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Comment by snakeyjake | Hacker News Reader

My current setup is 3x monitors + a laptop screen to the side at the office and 3x monitor + a wall-mounted television in my home office. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what people are willing to do for screen real estate.

Many people are accustomed to working with 3x or more display devices where at least one of them is out of their field of view no matter where they are looking so I imagine the primary adaptation to using a vision pro would be the weight.

I am a color accuracy and resolution snob so I only use professional monitors: BenQ at home and Eizo at the office.

If one day the vision pro can match the performance of color-critical monitors for less than $5,100 it will be a definite "oui-starter".

If one day the vision pro can BEAT the performance of color-critical monitors for less than $5,100 I will hire a personal trainer for the sole purpose of getting my neck buff enough to use one without strain.

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> That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what people are willing to do for screen real estate.

Very, very few people. I would be surprised if it's more than a fraction of a percent of the home computing market.

In fact, most people seem quite content to downgrade. They have laptops or desktops that are collecting dust while they're browsing the web on their phones while at home. My entire family does that, I'm the only outlier.

I'm sure that cost and convenience are factors and there would be a larger market for zero-hassle "high-FOV" computing, but a bulky headset isn't it. As it is, the market for Apple Vision Pro is almost nonexistent - not without some killer use case that appeals to more than just hardcore geeks.

For me the interest here is VR making your set up hyper-portable. And even if it could I'd still want that physical set up in my workspace.

Currently though it cannot match the efficiency of a single monitor with a tiling WM.

> Currently though it cannot match the efficiency of a single monitor with a tiling WM.

This.

More than anything else, I've found tiling to be the single most important improvement in my workflow in ages.

Specifically, the Pop OS Tiling extension, which is zero-config.

The closest I've found on Mac (besides some wm attempts), is Rectangle.app, though it's still a long ways off from a tiling wm.

> My current setup is 3x monitors + a laptop screen to the side at the office and 3x monitor + a wall-mounted television in my home office.

Well, that only leaves one question: Why so few monitors?

More seriously, I'd be really interested to hear your system for arranging things across all that real estate and how you use it optimally.

I used to have 2.5 monitors (two widescreens + a laptop off to the side) --- but after several moves, the inexorable passage of time, and my growing laziness, I now just spend my workdays hunched over a single laptop.

You didn’t ask me, but I’ll chime in here. I run 6 monitors — four landscape in a 2x2 config and a portrait on either side. I use the bottom right landscape for most web browsing, email, and sharing my screen. When I’m sharing I do those things on bottom left landscape. Top monitors are for reference type info as they’re too high to stare at for long periods. Top left is downloads folder, CPU/RAM/etc monitors, sticky note, and to-do list. Top right is calendar and security cameras. Right portrait is slack (portrait is great for this, lots of history without scrolling). Left portrait is windows explorer. It’s super fast to just move the mouse and turn my head to what I need without switching windows as much.

My setup is similar to your multi-monitor arrangement, except instead of moving my head I switch between respective window sets in Stage Manager (macOS).

One downside is that my neck does not exercise much because I do not look in different directions while working. Another downside is that at certain times context can involve multiple window sets, but that is rare, and it comes with an upside: it is easier to focus on one task without windows on other monitors distracting me.

What do you do that you need so much hardware?

My experience was a few weeks with pcvr gaming on quest 3 was all I needed to get the neck strength. The AVP feels lighter by comparison.

Left: Outlook and Teams

Middle: Solidworks and/or CST Studio Suite

Right: Browser and as many terminal windows as I can stand before I start to go insane.

Laptop/TV: personal stuff

I design satellites. Specifically antenna tiles and onboard processors that do RF things. I also assist in the testing of new RF signal processing methods.

appreciate the comprehensive reply. very cool.

I spent a couple months sporadically training a neck harness to build up for lifting and it made a big difference when I gamed long sessions on VR again. I feel like will probably take headset fatigue/injuries as seriously as any other office overuse. Which is to say, probably not much, but maybe awareness will get there one day.

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