Apple Vision Pro available in the U.S. on February 2

simple@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 140 points –
Apple Vision Pro available in the U.S. on February 2
apple.com

I honestly doubt this will take off, but it'll be interesting as a tech demo for what AR/VR can be at the highest end.

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The anti-consumer apple BS aside. The lack of PC support or support for any real GPU that has a chance at running Games in full resolution, makes this dean on arrival for most people using VR.

Apple is pushing productivity as the main application for Vision Pro, to the point they don't even call it VR but spatial computing instead. I don't think gaming is really for a focus for them at the moment, instead they want to try and tap into other markets who aren't using VR currently.

they don’t even call it VR but spatial computing instead.

I was under the impression these were meant to be AR glasses, not VR glasses? Either way, I'm not really sure who their target demographic is supposed to be at that price point.

It can be both, the device isn't transparent at all and the user can control how much of the real world they are seeing at any time. It's all cameras that create the AR effect. Applications can be anything from a floating window in the real world or a full VR immersion.

I wouldn't consider it AR because it's still a fully virtual environment the user is interacting with, granted it's built convincingly from the camera feeds. If the lens were a clear passthrough into the real world+layering virtual elements over it then I think it falls under AR.

It's mostly semantics though. The line between AR and VR has been fuzzy since we started shoving camera passthrough on devices.

Wow, your comment is the first time it's been made clear to me that this thing isn't actually see-through and that's just a screen on the outside. I thought it was essentially a sleeker looking Hololens. I've had the wrong impression of this thing the entire time, and now I'm much less impressed by it.

Lol, yeah, and what's crazy to me is they have the inner eye tracking cams projecting the user's expressions back to that outer screen. Incredibly complicated implementation soaking up precious compute cycles, for no real reason or benefit. Normal Apple things. I think the outer screen goes dark if the user goes into "full VR" mode to watch a movie or whatever

Imagine getting written up by your supervisor because you dared to look away from your monitor take your VR headset off to give your eyes a break

they don't even call it VR but spatial computing instead.

Ugh. Apple marketing with their need to create words for existing tech is just so damned pretentious.

I mean this thing barely has Mac support, why would it have PC support? It’s basically its own computer you put on your head.

It just seems like a slap in the face to say buy one and then also need to buy another headset if you want to fire up a game with friends who don't own this headset or want to play something more serious than the apple arcade offers. Apple could have easily made this possible but that would require them to give users the ability to interface with non apple hardware and that's a bridge too far for them.

It’s no more a slap in the face than having to get an Xbox to play with your Xbox-owning friends when you have a Switch.

Being that a developer can implement cross play between Xbox and switch, Is Nintendo the bad guy for not “interfacing” with an Xbox?

Well, it's more of a slap in the face in the sense that it costs ten times the price and has no content right now (which will change, I'm sure)

Ten times the price as what though? There simply isn’t another product to compare it to. It is basically an M2 powered laptop you strap to your head with industry-leading displays.

When a similar headset comes out with a Snapdragon Elite X inside then there will be a pint of comparison.

You were talking about an xbox in the post I replied to

The Vision Pro's primary function isn’t content consumption

Except most of the time developers do implement cross play and in this case Apple is the hardware developer and the software developer with no one else to point the finger at. You could also buy every console twice for the cost of the AVP so yeah it's more of a slap in the face.

You are basically saying it’s Nintendo’s fault for not putting Smash Bros on Xbox because Nintendo is the software and hardware developer.

I mean, yeah?

You’re too angry at Apple to make a salient point aside from the fact this product is expensive.

Honestly have no idea how we are talking about smash bros and Nintendo. The point is that it's a locked down headset and for the price you would think it could at least check the boxes of its predecessors. Price is one thing but to forego support for existing open source VR standards is another.

Your original point is that it's a slap in the face that you can't play VR games with your friends. So I used an analogy of it being a slap in the face that you can't play Smash Bros with an Xbox owner.

The Vision Pro is a full computer strapped to your head, it doesn't plug into anything but a power source, but it will have an app store, and it's up to developers to put their games on the store. People on iPhone can play Roblox, Genshin Impact, Minecraft, and a few other games crossplatform, so the precedent is there.

Right but most VR games come from stores that Apple doesn't support and I get that it's an all in 1 device but there is a reason VR games need beefy GPUs and that's something that obviously isn't in this headset. You would need enthusiast level hardware to play demanding VR games at the resolution needed for the AVP and with no way to pipe input from a PC they've killed that potential use case for this headset. VR gaming isn't running apple arcade games on a virtual flat screen.