this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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You've nailed it. Ordinarily, Apple is good at throwing its weight (money) around to make things like this happen, but it seems like there weren't many takers this go-round, so we just got an overpriced, beautiful and fascinating paperweight.
That's why the biggest use case for VR has been gaming and metaverses. It's a ready-to-go thing that adapts well, but it's certainly not for everyone. For my part, I'm saving up for a PS VR2, because it's adding PC support soon and I already own a PS5 as well. Far, far cheaper than Apple's device, and likely quite good still.
Yeah normally Apple is maybe the only company that has the scale and control over their ecosystem to force rapid adoption. But this was clearly not a consumer product aimed at capturing the masses, but more or less a dev kit sold to anyone willing to shell out the price.
The PS VR2 sounds nice, but feels like it is only aimed at the gaming market and even there sony only captures a fraction.
The Quest as a standalone device imo really would have the best shot at mass market adoption, but Facebook rightfully has an image problem. And despite spending so much on development doesn't seem to create any content or incentivize others to do so.
Edit: actually kind of forgot "bigscreenVR". I am somewhat surprised that the default is to cram all hardware into the headset making it much bulkier instead of a seperate piece on a belt, back, or maybe strap on your upper arm.
Yeah, I'm pretty convinced we need to be able to make the headsets lighter, and put more compute in an accessory and have the headset just do low complexity stuff like low latency last-millisecond angle adjustments to frames as you move.
Have you checked out the bigscreen headset? It's only doing upscaling to overcome the resolution limitations of displayport 1.4, and the form factor might be to your liking.
Shame about the lens glare effect, but otherwise, pretty cool!
I find it unacceptable that a $1000 HMD-only product like this has subpar lenses. You would think they could do a little more R&D to fix that
Apple has a long history of insanely expensive ( but quite high quality) displays.
There are photographers and design professionals out there, but it’s pretty niche market. That’s what the Vision Pro seems to be aimed at. But it’s not very good for mouse based design, and harder to trust in the usual proofing/editing environment. Plus wearing it for an 8-10 hour shift is never going to happen.
You are right, Apple also has some legit professional staff. And if the person using it gets paid a lot, then a one time hardware purchase becomes negligible.
Accurate fine motor control and even basic stuff like typing does seem not quite fleshed out, so that is indeed an issue. But I don't think it's a deal breaker that you can't do long shifts with it, since you'd probably only use it for certain tasks.
Even more of a niche, but I could see it for something like architects. Both for work and to maybe even present to clients.
But they're not at all designed for use as shared devices, not even proper local multiuser support (any devs who want that has to craft it all by themselves from scratch), so collaborative work or simultaneous display and interaction doesn't work well with them. In fact it would be easier to just let a client see 3D stuff on an ipad with an AR app.
This was my feeling after seeing it too. Architects also love to see models and more tangible things, even printouts in my experience.
Offering a fully rendered environment sounds amazing but someone would have to do a lot lore work at the office before presenting it to the client because it would look less complete than simple foam models can.
It may be useful for investor presentations for really large projects (Saudis or UAE style projects), but again, those are pretty narrow audiences and so expensive that bespoke displays could be viable.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned upcoming PC support for PS VR2.
To be fair, they have a similar problem with iPad, but they can flog those at a price point where many people are happy to grab one to see how they can make it fit.
The overarching opinion of iPads is that they’re just big iPhones, and because they can share apps, it took a long time to get to where we are now, where most iPad apps are actually developed for it. But ultimately, they’re still iPhone apps, just rejigged to take advantage of the bigger screen. As someone with an iPad and a MacBook, who’s had a really good go at making an iPad my main computer, the platform just isn’t there. So if I do use it, it’s always in the knowledge that what I’m doing is probably easier on my Mac.
VisionPro feels the same to me. Sure, I could surround myself with work, but pinching and tapping nothing in the air has zero tactility and is far less satisfying than clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard. And comes with having to wear a headset. So in the end, most people will just do the work on their Mac.