Apple Vision Pro's Optics Blurrier and Lower Contrast Than Meta Quest 3 | Hacker News Reader

Apple Vision Pro's Optics Blurrier and Lower Contrast Than Meta Quest 3

kguttag.com

59 pointsolliepop33 comments

From John Carmack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1764016979101286756

"Meta’s optics and contrast may indeed actually be better, but this is almost certainly not a definitive comparison — too many variables around casting compression and window buffer resolution. Does Immersed use the supersampled layer option with a window above the display resolution? (with an sRGB texture for gamma correct filtering, of course)"

The author received both devices from tear downs by iFixIt and was able to see the image without the lens (without the blurring) as explained in Part 1. Though it seems the AVP tends to do some post processing no matter how they image is displayed

> I see different processing and artifacts happening when natively rendering on the AVP (such as when running Excel), displaying a saved bitmap from a file on the AVP, displaying a bitmap image on a web page, and mirroring the content of a MacBook. With each test image, seeing how it will display differently with each display mode is an adventure.

https://kguttag.com/2024/02/16/apple-vision-pros-avp-image-q...

It reads like this guy has an axe to grind with the AVP or with reviewers. He really wants to convince the reader that the product is not good and it doesn't matter what people feel about it.

I'm all for objective analysis, but what if the slight blurriness helps with the immersion? And what's the problem with the displays not being as precise as 1080p monitors if the immersion is good and people are satisfied with the image?

I decided against buying the Vision Pro but for other reasons, mainly the OS being a fork of iPadOS instead of MacOS, the impossibility to use it as a monitor like the XReal and many others, and the weight.

The author ends the review by saying “AVP is the superior product” so I find it hard to agree with your take. The information presented clearly shows the tradeoffs that Apple has chosen with their displays. It’s left up to the reader to decide if that’s a subjectively more enjoyable experience but from the objective viewpoint, the article does a good job at showcasing the drawbacks.

It is needlessly smug and overconfident.

The core problem is that taking a photo with a camera isn't a valid comparison to the optics of the human eye.

Unlike digital cameras which are designed to bring colour into focus on a single plane (the sensor), the natural human eye produces a mixture of focal points dependent on wavelength of light, falling before and after the macula. The display+lens proximity to the cornea and natural crystalline lens needs to be accounted for; it's not going to be perfectly planar to the eye, and that is going to cause blurring which will change dependent on how the digital camera rig is arranged as well as lens selection.

Analysis based on photos taken through the viewport is an insufficient approach to draw conclusions as they don't account for phenomena present in the human eye. A secondary factor is that certain types of blurring may be intentional to offset the development of myopia. (It could even be to help prevent the appearance of aliasing.)

One can take "thousands" of photos of VR goggles, it doesn't make them an ophthalmologist. It makes them good at taking photos of VR goggles.

I don’t have an MQ3, so I can’t compare, but I can say the photo of the blurriness of the AVP is not representative of what the eye sees with that same picture open as large as it will go, as far from the viewer as it will go.

I can see 5 lines, not some amorphous blob.

I was going to add to my comment but it was dragging on a bit: the real test is simply to put it on and wear it.

It seems strange to me to be comparing images from streamed sources.

We know that a 5K MacBook Pro feed is being aggressively downsampled to 4K.

Why wouldn't you just open browsers on both devices with a test image.

Also the FoV is narrower on the AVP than the Quest. Granted, all current headsets suck at this, as in it's less AR/VR and more like looking through a pair of binoculars which absolutely sucks for immersion, but it's crazy the AVP has a worse Fov than a Quest that's 7 times cheaper.

Only Apple can get people to pay 3.5K to be beta testers of a devkit/prototype.

> The AVP image is much worse than a cheap monitor displaying high-resolution, high-contrast content. Effectively, what the AVP supports is multiple low angular resolution monitors.

Waiting for the early adopters and apologists to say again how the AVP is so magic and revolutionary it's gonna replace their 5k monitors for daily work. Maybe that "daily work" they were talking about is reading emails for 15 minutes/day and watching a 30 minute episode on Netflix on the couch after wich the headset gathers dust.

Arguably, if they have a limited production rate on this “prototype” - which it seems they do - pricing it so only the ones who are extremely enthusiastic, or ones that will actually develop apps for it and thus consider it an investment, is absolutely the right thing to do.

Meanwhile they also get that halo effect where they establish it as a premium product. If they later drop the price or let inflation slowly reduce the difference, that effect will remain.

But why would you release a "limited production prototype" to the public for purchase as a finished product? It's very non-Apple. The iPod, iPhone, iPad etc were not released as limited edition prototypes.

I don't think Steve Jobs, had he still be alive and in charge, would have released the AVP yet in this state.

Same how Appel hasn't yet released a folding phone even though Android OEMs have been doing it for 5 years already. The tech is just not yet mature for a flawless implementation that Apple is know to deliver even if it arrives later to the market than the competition.

It is actually very Apple, and perhaps even more so at post-Jobs Apple.

The iPod wasn’t as good on paper as the Rio or Rune. Cost a LOT more too.

The original iPhone wasn’t great, but it was good enough to capture the imagination. It certainly wasn’t cheap.

The Series 0 Watch was also pretty ordinary, especially when compared to other smart watches. Expensive too.

Same with Siri, the HomePod and Apple TV, but these haven’t quite hit the mark. Probably not failures (except maybe Siri), but not in the best of Apple category.

All of these early products were for the bleeding edge. They provide the feedback and insight into how the product is going to be used.

Apple’s special ability is to find the essence of what a good product needs to have, quickly. Sometimes they don’t nail it first time, but they excel at finding out and then iterating until it does.

> I don't think Steve Jobs, had he still be alive and in charge, would have released the AVP yet in this state.

Even assuming that, what does it matter? He’s not around and times change.

>Even assuming that, what does it matter? He’s not around and times change.

Because they can also change for the worst. This product is less Apple iPad and more Apple Newton. Both were great innovative technical achievements of tablet computers in their eras, but only one was a smash hit with the mainstream public.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton

The following products were all created under Jobs' direction and failed commercially:

- Apple III (1981)

- Lisa (1983)

- Puck Mouse (1998)

- The Cube (2000)

- iTunes phone (2005)

- Apple TV (2007)

I’d argue that the Motorola iTunes phone was a success. I don’t think its goal was to be a great phone, I think it was to bring in some much needed cash.

The original Apple TV, like the iPod hifi, always felt like a hobby project that really needed some decent investment. I think they couldn’t really figure out what they needed it to be, but someone important wanted to have an Apple something in their home.

Much needed cash? Apple was making lots of money off the iPod in 2005. If it was a “success” it was in the sense that it proved they needed to make their own phone

That’s fair, but they weren’t out of the woods yet. But probably less important than I previously stated/thought.

I'd argue that the iPhone without the app store was unfinished / a prototype.

Once again revisionist history in effect.

The Vision Pro is on par with the level of quality as the original iPhone or Apple Watch. And has sold better than both.

Arguably the original iPod fits in alongside the original iPhone and Watch. It was significantly less of a finished, polished product than the commercially successful 3/4th gen models onward that people tend to think of when iPods are mentioned.

Only because the connected market is many times larger did it sell better. It's not fit for purpose and the audience will take a decade or more to reach numbers that make it worth it for app developers and even then it'll be a dorkbox for your face and not used much at all by the "productivity" half of the office that care about hair and makeup.

I strongly suspect the narrow FOV is an intentional trade off for increased pixel density, probably to enable practically readable text. If the FOV was much wider with the same pixel count I don’t think text would be really usable.

I don't have either, as I expect after the novelty wears off I won't want to bother putting on a headset for most things.

That said, if I had to buy a headset today, I'd go with the Vision Pro. All the technical stuff aside... I simply don't trust Meta enough to buy a piece of hardware from them. I will pay 7x to buy from a company where I'm less worried about their intentions.

When does Apple even make this claim that this should be is better / worse at the task? I get the idea of testing this for the purpose of testing this outcome but when I’m using safari or a movie this doesn’t come up as much but if you use pass through it is apparent. This is an intentional engineering choice and keeps on getting reposted…

>When does Apple even make this claim that this should be is better / worse at the task?

But then at what kind of tasks is the AVP better at in order to justify its existence/purchase?

It integrates far better into the entire Apple ecosystem of products.

Given the current state of the software - both visionOS itself and available apps - it’s simply not a mass-market device. I believe it will be in 1-2 iterations, but we’re not there yet.

For what it’s worth, I say that as someone who loves their AVP and owns several other headsets including the Quest 3 an Pimax Crystal. I’ve had my AVP for jsut over two weeks and would comfortably estimate that I’ve spent over 100 hours with it on.

>It integrates far better into the entire Apple ecosystem of products.

That's not a task you can use it for. It's just a feature.

>it’s simply not a mass-market device. I believe it will be in 1-2 iterations, but we’re not there yet.

My point exaxtly. I was only talking about the present device and what it doe. Not what it can do in the future iterations.

For the money they charge, it sure is an interesting choice.

Am I the only one sick of this cyberpunk dystopian tech? VR tech was a fun niche toy and this isn't that much different. Walking around all of the time with one is a level of cringe I can't even fathom.

Might as well call them iSores.

To be fair, they weren't designed to be used while walking around all day. In that case, it's the people who are the problem, not the product.

Think of them as a monitor replacement not a phone replacement. At least that's what they are now...

I encourage anyone who believes this to check out both

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