference in quality to real screens at a similar "apparent" distance
The exception to this is at the edges of your vision, where each eye does see a unique portion of the field, but by definition that’s not where you’re looking.
This is impossible at the resolution stated. The headset would have to be 8K or more per eye in order to achieve this, which it most definitely is not.
We also know 23 million pixels for the whole system. So, 11.5 million for one display. a 4K display is 8.2 million. So it's not a whole lot more than 4K, and lower than their own 5K display (which has 14 million), which matches what they claim ("more than a 4K display"). That's not enough to cover the full field of human vision and still have pixels so small they can't be seen.
With corner waste it's just barely enough for one 4K display this way (and stretched to the full limits of vision it will be pretty unwatchable so close). You can't display two as you mention, because AR/VR projection works by using the 2 screens to display the same content just from a slightly different position (parallax) causing the 3D effect. The more overlap between the eyes the better and more comfortable the 3D effect (some headsets try to get an ultrawide FoV this way but shoot themselves in the foot with low overlap).
If it has a really wide FoV its sharpness will be pretty much on-par with a quest 3/Pico 4, if it's got the same FoV it will be a lot sharper. I expect the truth to be somewhere in between. Wider than a Quest and also sharper, but pixels visible if you look well and not quite full human FoV.
What I expect Apple will have done is sacrifice a bit of vertical FoV for horizontal FoV. Vertical FoV is important in VR (especially 'roomscale') because of orientation issues, and not quite as important in AR. Also most of their marketing material promotes a seated position so moving around is not an issue. Most VR headsets have an almost-square resolution per eye, but I expect this one to be closer to 16:10 (maybe not quite that wide). I think it will come out at around 4300x2600 pixels per eye which is slightly over 11 million pixels.
Still very impressive (which it must be at that price point obviously!). But real-world and not magic. Makes sense because Apple's engineers, as good as they are, are bound by the same laws of physics we all are. Their marketeers would love us to believe otherwise though.
It's really time for some real-world specs on this thing instead of marketing blah. But I think Apple specifically doesn't want this, it's no wonder they let only the most loyal media outlets (like Gruber) get as much as a short hands-on with this thing. And even those experience are white-gloved in detail (they even prepared custom adaptive lenses). They just want to keep the marketing buzz on as long as possible.
This is actually a bit disappointing since I would rather not have to move my entire head to look at a virtual side monitor. It seems like the technology is there now and many companies are looking into it, hopefully other headsets will be released with higher FOVs: https://youtu.be/y054OEP3qck?t=283
Another noteworthy point from that video: Apple has bought Limbak, an optics specialist that was formerly tied with Lynx R1's optics. This means Lynx can no longer use Limbak's future optics that, admittedly, fall short in scaling to higher resolutions. Now, Lynx has shifted its gaze to hypervision optics, intent on preventing a similar acquisition by another tech behemoth like Apple.
What does "border in the FoV" means?
tf? Did he miss everything about LLMs?
I do think a bunch of incremental improvements will eventually allow different use cases though. E.g. you'd never take it on a run or a bike ride in its current state but with enough weight and battery improvements you could have a HUD for exercise stats + navigation when biking with stuff like a videogame-esque ghost of your PR to race against. Just a random idea, there's a lot of stuff you can dream up.
Imagine riding a bike at 30kmph and accidentally unplugging the headset. Boom. Black. Instantly. That's a scary place to find yourself.
I'm curious if Apple will utilize the gyroscope to try and detect movement faster than a certain speed and show a warning. Take the risk if you want, but at least people should be aware of the consequences!
> I'm curious if Apple will utilize the gyroscope to try and detect movement faster than a certain speed and show a warning.
The Vision Pro is doing SLAM at all times so it actually always knows exactly where you are (relative to its origin) and your speed!
I was already into performance programming beforehand but had no finance knowledge whatsoever.