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Apple Now Calling AR/VR Headset Operating System 'xrOS'
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Can you please expound on this? Current headsets can be uncomfortable, especially with extended use, but you aren’t talking about that because you said “no matter how light”.
A lot of current VR games are more physically demanding, because the physicality of the control schemes is a major factor that sets them apart from desktop/TV games. A lot of people appreciate that VR can be more physically demanding, but it by no means needs to be.
And what do you mean by cognitively demanding? VR devices aren’t as refined as other devices in UI design, so sometimes they can be awkward and frustrating to use, but in other ways they can be more intuitive to use than other computing devices. I’ve very interested to see what UI conventions Apple brings to the table.
Guys, this isn’t about mapping a drive, it’s about an immersive flyover experience. Think about street-level photography that turns as you turn your head.
rOS will be better. Waiting to see what Apple calls it when it is actually released.
My first impression about the meaning of XR was also "Extended Reality", but I have a feeling that Apple may call it "Expanded Reality". We will find out for sure sooner or later.
Perhaps they want to go beyond "Reality" and make it "Unreal", reason why that name may not stick.
Xtended or Xpanded Reality OS may describe it better.
Also, regarding the consumers: Many iPhone users don't know what iOS is.
It sounds like they have multiple names registered, but nobody outside of Tim Cook and his tight inner circle knows what it will be called — and I can guarantee you that Bloomberg has no connections anywhere near this group.
You should not take that “respected” physics theory literally.
When we talk about these headsets we have to talk about the user experience. Science fiction fantasies don’t apply here. People are physical, we feel pain and discomfort. The older we are the worse it is. We get impaired vision, rusty necks, wonky spines, painful joints. We cannot be asked to move our heads and bodies with a computing device for a lifetime.
That has been the experience of Oculus users through every generation of their headsets. They buy it out of curiosity but then find the device to physically and cognitively demanding to use for longer than short bursts.
There are many problems that are simple impossible to overcome if you want an ‘all day’ head set, and even Tim Cook has said he doesn’t see this device as being used for long periods.
Those problems range from battery life, processing power, operating system bugs, graphics performance bugs, throttling processors, intermittent failed wireless connections, etc.
All these problems are present in Macs after decades of development, in iOS after 15 years of development, and will be in xrOS. But in a headset these problems are completely unforgiving. There’s no room for error otherwise the user feels extreme discomfort, disorientation and distress. It’s one of the reasons so many Oculus devices are left to collect dust and why Horizon Worlds has poor user retention rates.
This will always be niche. Trying to make it the ‘main’ way of computing is a bad idea and anyone who wastes energy, time and money trying to argue that it will displace desktop and laptop computing will have egg on their face. When they are older and wiser they will look back and wonder what the hell they were thinking.
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I wonder if you can wear these when skiing/snowboarding? Might make a great alternative to pulling out your phone on a cold mountain with gloves on?
Only if you want reduced peripheral vision and go flying off a mountain edge because a notification distracted you.
Irrespective of past news reports that are guessing.
Do you all feel that this will be a stand alone device.
Or it will be more like the 1st Apple watch, and be more of a display with sensors/cameras which uses the iPhone to do most of the processing?
Do you all feel that this will be a stand alone device.
Or it will be more like the 1st Apple watch, and be more of a display with sensors/cameras which uses the iPhone to do most of the processing?
VR fights a losing battle with the inner ear. It has limited used and limited potential as a result.
True. The Apple device isn’t VR however. It is an AR device, but that still comes with the issues I outlined a few posts above.
When I read these debates over all the years, enthusiasts really are not looking at the first gen devices but looking forward to when AR can exist in something that looks like regular dress or vision correction glasses.
That’s extremely difficult. For a start you can install a powerful SoC in dress glasses. So no A series or M series chip. The processing would have to be on the iPhone or Mac which would stream AR elements to the glasses.
Then we come to the battery, sensors and cameras. Dress glasses have very thin frames and we really can’t get a battery in there that could last more than an hour. All these add bulk.
Finally displaying the AR elements on glasses requires a projector like Google Glass had, which means the AR imagery would be ghost-like and lacking detail.
High resolution and high fidelity AR requires a headset. That comes with all the usual uncomfortable problems that mixed reality headsets do. Less disorientating than VR, but still having all the usability and technical issues outlined not just by myself but also on VR/MR review sites.