Jokes aside, it’s an iPad for your face. It’s almost nothing to do with VR, but that’s ok. If you are the sort of person that doesn’t want to spend an extra $4000 for a red painted Tesla rather than the white one then you might not be in this initial ‘Pro’ market segment.
For the people that said the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and iWatch all had better and cheaper existing alternatives when they launched a v1, you are indeed were correct. You should also not ignore Apple’s market cap is currently $2.9 trillion dollars at the moment, so they might not be complete idiots, and this was released at a developer conference after all. It’s not even due till some time in ‘early 2024’.
The people that have used it say it’s great so far. It’s still cheaper than a Varjo XR and has a complete computer bolted on your head. It’s annoying for us here as we don’t care about that bit, but we don’t really matter for this device. It’s important that they state that the eye tracking and data don’t leave the device, as others aren’t ready to say that as yet.
It might be good for the industry, pushing things forward as well.
I doubt it. Maybe there will be an app that lets you stream your PC video to the headset one day? There will probably be new cool apps and games for it though.
I sort of agree @Troll but some other noise at the WWDC23 was about the ‘Game Porting Toolkit’. Apple had secretly put some money into making it very easy to port DX12 titles to OSX.
Early indication show a lot of promise in that, and DX12 titles are working on their silicon. Apple is generally awful at gaming (unless tapping on an aquarium), so this seems like an odd move but probably no accident. The partnership with Unity and showing a gaming controller in the demo seems to be blanked from the collective VR peanut gallery consciousness as well.
You know what would port really easily and nicely to VisionOS and run natively on the Vision Pro device - X-Plane. The hand tracking via the R2 chip, the M2’s beefy ability to throw around 4K and Microsoft wanting to keep MSFS all xboxey might mean a huge opportunity for Laminar (if they take it, no-one can read the mind of Austin…).
That’s interesting.
I didn’t think DX12 was an option outside Windows… But then again, what do I know
I also thought about Austin and LR. I guess that at least X-Plane iOS will one day work on the
Edit. Ok, I re-read that… Port DX12 to OSX is the key here… Well, cool!
Yep, it’s sort of like the SteamDeck, which is essentially a Linux OS now running so many Windows games really well - Apple are getting into that Wine/Proton sort of thing. We’re still a million miles from being an interesting hobby to Apple, but it at least makes more things feasible.
Other things of note while I’m here:
That ‘It’s my kids birthday party, let me go put on my headset and take 3D scene movies’ was laugh out loud awful. I bet onlyfans is going to like that feature though.
The outwards screen showing your eyes through a generated persona needs to be killed with fire.
Apple has lots of physical stores, so demoing it to normal people might actually make AR happen. They call it ‘spatial computing’ but ‘Huge screens in tiny real world place’ is going to be the key selling point.
The non-Pro in 2025 for, say, $1999 might be interesting, as that’s probably when the real horse race starts. Our existing VR toys have more rough edges than a sand paper slide, so Apple doing smoothing of the experience might happen.
well this thing is not a VR headset it is Augmented Reality… I am unsure where they are going with this but it is not VR in the slightest to those who think this is a VR headset…
Either way, another major player like Apple in the sector (even if it is just smoke and mirrors?) will shake things up.
I have trouble seeing beyond the practical applications of AR (especially training), but it looks like Apple are banking on the entertainment market and I reckon they could be onto a winner?
About possibility to play flight sims with Vision Pro.
I highly doubt the M2 chips performance compared to RTX 4090, which is probably the only chip currently available and about to drive so many Vision Pros pixel count.
well I just skimmed the video on the OP and I see no VR as we currently know just what Apple is calling Spacial Computing… Yes you can play games and watch movies on a Big screen that they say you can make it seem like it is 100feet. but I see no VR capabilities of this device…
Maybe a future version will but it seems this one is basically for SC Experiences like where you can use it for work and see multiple desktop environments and the pass through feature you can see the real world at the same time.
Apple products are expensive.
OTOH, I bought my Macbook Air in 2014 and it’s still going strong…
I mean, it’s too good. I can’t justify getting a new M2 based unit.
It just keeps on chuggin’.
But, I could’ve bought 2 PC laptops for the same kind of money and they would probably have lasted this long, together.
So, yeah, nah, I dunno…?
I hear you. But I am certain that will be VR if you want 3D it and AR if you don’t. Nobody is going to pay that kind of money for a 2D experience alone. But us talking VR about this thing is almost like discussing cup-holders in a Bentley. Apple knows that as soon a people start thinking “Fruit Ninja”, it’s game over for such an expensive piece of kit.
It’s not really an apples to apples sort of thing (heh). The eye tracking and machine learning model on the custom R1 chip allow for foveated rendering to actually work well, so that means that 4090 has to brute force it’s way to even compare. It’s also basically a console, in that the entire stack from chipset to OS to the titles it runs is geared towards latency and custom silicon like they’ve been doing can get you pretty far. The initial people that have used it claim it is the best VR experience they’ve seen so it does seem to be working ok, but they might be still drunk on the demo (the ghost of Steve Job’s reality field still lingers).
I think they don’t want any association with VR at all, as they see the isolation etc as a dead end. They launched at a dev conference to get people to write stuff for it though. So far just big screen stuff and a dinosaur demo. The 3rd parties through Unity will start to announce as they get nearer to next year. e.g VR titles
Very much agree. A VR gaming device in product position terms is just a race to the bottom. There’s n number of Chinese headset makers that will always make it cheaper and less cheerful and there’s no future in that. Apple need to start by defining a new market and using new terms for people with no experience of AR/VR so far, for us with our existing stuff it will seem basically like a joke. It still might turn out to be like that, but it’s a pattern that seems to get repeated a lot with Apple.
Me too… it’s expensive, but I am definitely falling into the ‘this is going to be cool’ camp. With the price point where it is, I am a little concerned about how quickly it would become obsolete… it’s not something you would look to replace after a year or two.
should have invested in Apple last year already