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Comment by spogbiper | Hacker News Reader

What's the killer app? Quest headsets have been out for years and haven't seemed to find one. Well.. besides 3d porn

I've seen a few ideas that seem really interesting, just not at the price point Apple is offering. And honestly I'm just going to wait for these headsets to be smaller and lighter too before buying one. I don't think anyone at Apple is under the impression this device is going to be a money maker, but more of a gen-1 device to provide a place to start from for further work.

- Learning instruments in a guitar-hero way (Piano, guitar, drums)

- Cooking with timers and recipes right in front of you (will be even more doable with better internal displays in the future)

- Coding with virtual displays on-demand. This is another thing where we still need more resolution to make it really doable.

- Watching movies. Obviously a solo way of doing this but I could see it being big.

- (once these are much lighter and less intrusive) I could see these being huge for virtual workouts like Yoga, weight lifting, etc.

Also regarding your question, I'm trying to think of the "killer app" is for a currently successful device - iPhone. I mean, camera? Texting? Most people use tiktok a ton but I wouldn't consider that a killer app. I think it's more of the device providing a home for a bunch of different apps.

killer app for the iphone was a truly usable portable web browser. everything else early iphones did had been done many times before, but a web browser that actually worked pretty well on a portable device was new

Cooking sounds like a nice application, but as soon as the headset steams up/get condensation on the glass it will be quite annoying. I can't imagine cooking in ski goggles.

Worse than that would be when you fry something and the front of your $3500 headset gets splattered in grease. No thanks.

It’s called a cloth and they cost almost nothing.

IDK they're like $19 these days and that's without even knowing if they'll officially list the Vision Pro as a supported device yet or not!

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MM6F3AM/A/polishing-cloth

Why would you buy a cloth from Apple but? Lol 19 dollars, I could get a meal for that. It would want to be made out of unicorn hair or something.

Cloth doesn't really absorb grease that well. It just kind of spreads it around.

Ah yeah, you'd need a little bit of dish soap too I suppose. (I used to work in a kitchen and my glasses would end up covered in grease somehow.)

For some reason everyone is pretending that cleaning up grease is an impossible task

And I wouldn't want to use dish soap on my $500+ device that isn't designed to be waterproof.

In fact the box comes with one.

> Learning instruments in a guitar-hero way (Piano, guitar, drums)

What would VR add here? For guitar-hero style instrument learning, there are already Yousician, Simply Piano / Guitar, Gibson and Fender apps, and quite a few others.

rocksmith is the big player here. It's awesome with a big screen TV. VR only gets in the way.

For piano it lines up the keys with the notes on your physical keyboard, so you don't need to look at a separate representation of a keyboard, you can literally see the notes fall onto your piano at the right times. Same thing with the other instruments.

The problem is that once you get past the very initial stage, you want to read ahead of what you play at the moment. At that moment Synthesia-style falling blocks notation becomes difficult to read because the blocks don't have any position reference besides the keys and no time values. Even the scrolling sheet music or tab is distracting compared stationary black and white. With guitar there's the additional problem that you can't see both hands at the same time, and usually you won't be looking at your hands at all. And if you ever want to play without help from the app, you need to learn to find the notes anyway.

This is by the way a great explanation of all the attempts to make music easier to read and how they fail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4

exactly. Those who think VR headsets are good music teachers probably have never taken any serious music lessons or master any instruments themselves. If you have just taken one month of lesson and have been practicing daily, these things will start to prevent you from making progress, not help you.

(coming from someone who has been taking piano lessons for the past 8 years and have a Quest 3)

> What would VR add here?

I'm imagining an AI VR tutor - heck, with some legal deepfake+AI style evolution, perhaps that tutor could actually be a famous player, talking to you.

The 3D view gives, well, a 3D view, and all the advantages it entails. For example, when you are with a physical real world teacher, you don't have a fixed view. You can observe from any angle, the teacher can observe and correct micro errors. And the senses of scale and proportion are intact, unlike viewing on a 2D screen of arbitrary size at arbitrary distance.

Even the simple POV of VR means that you get to see the techniques in-situ - e.g. seeing the expert's hands on your guitar, and how the technique is supposed to look from POV - rather than the standard teacher-student limitation of e.g. guitar, where the student sits opposite the teacher and sees a reversed image.

But to be clear, my vision of how this would be game changing relies upon a level of interplay between hardware and software that is not yet developed. But I expect it will be, in time, because virtualising real world experiences is arguably the core goal of VR, and (correct me if I'm wrong) but nothing in the music tuition world has yet proven superior to having an extremely skilled one-on-one mentor who can personally guide your every step, "in person" - and this is what VR would seek to achieve here.

May I ask if you play any instruments and taken music lessons for a serious amount of time?

My guess is not, because to me it is obvious you don't understand how this works and are just imagining things.

Speaking as someone who takes private piano lessons and have been practicing daily for the past 8 years:

If this were possible, music teachers would have already been replaced to some extent. But that has not happened yet. AI is not new. VR is not that new. Even without this, just talking about non-personalized, non-VR instructions. Have you seen those websites that "teaches" you piano just by connecting your keyboard to a computer and following instructions? Where are they now? It does not work like that. Maybe for an absolute beginner who has trouble finding a key or fret, but as soon as you get a little bit better it won't work.

Music learning is an extremely personalized experience. People pay 1-1 private lessons because it needs to be done that way. A teacher, especially a good teacher, can tell you exactly what you did wrong and what you should do to get better at it. Plus different teachers often have different opinions of music -- how a piece of music should be interpreted or played. As you get more advanced, you spend even less time on technique itself. Theoretically you could train an AI tutor that does the same thing. But no, it hasn't happen yet and will not happen. Did I mention hallucination? Do you want a teacher that hallucinates?

Plus you need lots of practice -- routines, repetitions, all those scales. AI or VR is just useless. Effective practice strategy is important, but you don't need AI for that.

> My guess is not, because to me it is obvious you don't understand how this works and are just imagining things.

That's great! I'm glad to hear that your 8 years of music practice has given you some firm opinions, and I'm sure you'll continue learning over time. Speaking as a player and composer of 25 years, former music teacher, and maker of the instruments I play - for whatever such things are worth - I believe my ideas have some merit. But only time and technology will show whether-or-not such AR (and AI) musician overlaps eventuate.

crickets

expecting a lot of insightful counterarguments from a musician and educator with such experience. got hand waving instead.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Working out with a VR headset on seems like a great way to get the whole thing disgusting. Hope I can put this $3500 face computer through the washing machine.

Unless Apple has truly screwed the pooch, this has been a solved problem. Sometimes, if you are purposely trying to work out with a VR headset, you just wear a headband to catch the sweat. Most headsets also have cheaply replaceable or even machine washable face "gaskets". If the idea of any sweat in your poor device saddens you, just point a fan at yourself while you work out.

Also, since the gaskets just stick on with magnets, I'm sure there will be third-party ones with included fans or whatever available within a couple of weeks.

I’m imagining trying to do burpees with this on my face. Or attempting to press a barbell up and shattering the device. No thanks!

> virtual workouts

Or real workouts. I want to be able to have floating text to read on my runs, and real time biometric data directly in my field of view rather than on my watch would be cool too.

I'm not sure if this satire that I'm missing but some people consider running with a kilogram of sweat on their brow?

the proceeding part of that quote has, "(once these are much lighter and less intrusive)"

Definitely not going to run with the current product lmao.

For me, I think the killer app would have to be something that interacts with the real world. Watching movies, FaceTime, or browsing the internet won’t be enough for me to ever buy this. But maybe if there was something like a home repair or car repair app that could in real time identify and inspect the objects, give me visual and audio instructions on how to perform the repair, that could be a killer app. But I’m not sure the AI/ML side is good enough yet to enable that.

The Microsoft Hololens demos included some examples of this. It certainly looked interesting

example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIsjVaqdNpc

Speaking of the MS Hololens: Is it still a thing and is there a community of 3rd-party developers around it? It showed a lot of promise when it was released.

Lets say I predict the same future for Apple's device.

Hololens are dead. Even their github is not updatel if i remember well 2 years.

They pivoted to military applications and I haven't seen much news about it. It looks like something out of the futuristic call of duty games. It looks super cool, but apparently soldiers didn't like it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Visual_Augmentati...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/13/23871859/us-army-microsof...

Apparently they are still making them for military purposes

I think even if it were good enough to place some static instructions over a non-disruptive part of your field of vision, with a pleasant way to display embedded images or video, and a hands free control mechanism, I would find that incredibly useful for DIY projects and stuff.

Watching sports in 3D with spatial audio.

> According to an exclusive report from The New York Post, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver “said the league is working with Apple to bring a tech-enhanced viewing experience” to its upcoming headset.

When asked about it, he told the outlet: “We’re working very closely with Apple.”

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/nba-games-could-be-apple-visi...

If there is one group that has a track record for laying down piles of money for hardware like giant televisions and expensive streaming services, it's sports aficionados.

Floor seats will be less desirable...or floor seat patrons are wearing Apple Vision/goggles for the AR (joking! but maybe serious)...

I do agree, just watching a sporting event on a projector where the athletes are life-sized is excellent, on-field cameras already provide a better view of the game then any seat.

Now make it more immersive, and the trick of immersion is very cool. Like The Sphere, that immersion is next level.

Add sports-betting to the Vision experience, that is a great side-car app for this. (I am not pro-bet but see the usage).

Meta already has a deal with the nba for select games. Not sure what the usage is like.

With standard coverage of sports, they cut between cameras and zoom in/out, pan to follow the action etc. Even people attending the game will be watching big screens showing this content some of the time.

I'm wondering how that translates to VR.. do they just teleport you around the arena? That seems like it would be a bit jarring if not altogether sickening.

It could offer a couple options. One being the main view is like you are there. You see the court in a huge view in your main view. Then, similar, but way better than in person, you have several big views off to the side, for replays, stats, maybe following a view of your favorite player... I would think they we have a way to make it so your view (switches as the action on the court switches to the other basket). That will have to be a good design but just the idea of something like teleporting from your seat with a great view of this half of the court to now having it on the other half.

And for other sports even better I think. With say soccer/football and football (USA) you can have a big overview (like you are sitting at midfield) but then camera angles for closer view of the action...

I think sports viewing could really be incredible. Figuring out exactly how to do it well will take awhile. But it seems to me the kind of thing Apple could do very well.

I imagine some combination of a single location environment view, floating 3D panels that follow players the same as TV broadcasts, and a miniature arena where you can watch everything at once from a top-down perspective.

I think the killer app will be remote work. The social interaction in VR chat is pretty good, if they can bring your work environment in with lots of monitors, and then share parts of it seamlessly and on demand but also have ample 100% focus time, I can see it being better than an office in some ways

I thought so too but it doesn't take much time for a headset to become uncomfortable. Taking one off and putting it back on is cumbersome.

For me it’s movies. But the fact that Netflix and Amazon haven’t updated their Quest apps in years — nor has Meta bothered building its own movie streaming solution (e.g. making the Quest Browser compatible with streaming services) leads me to think that the active user base might be slim.

Can’t imagine doing work is the killer app, not while wearing a headset is more cumbersome than opening a laptop.

I'm not sure how Apple can make watching movies in VR that much better than they are already on the Quest series and other existing VR headsets. And as you noted it doesn't seem to be a popular use for those devices. Maybe the higher resolution on Apple's headset will win people over?

> I'm not sure how Apple can make watching movies in VR that much better than they are

Apple is already making it's own 3D content.

For instance watching a concert shot in 3D with spatial audio may be something that people find compelling. Certain artists, for example Taylor Swift, have fans who are well known to be willing to spend a fortune to attend her shows in person with high end tickets running $750.

I tried some of the 3d concerts that Quest recorded a few years ago.. it's a neat trick but Apple will definitely need to do something different to make it compelling

I haven't tried them personally but I think current quest headsets still have visible pixels. The vision pro is Micro OLED with no visible pixels. So it should feel like watching an actual IRL screen.

It’s an incredibly popular use for the quest, Amazon and Netflix just don’t own the market, people are watching content elsewhere like big screen/vrchat/various vr players.

Almost NOBODY uses the Netflix app because it’s terrible, terrible software.

do you really watch that many movies all by yourself? that's the problem for me .... if I'm carving out 2.5 hours to watch a good movie I am wanting to spend that quality time and share the experience with someone else as well.

Quest headsets are already pretty compelling for some use cases, but the tech still needs more advancement (at a reasonable price point) to go fully mainstream.

For a lot of people, Beat Saber and similar games are a killer app for the Quest. It can be good for making exercise fun and accessible at the same time.

> What's the killer app?

Movies on airplanes. I’m guessing these will become virtually ubiquitous in the front cabin within a few years.

You mean the front cabin where they have big screens for every seat?

I couldn't see carrying one of these instead of just an iPad for movies. (But then I'm a very light packer.)

I think it will be more like the proliferation of noise-cancelling headphones; it's not about what it brings (music, dialog, etc) but about what it blocks out (the ambient sounds). Yes, you can watch a movie on a plane now, but with a headset you remove the depressing, crowded, and claustrophobic visual environment.

Although I'm not sure I want to be that isolated from the environment. (I do use noise canceling devices but they're in-ear.)

And watching content on a plane's built-in screens is a miserable experience: poor interface, lag, constant forced interruptions for even the most boring announcements (captain, donating foreign coins, meal schedule).

Back in the day I was flying back east and had some movies loaded on my iPod Touch.

And I was casually watching one in my seat, the movie was “Blackhawk Down”. And it occurred to me how a neighbor might not enjoy watching blood, guns, and violence out of the corner of their eye.

So, I can absolutely see value in a headset style movie experience in public places.

I am perhaps slightly selective about what I watch on a plane--depending somewhat on who is sitting beside me. But my observation is that US airlines have gotten quite a bit less editing-heavy in that regard and, at some level, it's not my problem. (Although I'll be reasonable if someone cares enough to ask me to not watch something.)

Thankfully, most newer planes have those polarizing privacy filters on their screens that make it hard to see what the person next to you is watching.

Those screens don't show 3D movies though.

Wouldn't just about any available headset that costs 10x to 20x less suffice for this?

Pretty much, but I haven't seen anyone on a plane watching movies with a Quest or similar headset

I met someone at a party once who claimed to do this. He turned out to be a cofounder of Twitch. There may be something to conclude here, not sure.

XReal's glasses seem like they could be enough for this: https://www.xreal.com/air2

For international flights they have may have a screen on the back of the seat in front of you. Using a tablet or small laptop works just as well without the discomfort of a headset.

A tablet also takes up less luggage space and probably has better battery life.

> they have may have a screen on the back of the seat in front of you

They always have a screen in front of me. And I always have my laptop or iPad. There are still advantages to this, from immersiveness to privacy.

Currently you can’t use Quest/Vision Pro in any moving vehicle, as they rely on accelerometers to capture head movements.

> you can’t use Quest/Vision Pro in any moving vehicle

You aren’t unpredictably accelerating most of the time in a plane. It makes sense Facebook would have fucked this up. I’d be surprised if Apple has.

You actually do wobble a bit, and sometimes s lot in turbulence, which can be unnoticeable for you but will throw accelerometers meters at a time. Also routine altitude/speed changes also cause accelerations,

Sure they have, it’s funny how often this is repeated. It’s anything social. It absolutely destroys every other technology for interacting with others over distance. There is nothing else like it and when the hardware catches up it will do a lot to shrink the distance you feel between those who live an ocean away from you.

It looks like there's no killer app this time. They just bet on the fact that people will buy it because it's expensive and it's designed by Apple.

Macintosh '84 didn't have a killer app until 1985-1986. And it was a laser printer.

Not sure about the social acceptance of people walking around with a laser printer strapped to their face…

Video games are the killer apps and Quest definitely found it.

The other one that could be huge IMO is attending real-life events like sport, concerts, shows, etc.

Both of these suffer from the fact that a good portion of the target audience is going to want to barf as soon as the camera moves. So games are limited in what kind of gameplay they can offer and real life events are stuck with either a fixed location or "jumping" from camera to camera.

> So games are limited in what kind of gameplay they can offer

I disagree. Games will have limitations. Limitations constrain but foster creativity. Console games were already limited in so many ways yet people found amazing ways to make them fun as hell. When mobile games come I truly believed that nobody would be able to have fun there, yesterday I played the entire game of League of Legends retrofited for mobile and it works! So now VR gaming is great, people will find ways to make it even greater without free movement that makes you sick

Games like doom3 in VR are just freakin' awesome. blasting some monster coming up behind you by firing over the shoulder takes the cake.

A killer app for me would be proper Blender integration, say with VR viewports.

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