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Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

For reference, here are the per-eye screen resolutions for some VR headsets:

  - Apple Vision Pro:    3660 x 3200 pixels
  - Pimax 8K X:          3840 x 2160
  - Pimax Crystal Light: 2880 x 2880
  - HTC Vive Pro 2:      2448 x 2448
  - HP Reverb G2:        2160 x 2160
  - Meta Quest 3:        2064 x 2208
  - Sony PS VR2:         2000 x 2040
  - Pimax Crystal Super  3840 x 3840 (57 ppd, unreleased)

The VR180 3D footage gets spread to 180° (horizontal) and inside your HMD you see around 70-90° (again horizontal²) or so at a time. You can see that below 8K per-eye image resolution, you will start noticing a decrease in visual fidelity.

² the Pimax has around 159° horizontal FoV.

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It gets even more complicated when you consider what geometric format it records in.

If it records "naively" where the vertical pixel maps to the angle relative to the horizon, then you get the least amount of detail around the "equator", and you get the most at the "poles" above and below you. Which is not only totally imbalanced, but imbalanced in the worst possible way!

Back in 2017 Google introduced a new format that YouTube VR uses:

https://blog.google/products/google-ar-vr/bringing-pixels-fr...

It's called an Equi-Angular Cubemap, so each pixel represents the same amount of area in a VR projection.

Unfortunately, outside of YouTube it still hasn't really taken off as far as I know, although some VR video players support it.

I wonder if Blackmagic records in it? Or more generally, in what shape does the 180° image fall on the rectangular sensor -- and so how does actual resolution vary across the VR projection?

This outlines how Apple approaches the immersive video format to put the most pixels on the horizon line:

https://blog.mikeswanson.com/apples-mysterious-fisheye-proje...

Wow, that is fascinating -- I had no idea, thanks. That definitely takes the cake for most bizarrely "optimized" method. But putting the horizon at a 45° angle is certainly a creative solution.

Interesting that it's such a strange transformation, even the author of that article hasn't been able to decipher it exactly. The Google EAC seems so straightforward and "neutral", I'm surprised Apple created their own format (unless Google's format requires licensing, but I don't think it does).

> I'm surprised Apple created their own format

There's nothing surprising here, it's been Apple's style for the entire time I've been working in tech - 15 years or so - to create formats that they control and preferably which only work on Apple devices. It's a big part of why their walled garden is so strong.

> Additionally, the format is undocumented, they haven’t responded to an open question on the Apple Discussion Forums asking for more detail, and they didn’t cover it in their WWDC23 sessions

Unfortunately, this is completely normal behavior from Apple and I've run up against it far too many times.

When finally forced, by regulation or industry pressure, to answer questions, open their format up, or support other open formats, they pay lip service and drag their heels in every way possible.

> There's nothing surprising here, it's been Apple's style for the entire time I've been working in tech - 15 years or so - to create formats that they control and preferably which only work on Apple devices.

Assuming no intentional bias, it's personally hard for me to imagine how anyone could be in the industry for that long and not understand Apple's contributions to formats and other standards we take for granted.

* Apple was the first major adopter and popularizer of now-de-facto standards like 3.5" floppy drives, USB, Wi-Fi, and DisplayPort, and additionally created (and gave away) DisplayPort Mini

* Apple co-developed and popularized IEEE 1394 (FireWire), USB-C, Thunderbolt, and USB 4

* Apple created the ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF), which is the basis for MPEG-4 and many other time-based and image file formats

* Apple popularized today's most popular compressed media formats, and will do the same for AV1 (with hardware decode in M3 and newer Macs today, and Apple TV soon)

* Apple dropped a proprietary OS for the BSD-based OS used across their product line, from wearables, to mobile, to HMDs, to laptops/PCs

* Apple used its open source WebKit to advance modern web standards, and are one of the few defenders against Google's near-total hegemony of web technologies

* Apple's contributions to and investments in open-source technologies like Clang/LLVM and Swift have helped all developers directly and indirectly

Using an as-yet-undocumented projection format to argue the opposite isn't super-persuasive, since Apple eats their own dog food (sometimes for years) before promoting it to an open, generalized industry standard (e.g. "QuickTime Movie" container format).

The thing about building an uncharitable narrative is that one can spin anything to be a nefarious deed. Literally anything, and we're seeing that here. A common aspect to this is distilling something as large as a company of many thousands of people with different views, projects and outputs into a singularly thinking entity that has evil intentions (along with an unhealthy dose of double-standards.)

It takes someone with a good deal of integrity to display a nuanced view of something, weighing both the good and bad.

Such observations aren't typically wanted in forums. Forums favour a "hive mind" mentality, because that's easy and doesn't require thought. Simply put <x> into the good or bad box. If we play the same game of distilling HN into a singular entity, then we already know what it thinks about Apple.

As for Apple's actions I don't think it deserves the polarised views that we see on HN. I've been around long enough to see how companies come in and out of favour and often the meddling efforts by competitors to sway such public opinion. Some people are just really distracted by team fandom and cheerleading, instead of looking at the more important question "what does <x> do for or against me personally?"

To be fair they forked KHTML to make WebKit. Even if they wanted, they needed to remain open source. Same with Blink (Chromium), a lot of shared history there. But that would take way too long to explain.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. What you say is true. They originally said facetime would be an open protocol based on jabber... didn't happen. Heck, they created their own cpu (undocumented) for some reason.

It's a bit more complicated than that right? There is definitely a corporate component there (FaceTime is one, iMessage is another) and they have a strong tendency to attempt to .. extort? .. others to pay for their standards. But they usually use standards that are available.

If they do build something on their own, they have a reason. Most often technical. E.g. lightning is strictly better than any alternative that was available when they were introducing it (and that it didn't become the USB-C form factor is partially due to them wanting high licensing revenue). And really... you don't get why they created their own CPUs? Which hands down beat anything else out there on perf/watt and allow their systems to have incredible battery runtime on really tiny batteries?

Is it that complicated? Instead of being an industry leader, they seem to just want money and sticky users. I'm not an Apple hater by any stretch, but this seems to be a fact. In other words, they could have lead the way to better calls/sms by making facetime the standard, but instead we have green bubbles. Literally, they are the reason their own competition exists. They could have made their CPU architecture available to anyone willing to pay, but instead it is exclusive and 100% non-portable.

In other words, there could be some Apple in literally every device on the planet, but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason. That is the part I don't understand. It seems like such a short-sighted play.

> Instead of being an industry leader, they seem to just want money and sticky users

But that's the job of a company...

> but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason.

Because they are a consumer company. They depend on a strong asymmetry between their customers and them. It would be really hard for any other company to rely on Apple as a supplier. Afaik the only relationship that exists in that way are company phones, but those are not handled by Apple directly, but rather through carriers. Apple simply doesn't have any experience in being a supplier (and probably also large aversions to becoming one from their own treatment of their supply chain).

Linus Torvald's repeatedly says something very insightful about "enterprise grade hardware", he describes it as "over-priced crap that doesn't work". Which is correct in the sense of "it doesn't comply to standards and only works in one specific combination". But that's literally where the value of "enterprise" comes from. There is someone that provides an in-depth description of a single use case and the appropriate solution and sells that. It isn't supposed to work in many scenarios. It's supposed to work in one. But for that one you have to guarantee a certain quality level and if you fail that you will have to pay for that. That is simply not how Apple operates. They are the big dog. Always. That's why they broke up with Nvidia

But my point was: They didn't introduce any format for the fun of it. There always was a reason. Nearly always a technical one. Sometimes "only" a business one (which one could argue that qualifies for "for the hack of it")

> But that's the job of a company...

By that logic, Google isn't a company despite setting industry standards.

Google primarily makes money from ads and user data. That’s their purpose. Everything else is ancillary and in service to that. Apple’s product is the physical hardware and software.

Yet they somehow lead the industry. I'd love to see Apple step it up, but it seems like you're just making excuses for them.

Apple are a hardware company. One that's deep into software because it helps them sell that hardware, but ultimately still a hardware company. Having their software running on other company's devices doesn't help them in the goal of selling more iPhones, if anything it harms that because why buy an iPhone to be able to Facetime with the family when you can by a cheaper Android device instead?

It's well known Jobs policy and strategy. "One standard port, two proprietary ports" is the version I've seen, the standard port is for ingestion and export, proprietary ports are for sharing within tight knit Apple circles.

Variants of this principle is seen everywhere throughout their systems and architectural designs, thankfully backfiring often enough that Apple isn't taking over PC any time soon.

Apple would quite rightly view taking 100% of the PC industry as unnecessarily sacrificing vast profits and the margins that generate those profits.

They manage pricing to maximize industry profit share, not marketshare.

The downvotes were expected. I've found that anytime I say something critical of Apple downvotes are sure to follow.

Even in technical threads were people are literally struggling to complete work because of Apple's attitude (my experience here mostly relates to support for 3d browser apis over the last decade) there's still a largely negative response to any perceived Apple criticism.

I'm actually pleasantly surprised that my comment here is no longer downvoted. I guess HN folks are more savvy than typical web devs.

To be honest I'm not sure I'm even criticizing Apple. I don't like it, for sure, and it makes my life harder, but it's clearly a sound business strategy that has served them well.

My Gopro MAX uses EAC for the 360 videos. But ironically I have to go through the hassle of converting it to equirectangular before uploading to Google Street View..

Thank you for posting this! It's very helpful. Just want to add a caveat for the reader. While resolution is important, the display technology matters just as much if not more. Pimax Crystal Super, for example uses QLED tech, so its backlit and its color accuracy, contrast will not be in the same ballpark as Apple Vision Pro which uses micro-OLED panels.

A pixel, is not always a pixel. There's more to the story.

There are two upcoming headsets that i missed, both with the same high resolution and with Android XR: The Samsung headset ("Project Moohan”) and the just announced Pimax Dream Air.

Both have Micro OLEDs with 3840 x 3552 pixels.

The Pixmax 12K OLED also looks really cool on their website, thanks for sharing about Pixmax (TIL).

Take a look at the company Varjo. They make a pretty good headset.

remember when all the VR headsets were shitty and all the enthusiasts would say that resolution isnt the metric to use to judge VR headsets

clowns

You're confusing two different things and being obnoxious about it.

There are lots of important attributes when using a VR headset.

Screen resolution isn't that important when playing a fast-paced game for example.

Then there are countless other things like screen refresh rate, contrast, brightness, light bleeding, god rays, visible pixel grid, sub-pixel aliasing, eye tracking and foveated rendering, color spaces, tracking fidelity, weight, sweating, pressure sores, poor audio etc.

Many things to get wrong indeed.

They were probably talking about games not using one like a desktop or to watch movies

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