I'm pretty sure they mean "carbon instead of silicon". The carbon is the O in OLED. Silicon is used to make glass.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Looking to Make Its AR/VR Headsets More Immersive With Sharper Displays
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Strapping something like this to your noggin is what's going to hold the market back, at least on the consumer side, that and the price. There is a difference between someone buying a $1000 phone and splitting the cost over 3 years minus the $800 the carrier gave them for their old phone, and ponying up $2-3k for a VR/AR headset, especially with no killer apps.
But I still think the comfort issue will be the toughest one to overcome. My wife thinks my Quest 2 is amazing, but you wouldn't catch her using it because of her hair and makeup. Even if Apple makes it much lighter and ergonomic, it's going to be difficult to get people to wear them. On the VR side maybe but only recreationally, but even that's limited IMO due to the social isolation with a headset on. On the AR side it's going to be a news story anytime we see some dufus wearing that horrible concept everyone keeps bandying around, and AR won't work unless it's ubiquitous. Heck look at 3d glasses, they were pretty much the same size as regular glasses and you still couldn't get that technology to stick.
But I still think the comfort issue will be the toughest one to overcome. My wife thinks my Quest 2 is amazing, but you wouldn't catch her using it because of her hair and makeup. Even if Apple makes it much lighter and ergonomic, it's going to be difficult to get people to wear them. On the VR side maybe but only recreationally, but even that's limited IMO due to the social isolation with a headset on. On the AR side it's going to be a news story anytime we see some dufus wearing that horrible concept everyone keeps bandying around, and AR won't work unless it's ubiquitous. Heck look at 3d glasses, they were pretty much the same size as regular glasses and you still couldn't get that technology to stick.
Even the fastest PCs/graphics cards available today aren't fast enough to play games that the resolutions this VR headset will display (talking about hardware that is a lot faster than anything Apple currently offer). So for this to work well, Apple are going to have to come out with hardware is a massive jump from what is currently available. Not saying it isn't possible, but I suspect it will be a lot more than $2000.
You won’t be able to work in a virtual workstation every day for full working days anyway.
In our imagination we can do that.
In reality you’ll get peed off by many things you can’t do properly when you can’t see your keyboard, your Wacom, your coffee, your snack, your dog wondering what’s wrong with you, your wife leaving you forever…etc
Last edited:
I suspect people won't want to work the whole day with a headset on. But as this thing is a VR/AR headset, the above shouldn't be a problem as it will ether overlay real world objects in VR or display them virtually (so you should be able to see your keyboard when you type and where your fingers are too).
Make up your mind AR or VR.
AR glasses serves no purpose for virtual displays. It can’t do high color rendition, colour accuracy or even display black, because ambient light is passing through it.
Do not confuse that with seeing AR on your phone. Different thing.
But not the cooling necessary for high usage. Throttling with VR/AR wouldn't be very acceptable.
That is simply incorrect. They have made money (profit) on both the hardware and the store. Quest Pro is launching in October. You really need to be married to an old opinion not to see what is coming.
That's speculation. *If* there is indeed a cooling issue (speculation), a lot of that will be ameliorated with next generation A series CPU/GPUs.
If it's an issue, I'm sure Apple will have a solution with next generation A-series CPU/GPU chips.
Even after the release of Half Life Alyx and all the Quest 2s and Valve Indexes sold and the upcoming PlayStation VR 2 there's still a lot of Boomers and haters out there still holding on to outdated notions of VR that haven't been a thing for three years now
The iPhone will do the heavy lifting for AR/VR processing. And will connect to glasses via a wideband datalink.
Meh…gamers say worse about VR.
It’s just really annoying having no legs.
And teleporting.
And then some nonce appears and says ‘Hey wanna party in DM with me?’
Again: Boomers. All those feelings that some gamers have are incredibly outdated with the release of Half Life Alyx. Since then there's been so many amazing software and games that make getting a headset so worth it, and not small things, but major titles like Resident Evil Village and soon Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.
A lot of VR games and apps have legs. Prime example the upcoming Bonelab which releases tomorrow. You have a fully simulated body in there with proper physics depending on the avatar you're using.
Recently I've been playing Contractors VR which is basically Call of Duty in VR, and I have a full body with legs there.
VRChat, one of the most popular VR apps of all time, has a full body with legs.
You can even have accurate leg tracking if you get ankle trackers.
So yeah, you got legs. This notion's outdated.
Teleporting movement exists as an accessibility feature to help those who are new to VR to help them get their VR legs. If they jumped into smooth locomotion immediately most get motion sick.
Most VR games and apps have smooth locomotion so you're not restricted to just teleporting. There's very few that are teleporting only, and those that are have a gameplay reason to restrict you to just teleport.
Again, another outdated notion.
You can block weirdos you know lmao. Yeah you can have some weirdos but other times you have some really incredible moments meeting new people in VR. I've met so many people from around the world playing Pokerstars VR. The hosts of UploadVR's weekly newscast live in the US and UK, and have never met each other in person ever, but they're side by side as they do their shows in virtual reality.
Okay so they’ll move 20 million, maybe.
That’s not a large market by anyone but startup metrics.
VR headsets, today, are NOT a mass market device.
There’s two in this house, my roommate used his every day for about two weeks, hasn’t touched it since.
So you will need a new(er) iPhone and the headset… could be but doesn’t make sense given the pricing speculates.
But whatever, I will not be in the 1st wave of buyers nor in the second.
The PlayStation 5 has moved 20 million units and it's two years old just like the Quest 2 is. Is it not a mass market device?
??? Not speculation, The iPhone (any model) throttles now, and heavily at times, and it's not doing the processing for the headset too. Just play a simple puzzle game for awhile, or try looking at the screen outside on a sunny day.
I think it's going to need more processing power than an iPhone can do without a total redesign with cooling being one of the primary factors.
We'll see though, who knows for sure -- probably not even Apple. (until enough people get it to see real world usage)
That's the big issue. VR developers aren't gonna want to develop for Apple after everything that happened from OpenGL getting divested, to forcing Metal, to Apple's comments during Apple vs Epic.
Not to mention the most users are on Meta's platforms (namely Quest 2) and PlayStation VR. Quest 2 alone is over 50% marketshare on PCVR, to the point some VR devs are simply skipping PCVR versions of their apps and games and making them only for Quest.
Yes and no.
Consoles are sold with slim profit margins because the entire business model revolves around the games.
VR headsets would fall in that camp…but the engagement time still seems incredibly short whereas consoles are the epitome of continued usage (guaranteeing future revenue streams).
On the “no” side it’s more a matter of scale. Sony and Microsoft’s Xbox divisions are tiny compared to the scope Apple has to move products to not be considered a “flop”.
Case in point, the common wisdom from people is *still* that the Apple Watch is not a smash hit device even though it sells in units and revenues higher than the iPod EVER did.
A headset with a user base as large as Apple would need to ship tens of millions of units a *quarter* for analysts to consider it anything but a flop. Believe me, gen one of whatever this is will be considered a flop and not mass market from that lens because it won’t move the needle at all on the company’s quarterly revenues.
So it comes down to perspective for mass market or not. If you’re a gamer you’re already self selected into a minority (a large one) with the numbers we’re talking. Apples thing…whatever it’s going to be, could move more units than the Xbox and PlayStation’s of this gen in a single year and it still likely won’t be considered “mass market”.
Those product categories haven’t failed, though. Smart speakers are quite popular. Smart TVs are very popular… I have an Apple TV 4K that was gifted to me, but I’m using it less and less because all the apps I use run directly on my TV, and it only takes one or two button presses on the remote to open them… and my TV remote is better than the Apple remote. AirPods Max is mostly just a more expensive version of AirPods earbuds, which are very popular. You could just as easily say that the Mac Pro is a failure because the MacBook Air sells a lot more.
You’ll want to use a real keyboard, but I think virtual screens will be a large selling point for the Apple glasses. I don’t think there will be enough “made only for VR” use cases to justify an expensive device.
I don’t think 3D TV/Cinema would have been significantly more popular if it offered the same experience but glasses-free.
Simply render games at a lower resolution than the physical displays. Problem solved. And there is foveated rendering, which means the highest resolution only needs to be rendered where your eyes are looking.
