I feel very vulnerable with a device like that on my head. I've been playing with VR hardware in various iterations since the mid 80's and I haven't seen anything yet that managed to get me to overcome that feeling. As well as nausea due to lag. I wonder how this one will do but at the current price point it just isn't all that interesting, it also reminds me of the way Google Glass was introduced and hyped and what eventually became of it. But Apple tends to have a much better product strategy than Google.
They talked about this briefly on the WVFRM podcast [1]. Apparently the pass-through is significantly better than other headsets they’ve tried to the point that they felt comfortable walking around and overcoming that sense of vulnerability you describe. Still, $3500 is quite a lot.
My instinct is that this entire product is basically a dev kit for whatever Apple wants to release in 10-15 years. Get something high quality in peoples’ hands and hope the use case bucket trickles full.
This first version of the visionOS product line is not the one that will be the 'iPhone' moment.
We are looking at the device that will be ready for these app in the next 5 - 10 years which by that time the device will be smaller that this first version.
Probably going to be called 'Apple Vision' in the form of AR glasses.
If someone had actual information of that type from Apple and released it on a public forum, they will be hearing from Apple's legal team in 5...4...3....
Otherwise, it just seems like a confirmation of their reading of the tea leaves.
I think both of you need to look at the amount of patents related to the Apple's AR glasses and their related vision products a lot more since it give lots of obvious clues about where Apple will take their Apple vision based products.
All publicly available for everyone to see. [0] No inside information needed at all.
The tea leaves, breadcrumbs and obvious clues that tell the truth as close as possible that defines the next phase of Apple's AR/XR products all to the source as public as possible.
The form factor we have now is basically identical to what headsets looked like in the 80s and 90s [0]. They are barely smaller than they were back then. The problem is not the computers, it's the optical pathway. You can't shrink optics.
I haven't seen anybody suggesting the occlusion issue is or can be solved, along with the huge light leak that's native to normal glasses. I am sure apple is trying out all the angles on glasses AR, but I don't think you'll be able to get anything like the current Vision experience on them without some new physics.
> This first version of the visionOS product line is not the one that will be the 'iPhone' moment.
You mean it’s not a device that’s significantly more expensive and less capable from a feature perspective than the competition at launch (aka the 1st gen iPhone)?
If someone can crack the VR/AR code, it will probably be Apple. Not saying they will though.
It bodes well that Kara Swisher seems to really like the device and she's one that has tried all the headsets and been fairly skeptical. Using hands as the primary control seems like a pretty big breakthrough. The default of mostly pass through of the surrounding environment sounds like it also addresses the nausea.
You're right at this price point it's definitely a gen 1/dev device. Gen 3 is where it'll likely get interesting, assuming some killer applications are created.
The form factor of the Quest Pro helps with that quite a bit, where you're essentially wearing it like a hat, and the sides and bottom of the device don't contact your face or seal out all the light. There are notorious stories of people punching through walls or TVs playing VR games, but being able to see the room in the periphery is both less distracting than you'd think and gives you enough spatial awareness to not really have those issues.
> There are notorious stories of people punching through walls
Bahaha, reminds me of the time when I first got the PSVR and my friend comes over. We're playing an FPS demo that came with it (PS Worlds? I think). It's this scene where you're in the passenger seat of the car, shooting up people on motorcycles that are shooting at you. Anyway, I'm standing off to the side watching the TV when out of nowhere, my friend punches me in the face.
I happened to be standing exactly where the NPC driver was sitting in the VR world and my friend wanted to try punching the character.
I suspect there's going to be a whole new class of disadvantaged / second class citizens in the future who belong to the minority that can't tolerate wearing these type of devices.
Having said that, I haven't met that many people that get nausea from wearing sunglasses, so at the theoretical limit there is some level of quality that seems at least almost universally accepted.
