Mostly presupposed hardware issues. Based on very thin assumptions, and some opinions that just seem wrong - for example, wearing a Quest 2 with the Elite strap is pretty comfortable, by far the largest issue is heat buildup and pressure around the eyes. The apple headset being lighter and with the much wider band looks to me it would actually be more comfortable.
The failure of 3D movies is always used as a cautionary tale, but it was a pretty unique case that came down to artistic execution. Both Avatar movies are incredible in 3D and don’t generate any kind of discomfort, but the average “3D” title from other studios was a cardboard-cutout mess, usually a worse experience than it’s 2D counterpart. Not a technology adoption problem.
The problem with that 3D craze was that it was implemented entirely because James Cameron wanted it. All of the technical innovations and infrastructure costs were implemented for Avatar, and all of the subsequent movies and consumer facing products were just there to try and recoup some value from these (probably bad) investments that were made for just this one film. It lasted only as long as it took people to realise that general enthusiasm for 3D movies wasn’t very strong in the broader market of all people other than James Cameron.
That’s an interesting alternative history but not really connected to our world.
There were 3D movies before Cameron was born. It’s been an ongoing cycle in movies, largely driven by the fact that the experience can be better, but it can also be neutral or worse, and the core of the art form is storytelling.
Cameron showed how to use 3D to support storytelling rather than distract, but these was no conspiracy to “recoup investments” — there were just imitators who didn’t put the work in to get it right, and manufacturers who were selling shovels and expected a gold rush that never appeared.
Our economy, and trends in the movie business are not centrally planned the way you imagine. Nobody says “AMC invested in 3D projection, so MGM should invest in 3D production, so this film that’s in development should be shot in 3D”. It doesn’t work that way.
I’m not suggesting it was centrally planned, but you’re massively underselling James Cameron’s role in this.
For starters the 3D cinematography technology created specifically for Avatar was legitimately innovative and better than anything in the past (though still a terrible experience imo).
When Avatar was in production barely any cinemas had the projectors to screen it, and most of them had a big and expensive rush to upgrade for Avatar
> In the UK alone, only around 320 out of 3,600 cinemas are digitally equipped, while in the US the ratio is even worse (2,500 out of 38,000). "So there is a big problem looming," admits Peter Buckingham, head of distribution and exhibition at the UK Film Council. "You are looking at about a minimum of £80,000 to get yourself into a 3D position. Even with the hike in ticket prices and the potential hike in audiences, that's quite a stretch for the smaller venues. The danger is that, in this digital switchover, a number of cinemas may well be left behind."
I vividly remember this at the time, and the huge amount of FOMO coverage of stories about whether your local cinema would be able to play 3D Avatar. Obviously none of this would have happened without the expectation that a wave of new 3D movies were about to be released.
The direct results of James Cameron wanting to make cool new 3D technology for Avatar was an immediate (and permanent) increase in ticket prices at the cinema, and 10 years of awful 3D movie screenings from cinema desperately trying to claw back the money they wasted on it.
This is obviously an emotional topic for you, and it is distorting your view of how incentives and commerce work. Your view is akin to the archaic supply-side views on drugs or taxes.
Consumers don't buy screening rights from movie distributors, cinemas do, and Avatar generated years worth of demand from Cinemas to get a return on the expenses they incurred from screening it. Consumers never had any substantial level of demand for this product, and it took years for the industry to correct for this mistake. You are the one who is trying to rewrite history by claiming James Cameron and his movie Avatar weren't responsible for all of this.
> all of the subsequent movies and consumer facing products were just there to try and recoup some value from these (probably bad) investments that were made for just this one film.
Interesting. First time I've heard it mentioned that way.
My viewpoint at the time was that the 3d craze in tvs' was more due to manufacturers looking for the next big thing to compete with each other, and Avatar had come out recently and was doing well. Thus "let's add 3d" and every other kitchen sink / feature they could find. Thus smart tv's now, etc.
Television manufacturers are constantly looking for a premium feature, since the profits are so slim on the lower end.
3D was one such feature, but had a benefit for non-3D movies in that it needed significantly more backlighting for active glasses to not give an overly dim experience.
3D was also odd in that normally such features get adopted first by a higher tier "early adopter" market - but because of Avatar and other family friendly 3D content, it was generally purchased by families. Perhaps its biggest early negative was expensive active glasses handed to young children.
HDR was another, but is somewhat spoiled by the lack of any good certifications/branding. Anything which can _process_ a HDR signal will be sold as a HDR television.
Curved was so weird to me, but that is because I always mount my televisions. Curved was a byproduct of the processes allowing for it. Since the curve has a fixed radius, it does lock you into a viewing distance 'range' that isn't always going to work for people.
4K was yet another, and partly what pushed 3D out in the US market. Active 3D also had a hard time with pixel ghosting - each frame was different from the previous.
Smart TVs are a different approach - sell advertisement and premium channels, I suspect in the future even put services like Uber Eats on TVs, all for secondary revenue channels to make up for how tight the primary sales channel is.
I think the whole thing stems from a need to do something with all the expensive 3D camera technology that Cameron had developed, and all of the expensive 3D projectors (and even more expensive 3D imax projectors) that all the cinemas had to buy for Avatar. Whether the TV manufacturers were just jumping on the perceived hype I don’t know. But as may be obvious I have a lot of contempt personally for James Cameron for inflicting this horrible technology on the world for around a decade.
I see you’re making a lot of points on this post, but I did some quick reading and it seems like you might have some facts wrong. Maybe this is because you’re reading a hype article from 2009 published just 1 day before Avatar was released in theaters and also relying on your memory versus reading a 10+ year retrospective article. I’m not saying that Cameron and Avatar did zilch for 3D in the film industry. I’m saying that some of your justifications about the level and ways of impact might not be accurate.
For example, you keep saying that a lot of theaters had to buy expensive projectors for Avatar. However, the article you linked to does not imply this. Sure, I imagine some theaters did buy digital projectors in time for the premiere. But all the article says is that many theaters didn’t have digital projectors even just 1 day before Avatar’s release. So no, most theaters weren’t buying digital projectors and 3D glasses specifically for Avatar. They couldn’t have. They bought them afterwards for all of the _expected _ future 3D movies. The retrospective article I mentioned above explicitly states this.
Also, the statistics used in your article are a bit misleading. Sure lots of cinemas around the world did not have digital projectors at the time, BUT the _big_ ones (that serve millions of consumers versus hundreds or thousands per year) did have digital projectors.
Also, for example, you keep saying that studios “needed to do something” with Cameron’s 3D technology since it was expensive to develop. However, this is not true at all. Only Cameron used his technology. Most of the films released after Avatar weren’t even shot in 3D. They were shot in 2D and then converted to 3D which led to poor viewing experiences.
Avatar’s influence on the 3D industry seems less direct than you’re making it seem.
Here’s the 2022 retrospective article titled “What James Cameron and ‘Avatar’ Did (and Didn’t Do) for 3D filmmaking”:
I'll die on the hill that James Camerson was also just plain wrong. Multiple scenes in Avatar are done in ways which either fail to take advantage of 3D, or are shot in a way which plays right into it's weaknesses.
Cameron shot his movie in 3D. Most other movies tried to jump on the bandwagon of 3D after being produced as a traditional 2D movie. They were instead converted to 3D in post.
I guess it depends on how you watch it? We saw it in one of the new Dolby Cinema rooms and it was mind blowing good.
And I’m not sure what you mean by “compared to VR” - do you watch some kind of 3D movies in VR? These are very different experiences to me. In the theater it’s just an aid for immersion, a full 3D environment wouldn’t allow for traditional cinema direction to happen.
>a full 3D environment wouldn’t allow for traditional cinema direction to happen.
I spent a few years in the early days of the VR rebirth doing live action VR. The issue you mentioned was one of the biggest problems for me. When the camera is locked down in a stationary position, the issue is not as noticeable. You can look where ever when ever you want. Just because the other people are talking to you does not mean you have to look at them.
However, no modern director wants a locked off shot, and wants the camera to move to add _________ to the shot. You've now removed that choice in the environment for the user. If the user is looking in a different direction when the camera starts moving, it is very unsettling. The user is no longer in control of this environment that is meant to give the user control.
For any significant market, I doubt we will have movies or shows go to a full 3D experience. These are storytelling, not interactive experiences.
You aren't going to be able to pause and get up and see what is inside the briefcase in a 3D Pulp Fiction remake. You won't be able to watch Jaws entirely from the point of view of the shark. What is being shown in the shot is the story being told.
People can and do make fully interactive experiences where you could do that. I would argue once you let the audience all walk around on the stage and asking if they can go back to the previous scene in the middle of the performance, you're no longer putting on a play. You're doing something entirely new.
True, but the fans add weight and use energy that could be better spent in computing.
I dislike the power loss failure mode - it will prevent their use in places such as factory floors where AR will be very impactful, because a suddenly blinded worker next to heavy machinery is usually a terrible idea.
But I also appreciate how they solved the transparency issue of AR by instead of overlaying stuff on the real world, they just replaced it with an Apple-made one, which is insanely clever and totally Apple.
I also want to know what they can do with additional sensors - extending vision into IR and UV and beyond will certainly prove interesting, as well as providing better perception at low light.
The key thing is that it’s not a head set for an existing computer, but a computer with a new shape, with an OS designed for that. We shouldn’t discount the initial problems - this thing is impressive. It’s a quantitative improvement so large it will become a qualitative one.
I don’t think their goal is to make something to use along with heavy machinery. I’d say they’re leaving that market for other operators. All their promos (and of almost all their hardware) pitch a pretty consistent crowd.
There was plenty of criticism that was qualified, and the assumptions had their limitations clearly explained... Overall the author did an incredible job providing context and caveats.
> Sorry, until the hardware is available I am not willing to sit down and read/listen about how terrible it is.
Agree 110%.
Its not on sale yet.
Only a tiny handful of Youtube influencers have been allowed to have a sneak-peak, and even they were not allowed to film it or go into too much detail. So clearly they were being shown late-stage prototype models and not the finished product.
Its therefore clear anyone sensible should wait and see.
They were not allowed to film it, true. But Apple specifically told people who got the hands on demo that they were allowed to talk about anything that they saw or was discussed. This is according to John Gruber and Ben Thompson (Stratechery)
It feels like a waste of time reading it, this would be an amazing review, but they never have even seen the hardware in person its absurd. Obviously Apple might have just made a piece of garbage, I have no way of knowing, not a single credible person has ever said anything about it. This is Apple we are talking about, of course they are not just going to give review samples to any credible/non-journalist person outside its cult.
Agree, but having the battery on a long umbilical cord that gets in your way, instead of strapped to the back of the headset to equalize weight distribution and remove the long cord, feels like a huge oversight.
Mounting an external battery pack to the back strap of the Quest headsets has always been a common mod and it feels bizarre for Apple to ship theirs with an external battery on an umbilical cord that you have to manage as a user, as it's an extra hassle that ruins immersion and portability, especially that since I live in a warm climate, my pairs of underwear and shorts I wear in my house have no pockets as I don't need to carry my wallet, phone or keys in my house. What then? Do I hold the battery pack with my teeth or between my ass cheeks while I slice cubs in beat saber?
It feels like they prioritized some superficial design goals for the sake of looks, and didn't really think this through enough in terms of ergonomics by actually dogfooding this in users homes, just like their sleek good looking but uncomfortable and stupid wireless mouse that's the only one I know with the charging port on the bottom instead of at the front so you can't use it while charging like every other rechargeable mouse because of Apple's bizarre design choices.
I wish I were a fly on the wall in the boardrooms when such design decisions are green lit. Is it the product designers that have the final call? Is it the engineers? Is it a vote by committee or is it one person who has the decision power?
Maybe I'm giving Apple a bit too much credit here, but it feels like they've given this some thought and decided to not go with that based on some sort of rationale, not oversight.
Don’t batteries get hot? My Mac Air gets hot enough to be too uncomfortable to keep on my lap so there’s no way I’d want one sitting on my head. Seems like most consumers perceive a degree of danger associated with batteries, and don’t want them anywhere near their head.
>but it feels like they've given this some thought and decided to not go with that based on some sort of rationale
Was it the same rationale they used to ship the broken butterfly keyboard for 4 years straight, or for the uncomfortable bottom charging mouse that even hardcore Apple fans don't use?
It's always funny to see people making excuses for the poor decisions of their favorite corporation as if Apple can do no wrong and it isn't capable of making stupid decisions just like any other big corporation subject to the same internal turf wars and power struggles.
Nobody is saying that they don’t make mistakes but the reason we remembered the butterfly keyboard is that it was a rare high-profile mistake. It seems reasonable to bet that this will be like one of the many thousands of decisions they’ve made well rather than the few memorable failures.
Considering some people’s use cases, the same could be said of a MacBook Pro or an iMac.
I mean, have you seen their introduction video? [1] It’s basically watching movies on a huge screen and chatting with heads embedded in floating windows.
Indeed, taking over control of a market is more trouble than it is really worth. Apple wants alternatives. They're happy just taking the lion's share of profits.
I ran a similar weight setup on my ebike for night lighting. Not more than a pound but it was pretty hard on my neck after a few months. Putting the battery not on the head is wise imo.
“I want a 3.5K Apple Vision Pro but I can’t wear it naked” is something Apple didn’t think through? Maybe they can sell you an Apple Fanny pack to place the the battery in.
>“I want a 3.5K Apple Vision Pro but I can’t wear it naked” is something Apple didn’t think through?
Well yes, they obviously didn't think through apparently, because, and this might come as a shock to Apple designers in Cupertino, but not all of us are Californians sitting in our air conditioned homes wearing long jeans pants and Patagonia jackets indoor in high summer because our home AC is set to a frosty 20C (68F).
In my part of Europe, July and August are unbearable and there's no residential AC in apartments here, so sitting naked at home or in underwear is the only way to make it through these torrid summer months.
European windows don't slide up like Americana ones to support cubic window mounted AC units, and many offices in the old town don't have AC and everyone is peak summer sweating bullets in t-shirts instead of wearing 2 layers and a jacket like in US offices.
Also, I wasn't being snaky at all, Apple is not the only Bay Are corporation to designing consumer products around the climate and lifestyle of the people working for them, omitting the other global demographics that face different climate challenges and lifestyles of those in California.
How much are you willing to bet, that the second gen will feature a better battery support as the first gen will get criticized for this?
Imagine walking in to your boss and saying "boss, the battery pack works, but some sweaty Europeans may be forced to sit naked in their uncooled apartments without a belt to hang it on. I think we should delay the launch."
This is a very odd take. Southeast Asians and Louisianans work in conditions that are technically considered "uninhabitable" by OSHA. The response isn't working naked. It is not a use case that any company would consider primary.
Also, you know, you can always put on a belt without clothing.
Not only Europeans... It is simply more comfortable, AC or not. But honestly I imagine I can just leave the battery pack lying besides me or wear some shorts or even buy some underwear with pockets (no way I'm doing this last one though) so it shouldn't be a big issue.
I mean it's gonna take all of 10 seconds before third-party headband systems allow you to attach the battery to the back of the headset, so this feels like a non-issue to me.
Both the Vive and oculus had lots of third-party support - I don't see that this is gonna be any different.
Ah, the classics Apple "you're holding it wrong", but now it's "your clothes are wrong". Brilliant!
I don't want to have a battery pack in my pocket and dangling cable while I'm in VR. Oculus could solve this on a $350 device. Surely paying 10x more could also have this groundbreaking feature.
I agree with you! But it's a weird hill to die on. Assuming you really want an Apple headset, it can be solved in lots of ways including aftermarket straps or tools or just a roll of sticky tape. Or a shirt with a pocket...
I will stick with my Oculus Quest and aftermarket rear battery pack though.
>Assuming you really want an Apple headset, it can be solved in lots of ways including aftermarket straps or tools or just a roll of sticky tape.
Of course it can be solved with some ducktape, but for $3500 do you fell that's a great UX for your money? That's like buying a Mercedes S-Class and having to manually wind the windows.
Whether something strapped on your head is balanced or not matters much more for your comfort than its weight.
In the past, but even today in some parts of the world, it was a common practice to carry great weights on the head for a long time, with the condition of them being well balanced (because it was more comfortable than carrying them in an unbalanced way, in the arms or on the back).
> but having the battery on a long umbilical cord that gets in your way
PC gamers have had to deal with umbilicals for a long time, and it isn’t that bad so long as you don’t move much. Of course, Apple would never say “it’s fine because PC gamers do it”. But it is probably fine.
When the Airpods first came out, I was convinced they'd never take off, and lots of social media seemed to agree with me. There was even science - SCIENCE! - used to explain why they were a bad idea. While I don't see myself buying the Vision Pro, I'll make no predictions about whether it will be popular.
I'm seeing those $200 earbuds in almost every students' ears at my local university.
I also caved and bought a pair.
The smart watch used to be pretty obscure and known as being a tech geek device, but now I see most people wearing an Apple Watch as opposed to not even wearing a watch it all just a decade ago.
what was the case against airpods exactly? Wireless earbuds always seemed like a no brainer to me, used them ever since they became available, never touched airpods specifically tho.
as for apple vision ar is the future no doubt, that seems obvious like wireless earbuds did. Vision pro tho imo is a devkit, but the fans will buy in anyway id guess. wait till they release a more consumer focused model and then itll be more obvious AR is working out.
The case against AirPods was that they looked stupid, were easy to lose, hugely expensive, had poor quality audio, connected via unreliable Bluetooth, and relied on batteries which wouldn’t last long enough to be useful. I agreed wholeheartedly, and now own my second pair.
That is a common argument here. It is also a logical fallacy. Because heavier than air apparatus can fly, dropbox made money and so on does not mean anything in the future will be successful.
Absolutely. HN has an abysmal track record of predicting the success or failure of most innovations, because it tends to over-estimate the importance of the technology itself and under-estimate the power of marketing to overcoming challenges in adoption. This is why I make no prediction whatsoever at this early stage - we know very little about it.
It’s not just marketing but also confusing our preferences with the market as a whole. For example, AirPods are not as good as my over ear headphones … but they’re impressively close and the AR features are quite effective. Based on flat sales for traditional headphones and huge sales for AirPods, they clearly targeted the much larger group who don’t value audio quality more than everything else.
There are other comments saying it's brilliant idea.
Apple's new device will not fail because there was some comment in 2007 on HN related to dropbox that pointed out alternatives (but even that commenter said it's good idea for windows).
The perspective shared here seems to be very focused on fundamental difficulties with AR passthrough devices:
- lag is lower than other devices, perhaps low in absolute terms, but is it low enough? Perhaps not for all use-cases
- there are difficulties aligning virtual images (this part is very speculative as to how it relates to Apple’s headset design)
- difficulties tracking saccades - not sure under what use-cases this would show up as a problem, this hasn’t been mentioned in reviewers’ first impressions
- safety problems with obstruction of peripheral vision when moving around
Pretty interesting, but I think it reflects well on Apple that these are the class of problems being discussed. None of these things sound like absolute deal-breakers for a Gen1 device.
Will it be useful though? It doesn’t do games or “presence”, or indeed seem very focussed on any uniquely AR/VR experiences right now. It’s not as good a monitor as a proper monitor (this analysis of VAC and resolution is pretty convincing). But it is portable. Maybe that in itself is enough?
Karl argues that the promised 12ms latency for video passthrough needs to be added on top of camera acquisition and display timing. This could lead to potential delay of up 3x 12ms in the worst case and 12ms in the best case based on 90Hz displays and 90Hz cameras.
I learned a lot from this article. I don't think he is being critical, he is making very well reasoned arguments and is probably excited to get his hands on this device to see if they hold up.
I know what you mean, but equally if people can’t apply the same principle re: hype and excitement then personally I think it’s nice to have a bit of a counterbalance.
This is a lot of argumentation for such a thin knowledge base about the device. However, even if it is all true, it does not matter. The Apple Vision Pro is a developer kit only Apple could launch.
Nobody knows what is possible with AR. There are lots of ideas, none tested in a large enough group of consumers. Enter Apple, which can attract both a sizeable group of developers and a relevant group of consumers. What we'll see now is the divergent part of software development for a new platform. Everyone trying new stuff, finding out what sticks, what gets market fit.
It'll be fun. Then, a new device will refine the concept.
There are some good questions asked in this, but I think there are some potential counter arguments missed.
> Low Processing Lag Time and High Frame Rate are Necessary but not Sufficient to Solve Visual Issues
I think I read somewhere that Apple are using the eye tracking to concentrate processing power and refresh rate on the area you are looking. Eventually a higher refresh rate in a smaller section of the display.
> Poor location of main cameras relative to the user’s eye due to the Eyesight Display
> The proper location of the cameras would be coaxial with the user’s two eyes.
The eyes have two degrees of movement, the camera can't be "coaxial" with them at all times.
The proximity of the cameras to the axial direction of your eyes is going to be more important for short distance than long as the effect of misalignment is going to be stronger. We tend to be looking somewhat down when working on things near to us, and in the case of the Vision Pro that's where the cameras are. You are almost exactly looking down through the axis of the cameras when working on something on a desk or table in front of you. This is better than if they were horizontally in front of your eyes.
I don't doubt that Apple have considered all these issues in the design, and any trade offs they may have made. Once we get our hands on hardware we will be better informed how well they have addressed them.
> > Low Processing Lag Time and High Frame Rate are Necessary but not Sufficient to Solve Visual Issues
> I think I read somewhere that Apple are using the eye tracking to concentrate processing power and refresh rate on the area you are looking. Eventually a higher refresh rate in a smaller section of the display.
That technique is Foveated Rendering, and my understanding is that it doesn’t change the frame rate. I think if it did you would get obvious visual tearing at the boundaries of the different areas. I believe it normally involves just rendering areas at a lower resolution and then applying a basic blur to it.
Additionally, I’m not certain if that will be applied to the pass through video, the most important bit for these visual issues. Adding foveated rendering to that pipeline could even do more harm than good in terms of adding latency, and video processing is typically much faster than the rendering of new graphics from scratch, particularly given the M1’s dedicated video accelerators.
> I think if it did you would get obvious visual tearing at the boundaries of the different areas.
They could gradually blend the area with higher refresh rate to the peripheral images with lower refresh rate. You would probably not notice it because the resolution in our peripheral vision is terrible. Even with sharp tear lines it might not be noticeable if the frame rate is fast enough.
I don't think this is what they're doing, but it could be viable.
I think you're right about the other issue with foveated rendering of pass-through video. You really don't want to do much processing.
But imagine this: if you can control which line the camera starts on with its rolling shutter, you could start the camera and the display update a few lines above the point where your eye is focusing. You can blend the first few lines with the ones from the previous frame to make the tear line less obvious, which would require almost no processing. They may be processing a few lines at the time before sending it to the display for color correction, simple transformations, etc. Could be viable.
> They could gradually blend the area with higher refresh rate to the peripheral images with lower refresh rate.
I'm just not sure that's possible for update frequency. For lower/higher resolution, sure, but even with our terrible peripheral vision I think we'd notice that the center of our vision is smooth while our peripheral vision is "sticking", particularly during rapid movement.
> I think I read somewhere that > Apple are using the eye tracking to concentrate processing power and refresh rate on the area you are looking. Eventually a higher refresh rate in a smaller section of the display.
It's called foveated rendering. Everyone following the space should listen to carmack's keynotes. Whe gove over a lot of stuff there and it's really honest and, IMO, technically meaty.
If the author thought about all this in an essay, you can bet Apple did too in their many years working on this. Whether they managed to come up with proper solutions to these issues is another matter, but I'd be hard-pressed to think they've not been acutely aware of all of this and actively worked on it.
> “A related point that I plan to discuss in more detail in Part 3 is that there have been near-eye “glasses” for TVs (such as Sony Glasstron) and computer use for the last ~30 years. Yet, I have never seen one used on an airplane, train, or office in all these years. It is not that the displays didn’t work or were too expensive for an air traveler (who will spend $350 on noise-canceling earphones) and had a sufficient resolution for at least watching movies. But 100% of people decide to use a much smaller (effective) image; there must be a reason”
It could be social conformance. Nobody wants to be the first person to do something conspicuously different in a constrained setting like an airplane.
I remember when I got my first mobile phone sometime in the 1990s. It felt embarrassing to answer it in the middle of the street and carry a private conversation right there. Today there are essentially no boundaries to where you can use a phone.
Apple can easily afford to spend billions on ad campaigns and influencer marketing to make headset use behavior look acceptable and get over the social conformance threshold. No guarantees that they can pull it off, but they have the resources to try. The external EyeSight display on the unit seems to be a big part of this.
They have pulled airpods as a "norm". In olden times leaving your earphones/headphones in you ear/head was a very rude thing to do, especially around people you know, in idle time; now it is almost norm. Especially it is marketed as a norm to the younger folk. They will try and there is no reason them to fail.
Meanwhile, the usually very blunt Kara Swisher (who has experienced all the leading AR/VR hardware including Apple's) just posted a rave on her Pivot podcast.
Her review is almost entirely orthogonal to Karl's. She focuses on the efficacy of the experience. Apparently Apple is able to sidestep a lot of the issues that Karl is mentioning. For instance all the vergence issues seem to be non-existent in her usage. Likely because Apple isn't focusing on interacting with any real world objects.
This is a great article with well supported points. I think a lot of people disagreeing are saying that since the hardware isn't out yet, this might not matter, but the takeaway for me here is that we don't yet have the technology to fix some of the issues for VR.
It’s interesting that Apple isn’t using terms like AR, VR, MR, XR, and pancake lenses.
It’s prob either that they want to package the tech as their own and give it fancy labels (like spatial computing). Or they are concerned about being compared to competitors. Or perhaps they want to do the “it just works” thing where you are not supposed to care about the specs, like system memory on iPhones. Maybe all three.
But if they want to avoid being compared to competitors, that concerns me. As they use that strategy to deliver inferior products.
> But if they want to avoid being compared to competitors, that concerns me. As they use that strategy to deliver inferior products.
Based on the initial reviews, I think it’s more the opposite: they don’t want you assuming that their product has the same limitations which have characterized those acronyms so far. From what I’ve read they have gotten over a couple of key thresholds for resolution, response time, etc. which held back lower-spec products and don’t want people to think prior experience with e.g. Oculus devices is representative.
I don’t think they’ve broken new ground in terms of resolution (compared to Pimax) and refresh rate (12ms is a bit less than 90Hz, which is equivalent to Quest Pro and worse than Quest 2 in dev mode).
I think they might want to avoid these spec-to-spec comparisons because other aspects of implementation can give a better UX (like software in iOS compared to Android). Though, until we see the hardware, it will be difficult to say whether they can pull more out of current industry-leading specs than others.
> I don’t think they’ve broken new ground in terms of resolution (compared to Pimax) and refresh rate (12ms is a bit less than 90Hz, which is equivalent to Quest Pro and worse than Quest 2 in dev mode).
I don’t think it’s unprecedented on the raw hardware capacities but the combination is: the Pimax is only a VR headset, so it’s missing half of the hardware, and it has half the PPD; the Quest 2 can go higher on refresh rate but has much lower resolution, no eye tracking, etc. while the Quest Pro gets closer on some of those features but at under a third the PPD.
I mention that because one thing which has stalled AR/VR adoption is the high threshold your brain sets for accepting a scene as real, especially for AR. We won’t know until it ships but I did find it interesting how many reviewers mentioned this being the first time things came together. It might be that much of the conventional wisdom around AR is too pessimistic and it’s simply that you need to reach an aggressive combination of resolution, color depth, responsiveness, tracking precision, weight, etc. similar to how it took decades for digital cameras to hit the quality/weight/cost thresholds where the benefits became compelling. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned out that the Vision Pro is barely over that level for Apple at a high price point and out of reach for Facebook for a few more years since they don’t have a high-end CPU team in house and have to wait for the commodity market to advance.
A good look at the topic, it's nothing new for them. They specifically love to both avoid marketing terms for some things and to give their own specific branding terms to others (think "Retina" instead of High Res, "ProMotion" instead of 120Hz, etc).
If this were written about the general problems with VR, as they apply to the Apple headset and not just an attempt to troll bait Apple fans/haters with emotional statements like ¡Apple is is ignoring physics! I think I would find it more readable. This is some really interesting bits here, but the tone makes it off putting
> “ general problems with VR, as they apply to the Apple headset”
IMO that’s exactly how the article approaches it: Here are some known issues where we can already see that Apple is taking a design approach that’s known to be problematic. I didn’t have much problem with the tone. You find harsher words and less qualified arguments in the typical “I don’t like this or that JS framework” programmer rant that makes it on HN.
Initially I thought 'oh I'm sure I can just turn off the fake eyes' assuming that unnecessary heat, battery usage, EM radiation, and social awkwardness were the only downside.
I'm glad that this review explained more of the downfalls of this design choice before I plunked down the credit card.
I’m wondering what kinds of APIs will be available.
It would be a hoot to see people write modifiers for the displayed eyes, to show things like cat pupils.
As for the rest, we’ll have to see. There’s a long history of really difficult problems with 3D/VR/AR, but Apple has more money than some countries, so, if anyone can solve them, they can.
I remember when the iPhone came out. I worked for a camera manufacturer, at the time. One of my employees brought one of them, and I looked it over. One of the things that immediately jumped out at me, was the built-in rear camera. It was pretty limited, with crappy resolution, poor light-gathering, weird depth-of-field, shaky image quality, and noticeable latency, but you could preview the image, live, on a fairly big screen.
People may also remember, that, when the iPhone first shipped, there was no SDK, and the App $tore did not yet exist. No one could write any apps for the phone. The JS Web apps thing sucked (even though many folks now write iPhone apps in JavaScript). Even Steve Jobs couldn’t make developing for iPhone attractive.
Nonetheless, using the device was incredibly convenient. I knew that if they could improve these issues, it would be a winner.
I mentioned it to our marketing folks, and was laughed out of the room.
A few years later, our entire consumer camera division, which had made us billions of dollars, was in the toilet. Even our pro camera division took some serious hits. A couple of major newspapers fired all their pro shooters, and told their reporters to use iPhones.
I'm sitting on a $7k mac pro with a second GPU that has never recieved electrons because it takes custom software, $1500 Google glass, a "self driving" Tesla, and multiple generations of VR headsets...
Sometimes tech doesn't go anywhere but a whole lot of promises..
> unnecessary heat, battery usage, EM radiation, and social awkwardness were the only downside.
Oh you are hilarious.
First let's cover "unnecessary heat, battery usage". The headset is based around Apple Silicon. And as Apple has perfectly demonstrated with their Apple Silicon MacBook range they are very much the market-leaders in eliminating unnecessary heat and maximising battery usage. I suspect we will find the same with the headset, I doubt there will be a problem.
> EM radiation
Oh right. Because VR headsets (from ANY manufacturer) are so amazingly useful without Bluetooth or WiFi enabled ! if you're worried about EM radiation, then don't buy one ... oh and whilst your at it, throw away your cell phone, computers, laptops and build a faraday cage around your house.
I'm sorry but I can't show sympathy for EM radiation concerns of VR headsets when you are clearly using 101 other devices in your every day life that emit EM.
> social awkwardness
That applies to anyone wearing a VR headset from ANY manufacturer on their head.
Whether the front of the unit is Apple's eyes or Meta's plastic, it's the same thing .... a weird contraption siting yon your head.
As a likely buyer of AVP I thought it was informative. For example, the VAC issue does seem like a fundamental issue and now that I understand what it is, I’ll be able to better evaluate how Apple has solved (or not solved) the problem.
A product can be light years ahead of its competition and still not be worth buying. The best we can do with current technology might not be enough to make a good product.
Not saying this is the case with the Apple Vision Pro.
I seriously can’t wait for Apple to be knocked off its pedestal. I can’t wait for the closure of Apple stores, layoffs in Cupertino, and seeing brand new MacBooks in the clearance bins.
I’ve had enough of this pompous and arrogant company. This is going to be good.
I look forward to the 3rd article in the series on Applications even though Karl's expertise is in hardware and I am surprised he was not asked to redteam Apple's design at various phases since it is what he does. But whereas Apple is, with notable exceptions like the EyeSight Lenticular screen which I love and cant wait to do in Jaguar mode one day, only assembling from the same shelf of product choices everyone else in AR/MR/VR is choosing from; it is their full control of the software stack and what they choose to do (or not do) with it that they have real opportunity. So I am much more interested in the VisionOS and Application landscape getting Karl's strengths and weaknesses approach.
The failure of 3D movies is always used as a cautionary tale, but it was a pretty unique case that came down to artistic execution. Both Avatar movies are incredible in 3D and don’t generate any kind of discomfort, but the average “3D” title from other studios was a cardboard-cutout mess, usually a worse experience than it’s 2D counterpart. Not a technology adoption problem.