The Apple Vision Pro is supposed to be the start of a new spatial computing revolution. After several days of testing, it’s clear that it’s the best headset ever made — which is the problem.
The Apple Vision Pro is supposed to be the start of a new spatial computing revolution. After several days of testing, it’s clear that it’s the best headset ever made — which is the problem.
Pro: Video passthrough is a leap forward, hand and eye tracking are awesome.
Con: video passthrough is fuzzy, hand and eye tracking are kinda shit.
WHICH ONE IS IT!?!
I think you’re missing the point. Both are true. It is both leaps forward, but still bad.
Just because something is “best in class” doesn’t mean it’s not a piece of shit.
Yeah, VR in general sits in this “cool enough to be interesting but bad enough to be disappointing” space.
IMO we could perfect the current iteration of VR and it would still be in that same valley because it still requires 1:1 movement inside a game and outside of it, or using a controller to move which can come with motion sickness and pulls you out of the “reality”. Though AR does have the potential to get good since it uses the real world as the game world.
The iteration of VR that will get out of that valley will involve something interacting with our brains themselves rather than our senses, as well as trusting an entity that is capable of developing hardware like that. Though maybe it’s for the best that it would be difficult or impossible to trust because I suspect someone getting VR done right will lead to the end of humanity as more and more people escape to fake worlds where they can have godlike powers or where waifus are real and society crumbles around them.
The Vision Pro is the best example of video passthrough and hand/eye tracking that has ever been produced, but they’re also insufficient for it to be a seamless experience.
This isn’t really the problem, I think. MKBHD touched on this but this system doesn’t seem to have a killer app. There’s a bunch of stuff you can do with it, but which of those things can be done better than just using a computer?
Gaming is the big one but apple doesn’t care about that so what else is there? It would be good for virtual walkthroughs of a home you’re considering buying. Or at an architects office to show off the experience of a new building. But…cheaper VR headsets can already do all of that.
So what actually task can this do better than anything else?
Is was really irritated when he presented the presentation app as the most killer app for the device. On traditional VR headsets this would be a really mediocre app compared to what games do in VR…
I have a psvr, psvr2 and love it, but there is no way id spend this much for a better version. However, I thought similar about the iPad at first. What can it do that I couldn’t do with my phone or a PC. Now I sue my iPad daily.
I think it’s a case of build it and they will come. It’s currently sold out and an early adopter thing but it took a few generations for the iPhone to have apps. And at first, there was no killer app.
It doesn’t lean into the VR aspect very much either. You can’t just use it by flapping your hands about like you’re Iron Man.
Other than that, it just acts like a virtual screen. Neat, but not particularly different from a regular screen in usage, other than the ability to resize at will, which people don’t generally do that often on their computers.
Relieving fanboys of their money 🤑
They’re not contradictory. All other headsets’ passthrough is just so bad that even though the Apple headset isn’t good it’s still way ahead of them.
Psvr2 passthrough is pretty damn good
It’s low resolution and monochrome. It works to help reposition in the centre of your play area or just have a quick look to see if you should take the headset off to deal with something, but it’s not really good for AR. Unless they’ve improved it since I last fired it up, but those cameras are more meant for motion tracking than passthrough.
not really a leap forward, valve index does that.