The coolest use for the Vision Pro
christianselig.com
christianselig.com
So when clients come in, and feels adventurous, we'll setup the headset, set the display height to their actual, and let them walk around their beautiful new home.
The response has been powerful. My clients are able to truly understand the scale, the proportion of rooms, ceiling heights, and the smallest details.
We're able to make real-time changes to the model (within reason) and provide instant design feedback.
I've been using this technology for years and I'm surprised it's not being adopted faster - good for us right now though!
For clients, I don't know any other way at this point. Showing a novice a 2D elevation does nothing for them. They will nod, make comments, and play along, but until you sketch a person into the drawing, they don't even understand that the front door is ten feet tall.
I think 2D prints aren't the baseline, and since at least the late 2000s even run of the mill architecture firms have been using 3d studio-type renderings with clients. Maybe I don't understand how the visionpro works. Your clients arent actually physically moving their body, right? What's the advantage of looking around the space in a visionpro vs large monitor?
It was the biggest unlock when it came to choosing a staircase design. Hard to picture ahead of time and expensive to change later.
"Complexity is free when you are drawing with a nozzle."
One thing about their use of plant-based bioplastic is that if you didn't like your staircase or house after printing it, you could shred it, melt it back down, redesign it, and print out a different one again.
>On a plot in Amsterdam-Noord, DUS Architects turned a six-metre FDM printer called the KamerMaker into a research laboratory disguised as a house — extruding honeycomb rooms from plant-based bioplastic to ask whether a building can be downloaded, printed on site, and shredded back into feedstock when it is done.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180509103603/http://3dprintcan...
https://www.studiomatrx.org/guides/3d-print-canal-house
>The KamerMaker: a desktop printer, grown enormous
>The instrument at the centre of the project is a machine called the KamerMaker — Dutch for "room maker" — installed on the site from September 2012. Conceptually it is disarmingly simple: it is a fused deposition modelling (FDM) printer, the same layer-by-layer, melt-and-extrude technology found in a hobbyist desktop machine, scaled up until it stands roughly six metres tall inside a movable, container-sized pavilion. It was developed by DUS in dialogue with the desktop-printing world — the Ultimaker community was part of that lineage — and it can print single elements up to about 2.2 × 2.2 × 3.5 metres.
Much earlier (1997-2000) I worked on The Sims architectural editing tools for walls, floors, windows, doors, swimming pools, ladders, diving boards, object placement, etc, including the staircase placement tool, which was extra tricky because it spanned two stories, punched holes in the floor, and reserved two contiguous floor landing tiles upstairs and downstairs. Orchestrating the undo/redo edit records in the right order was diabolical. ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs
The Anti-Heisenberg Teleporter added by House Party was not actually classified as a staircase although it spanned two floors and had landing tiles. But it worked since the staircase tool (and other specialized tools like windows, doors, pool ladders and diving boards, etc) were actually just special modes of the generic universal object placement tool.
Stairs Aesthetics In Every Sims - Sims 1, Sims 2, Sims 3, Sims 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43IwecyTHYU
The modular clown themed roller coaster construction kit in Makin' Magic was amazing!
The Sims 1 Was Made in 2000...and it's still amazing:
https://youtu.be/x00rH9eIJgo?t=216
LGR - The Sims 1 & 2 Legacy Collection Review
Yes, they can move around if they want. We set a boundary in the foyer of my office, so they have about 15 feet of movement.
If you haven't ever put on a 3D headset, it's hard to describe the advantage. Do I think it's 100% necessary vs. just looking at a screen, no, but it's cool.
A lot of people don't grasp scale correctly when looking at a monitor. It's not an intrinsic skill in the same way that our perception of being inside a 3D space is
I'm AEC adjacent and am trying to talk myself into picking up a pair strictly for personal architectural projects..
We have on occasion used our Matterport 3 lidar scanner to model existing structural conditions to help us figure out a problem.
Re Matterport 3 - we use it as a communication tool for remote work sessions with engineers, architects, clients, etc. Saves everyone a trip to the site. Helps us document progress, preserve historical details, uncover discrepancies between field and plan, etc.
It looks cool, but it wasn't applicable for our day-to-day.
Most small to medium enterprises run off SaaS. The most common local tool is Office suite, which now has feature parity with the Windows version.
I'd make them wear a giant visor over their face rather than have to talk to them directly too. They're also some of the most insufferable people you'll ever meet.
I want to learn how to import into Unreal Engine... also throw a rocket launcher in there with some destruction physics.
I will caution tho, converting the Rhino models back into CAD for construction drawings, etc. is time consuming. One of my architects is skilled in Revit, but we haven't explored the real time rendering / 3d visualization abilities enough with it.
It’s like starting with a pencil sketch instead of going straight to SolidWorks, once you start building that more nailed down drawing with its explicit flow of sketches and operations in relationship to each other, it becomes much harder to make large structural changes.
https://help.autodesk.com/view/RVT/2023/ENU/?guid=GUID-71F2C...
When they bail ?
Anyways, I learned that AI can't read DWG, so converted it to DXF using trial AutoCAD. The LibreCAD couldn't even open my dwg as it was some newer version.
I also have a plan to make some "what-if" scenarios - we want to remodel kitchen, remove this wall, put this here and there... basically that can help visualize and that can understand how big stuff is to calculate BOM and such.
Is Blender OK for it or should I target some SketchUp for my "3D feel"? I'm looking forward to using some free tools.
Is there even a free cad alternative that would understand "newer" dwg file formats? Is there other software than AutoCAD with MCP capability that would allow navigate dwg/dxf?
Do it! You have the knowledge, you have the interest, you now have confirmation someone else was able to do it, so can you! No time to wait, just jump in and start planning, then execute! I don't know why people hesitate so much, you do literally only live once, and who has time to sit around thinking "what if?" when we're old and just want to chill? Worst case scenario, you fail, learned a bunch, lean back on what supported you before, maybe in a slightly different way, but with so many more fun memories.
Money? It's hard to stop getting revenue suddenly for an undetermined time. Especially with a family behind.
> Worst case scenario, you fail, learned a bunch, lean back on what supported you before
That's to my opinion very simplistic very often not true and dependent on the job market (which isn't that great right now!)
True, the job market is worse than it's been before, but it'll also eventually get better, as before. Things go up and down, can't really skip out on your dreams just because it's a bit difficult, then you're just giving up as easily as everyone else. Gotta fight a little :)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiiKeAlm6Ow This Put Me on Stage at Unreal Fest Chicago
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ehoHM-uzRQ From Scan to Stream: Open Pipelines for Large-Scale 3D in Unreal Engine
If your partner watches this stuff then you are in trouble.
And I mean for someone with no specialized architect/design skills.
Speaking of which, it seems like evolution in the headset world is slow or stalled at least commercially.
How did you get your team to get onboard with the process? How is the ROI?
The ROI - the salaries were a negative on the books for two years, but now we're choosing our projects, ones that any AD100 firm would kill for.
If you are doing well for yourself you buy a house from a project. It will be 150 identical homes next to each other. If you pay extra you get to decide the color of the kitchen and what tiles you want in the pre-designed bathroom.
Designing your own home is some Jeff Bezos stuff.
If the builder does it correctly you really have to squint to tell which homes are the exact same since they are all slightly different.
For a lot of building projects you need both pictures to send the government to get permission before you break ground; and also evidence of the structural calculations, and that the structural elements were built to design.
You can do these things without an architect, but there's enough demand to support an ecosystem of small businesses (say, 1 architect and 2 support staff). Not every project/architect uses a full 3D model - some architects produce a set of 2D drawings.
Worth to note that there is a huge practical difference between a "custom" and a "self-build" home.
- On "self-build" you take full personal responsibility for finding land, securing planning permission, managing the budget, and hiring architects or builders.
- On "custom" you buy from a developer who already has pre-approved planning permissions, often for a huge serviced plot targeting 20-30 homes based on some copy/paste concept, managing all aspects of the construction while you can influence minor aspects of the layout, style, and interior finishes.
Custom-built homes are very common in rest of Europe. It's a common scheme to buy a plot of land, plan a low-cost project of very densely placed, similar looking houses, reusing as many elements as possible to simplify permissions, and then allowing customers to pay for additions within those fixed boundaries.
The possible individual modifications are usually minor then, everything that requires re-submission for (structural/council/...) approval is not economic.
Then there's the "I self-build, my dad is a carpenter and I just bought this toolbox" category, which is such a minefield of fatal mistakes that movies and reality shows were made around it.
I think the market for "self-build but fully outsourced to a premium developer" is the ~1-2% bracket only...
But when you go to very high end neighborhoods where you essentially pick a plot and a architect, no 2 homes are close to the same, all completely custom.
I guess I'm in the .001%: my father in law built homes for a living and built his own home and every piece of furniture in it himself. Everything lasts longer and works better than in professionally built homes in my experience. He's a real marvel.
I suspect there may not many more people with his skillset after his generation passes.
There are a lot of 1 percenters here.
This company probably makes a lot of money, but they also have serious competition, so they need things like the 3D walkthroughs.
Summer traffic in the Hamptons is a nightmare, though. Many uber-rich have helipads.
And the Hamptons competition is very serious. It's insane really. Construction in the Hamptons is the Olympics of high-end building. There are atleast a dozen excellent, amazing builders and over 250 active companies in total. My company sits near the top of that list and the only one, to my knowledge, actively leveraging technology to our advantage.
No private heli-pads, they banned it long ago. There's a little known heli-pad on Meadow Lane in Southampton. So from your SoHo office to your beachfront house is under an hour. There's also Blade service to EH.
One of my clients often arrives by seaplane to check on the progress of his Peconic Bay waterfront project. It's pretty cool.
Glad to hear you guys are doing so well.
Just like the article says: Within a second after putting on the headset you just know if things are proportioned right, or need some fine tuning. That's really valuable!
Also, when the house was actually (partially) built, it felt exactly like the simulations we knew pretty well by that point.
Coincidentally enough, author of the submission ended up calling their thing "Prospector"
> After some intense typing with a combination of Claude and Codex over the course of a morning I had something I was pretty happy with. I named it Prospector (can’t remember why) and I’ve been really happy with it.
I can't help but think that the author asked the LLM for suggestions on the name, and Prospector/Prospect was recommended as it was so similar to an existing thing, but I might be reading too much into it.
Prospector could even be interpreted/spelled as Prospecter, -er as in "more/better than Prospect"
I hope he knows that a lot of iOS users really appreciate his work, (I even convinced one hardcore Android user to get an iPhone just for this one app, it was that good).
For that, thank you Christian!
All the best to him on his future endeavors!
The new reddit, the not old.reddit, is hideous and offensive, and it's hard to believe they didn't acquire Apollo.
Good for me though, no more reddit.
I do that every now and then but LocalLlama has become such a pain to read. Between the stupid memes, the useless benchmarks and the hype train of the week, I feel the signal to noise ratio has dropped significantly. I haven’t really found anything like what it was 1 or 2 years ago.
I land on Reddit every couple of days or so, and if they don’t kick me I read the thread and sometimes browse a bit a couple of subreddits I used to participate in.
I started getting a blocking overlay telling me to download the app on new reddit and I just leave.
By default it sends you to new ("www"), but I've found (at least on non-mobile) I can edit the URL to use "old" and works (at least for now).
But I found a couple of ways to browse without using the official app. One is Safari, with the free SinkIt for Reddit extension, and another is a free app called Lurker. The Lurker app is nowhere close to the speed and smoothness of Apollo. It also seems to drain the battery quicker, but the UI is relatively clean.
Reddit's post quality dropped so hard after they killed off the API. It's night and day.
it's so funny how corporations throw literally everything they have to control narratives and it just drives people away. all companies tried so hard to have a twitter presence and that site is now nothing but a wasteland of sports journalism and racist bots.
but yeah, reddit sucks. it can't decide what it wants to be but it sure is barreling towards yet another crappy scrolly social media platform
I used to use Reddit daily to follow a few games and news subs, and was fairly active in a couple of those communities as a contributor.
But I don’t know that I miss Reddit all that much, save for a few small corners of the community. The discourse here is a lot more thoughtful, generally, and the community aspect is what I enjoy the most.
Christian’s work on Apollo made me hopeful that good app devs will continue to exist (shoutout to HACK for iOS, it’s a great HN reader), and I’m glad he seems to be doing something pretty cool with his time
Though this is especially helpful for old homes where you have to sort of improvise ethernet wiring.
I normally just use it to consume 4k hdr media though.
It has not lived up to being a utility player device, but so far it is so good at media delivery that is sort of okay.
https://kmcheung12.github.io/climb-preview/w/a6ece004
I think 3D application is massively under utilised. There is whole family of interaction the textual web cannot provide
On the other hand, if we want a 3D reconstruction of a route in general, using a drone, then that's very doable. We still rely on 2D climbing magazine/book/app to view a route, where the contour of the route itself is highly desirably imo.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1ut1atj/how_i_ret...
https://old.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1tq34lj/created_...
Submitted previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48867417
He's in the Charlotte NC area.
Basically, you do the geometry modelling in Sketchup, Blender or what have you, import that into TM, texture it, place lights and then walk around Doom style. VR headsets are supported natively. There is also a decent (and very easy to use) support for "scenarios", so you can open/close doors, turn on/off lights, etc.
Highly recommended.
PS. There is a free desktop version of Sketchup Make 2017. Got everything one needs for a single-person setup. There is a copy on the Internet Archive.
[1] https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdc...
Just thought I’d raise this since it weirdly isn’t mentioned in the article.
I used a similar technique the last time I moved - scan the apartment using the iPhone, then I had a 3D model for measuring and planning out the space before/during the move. It’s a big help when planning out furniture etc.
And I scanned my old place before leaving so I can virtually step into it any time I want. iPhone via finder/preview handles showing 3D models in AR out of the box.
And I ask for details because I have attempted something similar but wasn’t getting the best results. I was using ‘3d scanner app’ (which was good but was sold and is not recommended now), and that created pretty decent models, but like, they were still I think based on lidar and not super precise. I also wasn’t sure how to reconcile my actual floor plan with that 3d model the right way - like if the 3d model got some error built-up, the wall which I know to be 100 inches has to be that, and not 101 or 99, since for furniture planing an inch definitely matters. So I kind of got stuck here on how to actually generate some useful and as correct dimensionally as possible 3d model, into which I can later put furniture 3d models into. Thanks for any info!
As for planning the new space, I sketched it out - I might have used their tools, might have also just sketched it out on paper.
Once I had my plan, I marked it out using masking tape just to sanity check and everything fit as expected.
Like you mentioned, Ive wanted to scan some spaces to remember them in the future. Last time I looked, those apps werent very easy to find or easy to use.
It can generate a mesh, or convert the scan into a floor plan or idealized 3d model.
I was able to capture the mesh and save to my iPhone. I think I did a month subscription and that was more than enough time.
If you're making a sales pitch the $3500 is an investment in raising sales.
Obviously $3500 is not nothing for most people, but neither is building a house in this economy. I think the skillset of leveraging the provided code here and working with 3D models is gonna be a bigger barrier to entry than the cost of a Vision Pro.
VR has lots of uses, but it takes someone outside the field who wouldn’t have given it a go otherwise to see another use and go “hey guys, you can do THIS too!”
I am referencing trends and past data, while you’re talking about an anecdote.
> What am I missing?
So much.
> This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets
The article is describing "room scale positioning". The first consumer available headset to offer this was released in 2016.
It may feel like it's been around forever if you're not familiar with the space except as a consoomer, but exploring a 3d space at room scale has only recently come into the realm of possibility for consumer grade headsets. For much of the 80s and 90s (and 00s), it was head tracking only. Real time positioning and moving around required positioning hardware that was a magnitude more expensive - and pretty much always had very specific space limitations. Sure, it existed to some degree, but it was such inexpensive addition that using an expensive and complicated treadmill was often considered the economical choice.
In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive. Previously, they all had specific limitations like a 4 x 4 foot area or were massive tech demos that existed in a quantity of one in a university basement somewhere, running a very tailored demo, and they certainly weren't feasible in the 90s.
> Make a 3D world, walk through it.
First of all, how do you map the room? Do you set up lighthouses? Low latency positioning? To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it. Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible. Previous generations didn't have it, and it's almost a guaranteed requirement for any large scale deployment of VR - for example, exploring multiple rooms.
Second, how do you create the "3d world"? It may seem simple, but VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation, and that means that any geometry and graphics you inert of the world needs to be within the compute budget of the headset solution. The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem. Again, it may feel like we've had the technology, but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages, and the compute power to process all of that in anything approaching a consumer solution. To do what AVP is doing with the USDZ files, composing them into the real world, and even applying lighting information, previously would have required a fleet of large and expensive machines. And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.
No, while you could do this, the article specifically mentions controller support for moving around. But sure, inside out tracking is not available on all VR headsets.
> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
No offense but did you look at what they exported from Fusion? Or the video demo of what they built? The only things that are not blocky are the models downloaded from IKEA. Nothing about this is impressive - AVP can render much better. Even the Meta Quest 3 can render much better.
> Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem.
Yes, but this article makes use of none of it because they are not doing AR.
What is in the article is explicitly walking around. Yes, you can do it with controller input.
> No offense but did you look at what they exported from Fusion? Or the video demo of what they built? The only things that are not blocky are the models downloaded from IKEA. Nothing about this is impressive - AVP can render much better. Even the Meta Quest 3 can render much better.
No offense, but mentioning the MQ3 only proves my point. It's amazing how far we've come. Headset mounted compute VR from even 15 years ago would have struggled with this.
> Yes, but this article makes use of none of it because they are not doing AR.
I was just mentioning it. Quote me where I said they were doing that, thanks.
> In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive.
Yeah there was, you mounted some markers on your headset and attached the mocap camera on marker set.
Obviously as a consumer you needed to either use vive or oculus. (and wait for them to come out, but there were other HMDs around. but they were shit and expensive)
> VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation,
I mean yes, but rasterising two cameras isn't usually double the processing. You deffo need to be running at higher framerate all the time though. Otherwise you feel sick (ask me how I know...)
but real talk here, that demo isn't a graphics stress test. its low poly simple lighting and a skybox with a 2048x2048 texture on it. You could probably do that with a mobile phone arkit/core and those shitty little len boxes that came out in 2015.
> but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages,
I mean thats not really true. LG made a phone with a 120fps camera in it in 2006. (my timing might be hazy, but its deffo been almost twenty years.) Also the other thing is the cameras don't run at that higher resolution, well not the RGB ones anyway. but thats irrelevant here, as they arent used in this sim.
Also, I don't think the slam on the AVP is running at 90hz, I think a lot of the work is done with sensor fusion, as its way cheaper, faster and accurate. (Again I never took apart the AVP, only oculus. but logically it makes sense as higher frame rates means less usable light, slam is also rather expensive to run.)
> And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.
eh? There isn't real world lighting in this. there aren't even any pbfs its just flat textures and ambient lighting. USDZ isn't some magic new world format. its a reasonably nice scene description format.
Transparency is a first class primitive in 3d since for ever. You can even do transparent coloured particles (guess what Gaussian splats are...)
Im not sure what the polygon budget of the AVP is. but the quest 2 topped out at about 1million in unity. I expect the AVP has more, and fancier shader support too.
> Yeah there was, you mounted some markers on your headset and attached the mocap camera on marker set.
You did VR? How did you get the round trip latency below 100ms? That was a serious issue until relatively late in the game. Maybe they cracked it by 2011, but even in 2006, it was a serious issue (mocap rigs are not designed for utra low latency feedback)
One was a vicon, which was low latency and sexy, another was the USB optitrack, which was utter shite. I don't remember what the third lot used.
The vicon at the time seemed to be low enough latency to useable. The director didn't like the headset so opted for a monitor instead. perhaps it was too higher latency to be practical. ( I didn't get a chance to use the headset, being young and too far down the pecking order. I only got to use the monitor )
And the Vision Pro was far from the first to implement it. The most popular headsets in the world all use the tech, now. It's not 2016 anymore.
> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly [...] really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
Is this a parody? The chip is a laptop-grade APU tethered to a power bank, and you're bragging about pixel-shading a <1000 tri mesh? Your mind will be blown when you discover what the Nintendo Switch can do with 10w.
I didn't say it was.
> Is this a parody? The chip is a laptop-grade APU tethered to a power bank, and you're bragging about pixel-shading a <1000 tri mesh? Your mind will be blown when you discover what the Nintendo Switch can do with 10w.
OP was talking in the timescale of "since forever", and so am I. Your mind will be blown when you discover what happens when you export that mesh without optimization or LOD maps to a head mounted computer from 2004.
This is what finally enabled Richard Hendricks to develop inside out compression.
Shipping it was stressful (renderer was in Ogre3D) and product fit well my face thanks to all the tape.
To say I am disappointed is an understatement.
It’s useful for placing furniture in your home. The IKEA app used to offer something similar.
Technically there’s no reason you couldn’t do something like a full house too.
[1] In the early 90's VRML was going to create a Snowcrash style metaverse of 3D places you could visit.
Having experienced other AR/VR products I was interested to see how Apples general 'refinement' of this product area worked out.
I admit, I had low expectations; and probably for the best, because nothing could've prepared me for what I experienced.
Given this was a gen1 product, I was blown away by how seamless and 'complete' the experience was. There was a few obvious places for refinement like battery-life, weight and the screen. But the immersive experience was incredibly convincing, compelling and even relaxing. The price point clearly needs to come down, and I suspect the technology was a little ahead of its time. But I can see in 5-10 years after continuous iteration and improvement that this product will be something else.
I also did some light simulations so we could see how the skirting roof around the building would allow light in for summer vs winter.
We have been very happy we used VR. It allowed us to iterate on what felt right, communicate exactly what we wanted to the builder, and the sunlight simulations have allowed it to be comfortably usable year round - letting light in during the winter, but keeping direct light out during the summer.
The coolest use I've seen is a research at the University of Alberta (Canada) that aims to use the Vision Pro to alleviate nystagmus[1].
This is a disease on the muscles that control the eyes' direction. It causes the eyes to twitch involuntarily. They use the Visio Pro to "twitch" the image along with the eye, so the patient doesn't feel the jitter. It enables them to read, watch movies, etc.
Another cool one is to use them to substitute the visual field test machines in ophthalmology offices. These are machines that cost U$15 000.00 dollars.
It worked great. There's nothing better than walking through a design. It turned out to be the _only_ way I was able to get over my analysis paralysis and actually commit to the project. I took pictures from all angles and printed them for our contractors, and they found it very useful as well.
It's stunning how similar the real pictures are to our renders. Here's an example for those interested: https://imgur.com/a/y3KXphc
I really struggle with visualising what things are going to look like. Even trivial stuff like choosing a colour to paint the wall. Sticking tiny paint swatches or painting sections from sample pots just doesn't work either, it's either all or nothing to me. I don't have that aphantasia thing either, quite a vivid imagination actually, but for stuff like home decor and I'm useless
I'm not really in the market for a vision pro or VR headset so my version of this is to take a picture of a space (say a wall) and feed it into on of the AI image generators with a colour - probably taken from a screenshot of a paint vendor, and tell it to generate me an image of what the wall would look like in <this colour>.
Obviously it's not perfect but it's definitely given me a better idea of what, in the ballpark, something would look like when painted on the whole wall.
I've also had some success with getting it to generate stuff with wall decor on as well, even pasting in product images (e.g. "what would this mirror look like") - even on the "painted" wall.
Again, not perfect, but it's helped me a lot.
It prompted me to wonder why environments haven't evolved into fully realistic room makeovers yet. As the writer notes, the hardware is ready for more uses.
The Vision Pro is great hardware, waiting for a beyond-toy-app beyond-media-kiosk OS.
I use it as a Mac screen. But why one "screen". Why not all Mac windows. Why not Mac windows that naturally handle 3D content.
I am talking "mundane" but seamless support. The better use of visual space, the better physical ergonomics of screens that can be easily moved, and no barrier to evolving practical uses for 3D, would create the "NeXT" Pro experience over macOS/Mac over time. Instead of another iOS check out counter.
I believe Steve would have seen the beyond Mac potential.
The first version's hardware is still "Pro" enough for a Pro OS.
Just as a screen, switching between a MacBook Pro and Vision Pro is frictionless (aside from a few seconds to link each time). Eye tracking and pinching could be implemented on the Mac, via its camera/island so physical memory translated both ways.
I use mine every day, with just-out-of-reach frustration in direction proportion to real what-I-have-now appreciation.
Often, the more effort you put into the tiniest details, textures, etc the larger the realism payoff.
I also found that immersion got better when the headset responded to the subtle head movements that we all make.
It's clear that it is the future. But there's still some steps between where Apple is at with it today, and where it needs to be in order to be a mainstream product. I would look and see if you can find one used either in the local market, or via a short trip if possible.
Exactly my opinion; I got mine on the first day it was available in 2024, yet I use it perhaps 1-2 times/month, to watch a movie.
What makes you think that?
Instead, what will happen is that it will get gradually slimmer and lighter with each generation, a few hundred grams at a time.
From what I hear, I'd probably be happy with the v1, just not at 3000€ and not when you need to buy a mac in addition to use various features. Depending on what is supported from open OSes (AOSP or Linux desktop/mobile OSes), I could see myself paying 0.5-1.5k to try if it's something for me. Maybe I could get one off the second-hand market if Apple (or a competitor) ends up making a v2 vision device, so I'll join you in hoping for that :)
It’s also a terrible experience. Pixelated. Laggy. Can’t see where the keyboard is… it’s half baked.
I can work max one hour then I give up.
Fix those and I am a buyer, at any price.
so the screen resolution might be higher, the effective resolution is not so much.
The quest feels sharper for a lot of things. Apart from the rgb camera.
Either way, for me, they are both too lower resolution for useful text work. I can see the pixels and the size of the font I want starts to fall below the effective reolution.
I realise that this is not the case for a lot of people though
you can install an app on OSX that allows you to do a passthrough, but the last time I used it horizon was called workrooms.
On windows you can use the official oculus app to use your local gfx card to render graphics. THat gives you really smooth graphics at much better fidelity.
my colleague used vrdesktop to get more screen estate.
For me the screens on the O3 aren't high enough resolution, I can see the gaps between pixels, which means less dense text.
I would have been much more likely to get one when I was unmarried, but now with a family it greatly reduces my use cases since I don't watch content alone (except when doing the dishes, when I am largely focused on the real world task in front of me).
I only use it to watch movies, ALWAYS while lying down with my head on a pillow and my feet propped up on cushions. That way I'm able to position the device so as to distribute the weight evenly on my forehead/cheekbones. The revised strap enables the weight to be precisely distributed and altered as needed if it gets uncomfortable.
And I am not even talking about the badly taken product decisions for such a great headset but… how can they get devs onboarded for an app ecosystem for a device that can only be bought in a handful of countries?
Clearly Apple sold it and did their best so that it fails.
If it was amazing as a display for work then most Apple employees would be using them at work. It's not, so they aren't
If it was amazing as a movie viewer most Apple employees would be watching movies on them. It's not, so they aren't
repeat for any other use case.
Compare to iPhone/iPad/Mac, every Apple employee uses them. Probably included in that Airpods, Homepods, AppleTV, Apple Watch.
They weren't handing out dev fused AVPs in sufficient number for anyone to do this when I left. And Apple software developers rarely buy their own hardware, why would you, when you get most of the hardware for free (and dev fused)?
It is true that buying one for use as an extra monitor was pretty niche at Apple Park. And it’s also true that everyone is crammed into shared offices where it would feel anti-social to be wearing one all the time.
So I’m vaguely aligned with you on the utility to the average dev, but your argument for why makes little sense.
FWIW almost none of my direct reports used HomePods, from your list of freely available devices, and grabbing an iPad for anything other than testing was maybe 50/50. And I don’t think you’d claim the iPad isn’t popular.
I don't know why you would post something that is clearly not true? They released an upgraded version, sporting an M5, October 2025. They do not sell the original M2 version anymore.
While the new head strap was better than the original, it still wasn't all that comfortable to wear. Some things were super sharp, while other things always looked blurry. The window system still seemed buggy and I'd describe it as finicky. The battery doesn't last long enough to feel comfortable untethered, while it also gets in the way while being plugged into the wall. It also felt like a lot of work to actively look at what needed focus all the time. It still feels like it should be in beta, maybe even the lab. I'll be willing to try again down the road, but it's hard to tell how much attention Apple is really giving it, as we haven't seen all that much progress in the last couple years.
I'm really excited to see AR take off in use cases like this, given how useful it would be to give all our technicians e.g. a legacy Google Glass (not the Intelligent Eyewear thing) and direct them to a rack, overlay information about a failed component, and walk them through the repair SOP.
I imagine at least the architectural stuff just happens now.
On the other hand, we can just do this stuff ourselves now. No movie studio level of equipment required. And THAT is pretty awesome.
I wish I had a vision pro it would be more awesome. But yes you can quickly create 3d models now from just a drawing. What a time to be alive.
The whole project took 10 years of back-and-forth with local governments and permits. Construction is 9 months. Tragically, all of the original creators left the project because their children had already grown up, or they were growing too old and close to death to invest in something this long term. Mind you this should be the easiest housing project ever; building houses at the edge of a rural village. No wonder house prices in the Netherlands have risen even more than in our neighbouring countries the past 20 years. And just for context, this isn't "lefty-madness". NIMBYism and slow legal frameworks aren't partisan. We've had centre-right-leaning government for 20 years now. This is simply bad government. Or more: Government that prioritizes protecting wealth of the asset-owning class under. If the VisionPro could help with that, that would be a game changer :).
Mushroom or plant recognition training through navigatable and manipulable gaussian splatters of the speciments in their habitat
There's definitely a perception gap that needs to be closed for these things, whether through VR or something slightly less digital. That's probably also a big part of the appeal of prefabs.
We are focusing on the niche of on site AR design and editing with commodity devices.
Awesome things..
Also while you are at it- add a Brain Interface reacting to a P300 response with LLM changes to the house depending on what the user looks at :p
I can only imagine how powerful that experience would be for experiencing your future house.
Throw in some time-of-day lighting and sun-path illumination... would he great!
Should have done it. Should have called it Project Plowshare.
This is arguably the most banal use of XR, for the Vision Pro or any headset.
It's still cool and useful but if that reaches the top of HR it shows a worrying state of both the platform and the XR industry.
PS: I work in XR and spend time on HN so clearly not the audience.
But bringing the tools to the masses to create something like this, well that’s another story (one that I’ve been pursuing for many years myself).
Thanks, Christian!
Anyway, I've been using Radiance to help me deal with the above issues, but it's for all practical purposes non-interactive. At some point there's bound to be a e.g. Monte-Carlo physically-based ray-tracer for these use cases, featuring radiometry with visually negligible error compared to reference (i.e. if you were looking at the real thing with your eyeballs), that is _interactive_-capable (at least in the frames-per-second category and not seconds-per-frame). It's probably already out there, but people have different preferences as to the tools they wish to employ. I like Radiance because it's text mode and gives you a lot of quality for all the text editing and tool composition (which frankly is a bit weird, Greg Ward was sure a maverick!), but mileage varies there.
Or the video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JqkaTRR8zI
They've had it since at least 2020ish, the video has a brief overview of the interface/how it works - it hasn't changed all that much over time by the looks of it.
But -- you should DEFINITELY book a free demo at an Apple Store, just to see what its like and decide for yourself
but the OS blocks it when it gets too low-light, disabling all AR features :'(
An effect of the heat wave, maybe.
We''re burning the world and destroying biodiversity, yeah let's continue our destruction with tech as a bonus, this is awesome.
So you can just, move up.
I mean, if you already have the land, "the housing market" doesn't really matter. The construction costs are a relatively small % of housing costs in expensive markets; usually the land is the biggest factor.
Plus, when you're building, the cost of each marginal square foot is relatively small.
From my (limited) experience, construction costs can tend to rise with the local real estate market. Those construction workers also have a mortgage or rent that they need to pay every month, and buy goods and services from other people with mortgages or rent to pay.
Sorry, usually not that snarky but.. c'mon...
Am I so used to shit-tier ads that a "tasteful" ad confuses me?