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Comment by martythemaniak | Hacker News Reader

There's one app I'd love to develop and use for this and it's for home renovations. I want to put this on, then walk around my house, have it create a real-time digital version of my place, and quickly remodel and renovate. Move existing furniture around, try new wall colours, shop for art, change the flooring, browse new furniture, etc.

I don't want to spend my few free hours driving around flooring warehouses, looking at low-res pictures of furniture on websites like wayfair, etc, I just want to sit/stand comfortably at home and see how things will be at the end and customize it easily.

This could theoretically be a business. If you're gonna be spending tens of thousands of dollars on a renovation, it'd make sense to rent a headset for a few weeks while you decide on everything. And since there's a strong purchase intent, you can sell real stuff (floors, tiles, furniture) through the app as well.

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You won't be able to move more than 1 meter with this device. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

If a person moves more than about a meter, the system automatically makes all displayed content translucent to help them navigate their surroundings.

When a fully immersive experience starts, the system defines an invisible zone that extends 1.5 meters from the initial position of the wearer’s head. If their head moves outside of that zone, the experience automatically stops and passthrough returns to help people avoid colliding with objects in their physical surroundings.

The system can stop an immersive experience when people get too close to a physical object or when they move too quickly.

That's a fine limitation. You can stand in one spot of your room and browse and look, move to another spot, see how it looks from that angle etc. Obviously you still want to account for all the stuff that's currently in the space you're in.

If I'm understanding Apple's documentation correctly it seems like the app would automatically shutdown every single time you move to a new location. If this is the case then it would make for terrible UX having to reboot constantly just to get a full scan of the house as you envision.

Where does it say that in the documentation?

"The system can stop an immersive experience when people get too close to a physical object or when they move too quickly."

"System can stop" seems to indicate that the whole Vision Pro shuts down or goes into suspended mode. Otherwise it would say "App can stop" to indicate that only the app in use would be closed.

Also, I came across this article on Apple Insider which seems to back this: https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/06/29/apple-vision-pro-....

Perhaps this only affects fully immersive apps and not passthrough apps, but glancing through Apple's best practices it seems they aren't too keen on users moving around while using the vision pro: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

"Let people use your app with minimal or no physical movement. Unless some physical movement is essential to your experience, help everyone enjoy it while remaining stationary."

A few years back, Lowe's tested their "Hologram Experience" using Microsoft's Hololens. I think it was only for kitchen remodeling.

https://www.retaildive.com/news/lowes-microsoft-expand-holol...

I am assuming this is temporary but I believe there is a limitation for how far you can walk with the device on, which seems to limit this type of app (I can’t see this limitation persisting though )

I think that limitation is in VR mode where you are limited to a couple of meters. I don’t think AR has that limitation and this idea sounds like an AR experience.

Sounds like a neat application of the technology. This use case isn't a tipping point for someone to spend $3500 on a device to imagine their space. If someone has that level of disposable money they are probably hiring an interior designer to redecorate.

Similar idea is for an interior design company to own the device and bring it out to your home after they've planned out your rooms. Same idea works for landscaping companies, custom home builders, etc. Clients can 'experience' the new design before committing to the designer's vision.

Matterport without their camera, which also sells for $3000.

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