I guess I’m easily impressed, then. 
VR in the 90s sucked.
Here’s The Atlantic’s review. I haven’t finished reading it.
Gift link good through Feb. 19.
Better to day that I was excited by the concept of VR out of William Gibson novels back in the 1990s. Especially the early 1990s before the WWW existed. But I came to realize that I do not want to operate computers like this:
The headset, which weighs as much as a cauliflower
I don’t believe I’ve ever picked up a cauliflower. What’s the conversion factor between a cauliflower and say, maybe, a ruby red grapefruit?
Metric or imperial grapefruit?
Older VR headsets, including the original Oculus Rift, had low resolution/refresh rate and quickly gave you a headache; newer ones are better. Also fun games available, you can (probably) use it for work, etc.
Moderator Note
Then why are you commenting on a thread asking about personal experiences with a particular brand/model of VR?
Don’t threadshit.
I’d like to hear how/if it’s almost 4x better than, say, a $900 Meta Quest Pro
Thanks for the gift article! It was good, very thorough walkthrough of their experience. Didn’t seem like the author liked it at all - except for watching a movie and playing Fruit Ninja, which is what I have the feeling I would most like it for. So not worth the extended Apple pricetag, I suspect.
Anyone know how VR/AR headsets deal with everyone’s different eyesight problems? Do you wear your glasses inside the headset? Does it calibrate like the ophthalmologist’s machines once you put them on (rumble rumble…scanning retina…oh I can see now!)? My eyeballs are like footballs and I can’t see shit without my glasses and half the time can’t see WITH my glasses, unless the text is a very specific distance away.
On my Samsung ones, there was an adjustment so that it would work (with people with two similar corrections, that wasn’t too extreme). On the Oculus one I tried, I had to keep my glasses on, no adjustment.
The Oculus 1 & 2 came with an adapter that allowed you to wear glasses under the unit. I believe the newest Oculus has removable lenses that can be replaced with prescription ones through various places online.
For the Vision Pro, you can order custom inserts that are made for your specific prescription. I work on an aspect of the product and had to order a set and they work really well. In my past life (working with other HMDs) I kept a small pair of reading glasses at my desk, which fit under the various headsets, though uncomfortably. There’s no way my current D2D glasses would fit underneath.
Someone asked above about the major differences between a VP and, say, a Quest. Primarily these are:
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the primary screen resolution is far superior to other devices (I’ve tried most)
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the ability to automatically adjust the inter-axial distance (between your pupils)
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the resolution and latency of the outward-facing cameras and SLAM sensors, which means you really can wear them and walk around, and have a “mixed reality” experience where apps are displayed over (a representation of) your environment (or the moon, yosemite, etc.)
There are a lot of good videos out already that demonstrate how you might use VP for “spatial computing” and how it can “lock” windows to real life things - for example, keeping a Notepad grocery list right next to your refrigerator that pops up when you get close.
When I got my new job last year, my “gift” to myself was a VR system (the Valve index). In my mind I was hoping it was a slightly better experience than how VR had gelled in my head, informed by the 1990s view of it…
It is so much better than that. I need a bigger room, because of the number of times I’ve punched my wall fighting goblins and skeletons in a virtual dungeon…
(nothing to do with the Apple Vision Pro, but I wanted to share that VR is actually better than what the 90s would have had you thinking, since it was mentioned a time or two in the thread…)
I’d really like to get one, or at least to try it in an Apple Store, but cannot justify the $3,500 cost. I admit that my current iPhone, bought in October 2020, cost a thousand dollars but I use that all day, every day. I can’t imagine using the Vision Pro that much.
I bought an Oculus 2 a couple of years ago before they increased the price (and renamed it to Quest). It was fun for a month or two but has sat around untouched for a long while. To be fair, I don’t really have the space for it since I started working from home and put a desk into the largest available space in the house but at least it’s less of a sting to see a $250 thing sitting on the shelf than a $3,500 (I’ve heard more realistically $4k+ after accessories) thing on the shelf. Although I’m sure the Vision Pro is a quality product, I don’t think I’d want anything that wasn’t compatible with the huge PC ecosystem of VR games.
The Oculus 2 could be fitted with custom prescription lenses but then you have the hassle of your spouse or kids wanting to play and now the lenses won’t work for them, etc. I found it easier to drop $25 for some Zenni brand prescription glasses with little round lenses, Harry Potter/John Lennon style, that fit comfortably inside the headset.
I bought a Quest II last year and use it every day. I enjoyed it so much I bought one for my daughter, and when the Quest III came out recently I bought that for my son.
The Vision Pro has incrementally better specs, but I can’t imagine Apple is expecting to corner the market just yet. There are quite a few competing headsets out there, even at their price point and above, but $300 to $400 will get you 95% of the experience they’re offering.
The comments in this thread do reveal that consumers in general are unaware of what’s going on in that space, and quite willing to take Apple’s marketing at face value. It is an unfortunate reality that none of the players in that space are paragons of corporate virtue. But the tech is very cool!
There are other multi-thousand-dollar headsets? I’m curious; what are the names of some?
Varjo is one - we used this for some development work, and a USED one is nearly the price of a VP:
They are seen more as an industrial tool rather than for gaming. When they visited us, they had an application where a guy driving a log-cutting truck could use the headset for seeing how he controlled the cutting/loading part of the tool (at the back of the rig) without leaving the cab.
I typed “pc vr headsets” into Google. In addition to numerous sub-$1000 units there were several well above $1000, even $2000 to $4000. Unlike mtnmatt I don’t experience with any of them so won’t call them out.
I have been following this space since “back in the day.” I was on the AutoCAD development team at Autodesk in the 90’s and early 00’s and got to experience the experiments that were going on then. The possibilities were obvious and we’re “almost there” in many respects.
The Apple branding alone…