Has anyone bought an Apple Vision Pro?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I’m interested in seeing where VR tech goes, but not interested enough to pay money for them. My work (state university) has some of the Oculuses that you can rent, where they even let you take home the PC rig, and I have done that a few times and enjoyed it, but mainly as party games. We have used VR sets to have our students set up design mock ups for projects and carry out mock sessions for research, but that seems mostly a novelty at this point. But even that tech is probably old hat at this point.

I would like to eventually be able to play something like Skyrim or Breath of the Wild on VR and feel like I’m really in it. I think this is already happening for some games, but I run into the trouble of needing a big enough space where I can mess around without destroying things, and I haven’t been super impressed with the controllers yet.

I also randomly get severe motion sickness from the VR things I’ve tried so far, which it seems like is something that will happen if you don’t start with it from a young age.

On some ad for one of these once I saw something about how it can guide you through repairing your own mechanical possessions, such as cars or minor plumbing, which I think would be a great use.

42

I wonder what this product and its price point suggests about the rumored Apple car. I expect it will be awesome but at the same time, I expect it will cost a lot; probably starting over $100,000.

43

I do not have an Apple Vision Pro or a Tesla but thought this was worth sharing:

44

The issue is the mismatch between what your eyes are seeing, and your ears telling you no, you’re not actually moving.

People can get inured to the motion sickness effect but the effect is indeed random, and can be affected by lots of factors - including speed of the motion, duration in headset, amount of salt you have recently eaten, etc. I am personally more susceptible - after watching just a few seconds a guy go down a half-pipe with a Go-Pro on his helmet in a Gear VR (Intel’s olympics coverage in 2018 or so), I felt terrible for over an hour.

As such, developing a standard system for content advisories is a challenge, as you can’t be sure when the effect will be felt (if at all) for any individual. I’ve spent a lot of time on this as part of my work on how to create an objective standard and a tool to measure “motion” and other factors that might warrant some notice to the viewer, and how to implement that for app submissions, etc. We are concerned that people will submit crappy synthetic content or videos that affected users will inevitably blame on the device.

It also means - for “immersive” video productions, which is my specific area - educating directors that the techniques that they use for dramatic effect (like pushes, etc.) have to be carefully employed at the risk of nauseating their audience.

45

It should be noted there is a difference between virtual reality and augmented reality.

I think Apple Vision Pro is doing more augmented reality which should be less nausea inducing. The headset lets you see the outside world and overlays stuff on it which has less possibility to make people sick.

I think it can do full VR too in which case you are back to possibly getting sick when using it in that mode.

46

Skyrim in VR is pretty incredible. Fighting a giant spider by crouching down, holding my shield above my head as it pounded down on me, while plunging my sword into its abdomen… One of my favorite VR gaming moments!

My setup was $1300.

47

The NY Times review was not that flattering. Basically, it’s rough around the edges, very expensive, and made the reviewer nauseous. He said it seems less finished than Apple’s other first generation tech.

48

Yes, agreed, most of the environment is for “augmented” reality - this is the concept of “spatial computing.” The stuff I work on is “immersive” video, where the video fills the entire 180 deg field of view (but is unstitched, and not 360 deg), and there was a lot of opposition to the idea of not having the passthrough video (what the outward-facing cameras capture) visible, which defeats the purpose of what we do.

49

Another question for you and those of you who have VR headsets - how do you use them for gaming? I don’t have a game console or a gaming-worthy PC. What would I need in addition to my headset to be able to do stuff like shoot bad guys, sword fight, box and fly over the Grand Canyon? The stuff they do in commercials.

The Apple VP at least made it clear to me - I just connect to my iPhone.

50

The Meta Quest headset (2 or 3) is a sort of self-contained unit; it has its own store and selection of games that you can purchase to play on it (no phone required, just wifi connectivity to buy/install games). You can also hook it up to a gaming PC (via a wired or wireless connection) to get a wider selection of games.

A system like mine requires a gaming PC.

51

I have the Valve Index and it needs two base stations as well as the headset (and two controllers, one for each hand).

The base stations send an IR signal that the headset senses to know where you are looking. I put my base stations on a pole (with tripod base).

52

Then what? Where are the games/visual experiences coming from?

53

Connected to a high-end PC.

54

All of your posts in this thread have been so interesting! I appreciate you taking the time to write it out.

I always assumed since I have bad motion sickness anyway that it was a me-problem. It’s very cool to know there are whole teams dedicated to making VR less nausea inducing for the masses.

A few years ago I was peripherally involved with a project with a bunch of illustrators that were tasked with making design-y VR worlds for an art festival installation, and it was interesting to me how some people could be floating in free space just flipping their canvas every which way no problem, but if I didn’t create a square “ground” to center myself on I’d be sick for hours. Brains are so strange.

55

I’ve been using VR since the beginning, off and on. I started with the Oculus dev kit, and have a Valve Index and a Meta Quest 2.

Apple Vision Pro is not an augmented reality headet (defined as a headset with a clear lens you can see through, with augmented data overlaid on the real world). Apple Vision Pro is a stanard VR headset that fakes augmented reality by giving you video passthrough from forwrard facing cameras, and by adding an outward facing screen along with cameras in the headset to fake your face looking out when people interact with you.

All headsets have video passthrough. But most use cheaper, black and white cameras and the passthrough is grainy and not really usable to work in the real wold. Apple just improved pass-through video.

The Quest 3 apparently has video passthrough almost as good as the Apple Vision Pro. Therefore, the only things the Vision Pro brings to the table are increased resolution (3K per eye instead og 2K), and eye tracking. But you pay for that with heavier power requirements, and that forward facing screen sits out a ways from your face, adding weight in the front that’s already a big problem for VR headets.

They need to lose the forward facing screen, which is a gimmick, and cut the price by $2,000. That would make it competitive. Until then, a Quest 3 is $499, and probably gets you 80% of the experience.

It’s hard to say why VR hasn’t taken off. Every time I put mine on I enjoy it - then I take it off after a while, put it away, and don’t touch it for months. Something about it just isn’t compelling enough. I’ve never really been able to put my finger on it. My friend bought a headset and we were going to play all kinds of 2 player games, but we’ve never done it. He just doesn’t use his at all, and I only use mine occasionally.

I suspect VR won’t really take off until we have a form factor like sunglasses, they are trivially easy to set up and use, and there are some real killer apps.

56

For me it’s just too much of a hassle. I have to setup the base station poles and the headset is connected by cables so I can’t move more that two feet. The experience is neat but not neat enough that I care to be bothered to get it all set up.

I want a system that can wirelessly transmit the data to the headset (IR/laser/WiFi/whatever). Put a battery on my hip to power the headset. And some better solution to base stations.

I also need good passthrough so I can use my keyboard.

And make the headset smaller/lighter.

I think the Apple Vision Pro is a step towards all that but still not there.

57

Yeah, I hear you. That was a big issue with the Valve Index. My computer was in an office, so I would have to unplug it and set it up in the living room, set up the base stations on stands, etc. Way too much hassle. And the graphics card requirements are brutal.

So I bought the Quest 3, which is self-contained, requires no computer. It’s much better, and now I can just put it on and take it off and be using it in seconds. But I still don’t do it very often. I just don’t feel compelled to use it.

58

I’m curious as to why Apple chose to go full VR for the headset, increasing costs and weight, when their demos seem to show it being used as something a similar augmented reality experience would provide.
If I would use it as they suggest, sitting in a room as the various screens hover about, I would much prefer something lighter, less bulky, less points of contact on my head, etc.
If I could sit at my desk at work and throw on something like a pair of reading glasses that had screens built into pass through lenses and experience the same floating screens I would be more apt to use it every day.

59

What you’re describing sounds a bit like Google Glass, which was released about a decade ago, but then went away.

60

I was gonna say the same. Google Glass got a lot of hate at the time. If you wore one you’d be mocked (at the least). I never understood that. (I never had one)