Apple Vision Pro's Virtual Display Feature Works With Intel Macs, But Limited to 3K Resolution

[scrodd]

Does anyone know how display scaling works on the virtual display? Normally with an external display you want a resolution of either ~110ppi or ~220ppi to keep MacOS elements at the intended size. At 4k that works out to virtual displays having the standard scaling only at 24” (~220ppi) and 40” (110ppi). Obviously there are a lot of different virtual display sizes available and I’m wondering if the UI/text scale differently on VisionOS (similar to Windows, perhaps?) or if they only looks “correct” at certainly virtual display sizes?

 

[oofio2461]

ok. but what happens if you try it on a Hackintosh or a device not supported by using opencore legacy patcher?

 

[mozumder]

The first thing I noticed with the immersive videos is how blurry everything looked. It is a cool experience. The Alicia Keys studio video felt almost intimate. But they all lacked sharpness.

I noticed that too. Rather than the display, I think this is a limit of the camera capture, which likely records the entire 180 degree field of view in a single 4k fisheye lens shot, but you only look at a small segment of that on screen.

So if they can get the capture at 16k, which some cameras I believe do, and get the image pipeline to support that resolution up until display, then it should be much sharper. But for that to happen we need a high powered AV1/MP4 decoder that can decode 16K and a GPU that can map that into the display.

 

[gnipgnop]

I noticed that too. Rather than the display, I think this is a limit of the camera capture, which likely records the entire 180 degree field of view in a single 4k fisheye lens shot, but you only look at a small segment of that on screen.

The immersive videos are shot in 8K.

 

[gnipgnop]

Does anyone know how display scaling works on the virtual display? Normally with an external display you want a resolution of either ~110ppi or ~220ppi to keep MacOS elements at the intended size. At 4k that works out to virtual displays having the standard scaling only at 24” (~220ppi) and 40” (110ppi). Obviously there are a lot of different virtual display sizes available and I’m wondering if the UI/text scale differently on VisionOS (similar to Windows, perhaps?) or if they only looks “correct” at certainly virtual display sizes?

It's an interesting question. Consider that many 4K projectors sold on the market today only have an effective resolution of 1080p but use image overlapping to create a 4K image. AVP has more than 4K pixels per eye.

 

[nathansz]

What is an Intel Mac? 😉

It’s a relic from when Apple used to make computers

Before they only started making content consumption appliances

 

[nathansz]

ok. but what happens if you try it on a Hackintosh or a device not supported by using opencore legacy patcher?

I would guess it would work so long as you have a metal supported gpu

 

[jdoyle]

For $3500 I think there should be a Mac OS X app on the Vision Pro. Load it up like any other app. Within it is Sonoma OS and whatever apps you want. No external Mac required.

 

[nathansz]

For $3500 I think there should be a Mac OS X app on the Vision Pro. Load it up like any other app. Within it is Sonoma OS and whatever apps you want. No external Mac required.

It probably doesnt have enough cpu or memory to run a virtual machine of macOS on top of its own os

 

[kilimanjaro]

Depending on the model, an Intel Mac is one that had lots of competition for RAM & SSD. So instead of paying 3-5X retail pricing for Apple upgrades, one could buy the base Mac and then load it up at any time with much more internal RAM and storage for relatively dirt cheap. There was a time when Apple made this very easy. But as Apple evolved into AAPL, the pursuit of harvesting every possible nickel made some of this increasingly difficult to impossible with many Macs. The latest move forces all RAM & SSD to be purchased from only a single seller- no competition at all- resulting in 3-5X relative pricing for the same amount of RAM or SSD in PC-land.

Similarly, if RAM or Storage went bad in Intel Macs, some models could facilitate replacing the broken part and continuing to use your Mac. Now, when anything at all conks in a Silicon Mac, you throw the whole thing out and buy another.

Intel Macs could also run full Windows instead of emulated ARM Windows (which is not full Windows), making it the only computer type in the world that could natively run BOTH major platforms in one case (excluding hacks). This also meant that a single computer purchase could run just about ALL of the world's software instead of only a relatively tiny subset of it. This included easy access to AAA games and various gaming platforms on the Window-only side. Those consumers who need Windows but wanted Mac could buy a Mac and get BOTH. Now we're back to if you need Windows, you have to buy a PC unless maybe ARM Windows emulation is good enough.

It generally had a focus on Power vs PPW, so it could generally get computing tasks done faster by using more power... instead of slower while sipping power. The difference in net power usage was marginal as the former would average about a single incandescent light bulb or two's power usage each month, meaning nobody saw any huge difference in an electric bill by opting for PPW over Power. But "we" sure make it sound like it's an Apples to Oranges proposition.

Like Spotify before Apple Music or Google Maps before Apple Maps or the LG 5K monitor before ASD, when Apple was embracing Intel, fans loved Intel Macs. Then when Apple abandoned them, fans turned. Suddenly, there were all these flaws that were left unspoken while Macs depended on them but then were relentlessly spoken when Apple wanted people to buy Silicon. Suddenly laps were "suffering third degree burns", fans were "sounding like jet engines", etc.

Intel cost the so-called "Intel Premium" that Silicon would alleviate, except no pass through savings seemed to appear. Instead, Apple's corporate margin fattened, from the traditional 39%-40% to now around 46%-47%. How long until about HALF of every dollar we pay for Apple stuff is falling into the corporate vaults instead of going directly towards the thing we are buying? Hooray for shareholders! Can consumers get a bone or two?

Intel generally offered annual hardware upgrades and Silicon offered the potential of at least the same, but it didn't work out that way for the latter, while Intel has generally continued with the old, roughly annual pace. "We" blamed that on covid & supply chain, etc and maybe that was the cause... except Intel seemed to roughly stay on the traditional pace of new generations.

Intel Macs offered the ability to connect powerful graphics cards in external boxes while Silicon offers its own graphics and only its graphics... even in Mac Pro. Because of robust competitive forces, an Intel Mac Pro could have a ton of relatively cheap, massive RAM while a Silicon Mac Pro can only max out at a RAM amount of Apple's choosing... at thoroughly exploitive pricing vs. market... as is always the case when there is only a LONE seller of anything.

In short, while I can appreciate my own Silicon Mac and use it every day, we had many great benefits with the prior platform. Silicon offers several advantages but so does Intel. Chief amoung them is Power (and Graphics Card Power) vs. PPW and integrated Apple Graphics. In general, PC will use more power to get computing done FASTER while Silicon will use much less power to get things done slower. On the flip side, the latter can have longer battery life than the typical person can use in a day, while the former can burn through its battery in as little as a few hours if the task is demanding.

We Apple people shifted from a mainstream platform with massive competitive-driven support back to a PowerPC-like silo where all key roads must lead to/through Apple Inc. As objectively as I can assess it, I don't know if the pros fully outweigh the cons unless one chooses to make the pros bigger deals while marginalizing the cons. The vast majority of the world happily runs on PC platforms. Our little bubble now happily runs on Silicon... at a steep relative premium.

I would be happy to point out that after the first i7 Quad core in my 2013 MacBookPro and it’s jet engine fans being the reason I didn’t buy another Mac until ASD; M1 MacBook Pro specifically.
I wasn’t going to buy another Mac until it was silent.. and now it is.

 

[MacRoyal]

What about multiple Spaces on the shared display? Does anyone know if that works?

 

[coolfactor]

Ok, someone explain to me why bluetooth mice arent supported…

I suspect bandwidth. People can throw around all the conspiracies that they want, but since a mouse pointer works when connected to a Mac, the only logical reason why mice can't directly connect must be bandwidth.

Or positioning. The Mac has special hardware-software for pointer positioning. Maybe that's not included in Vision Pro, since it conflicts with your hands being the controller.

 

[macos9rules]

Am I the only one who can't see the difference between 3k and 5k?

 

[seek3r]

I suspect bandwidth. People can throw around all the conspiracies that they want, but since a mouse pointer works when connected to a Mac, the only logical reason why mice can't directly connect must be bandwidth.

Or positioning. The Mac has special hardware-software for pointer positioning. Maybe that's not included in Vision Pro, since it conflicts with your hands being the controller.

I thought about that, would make sense except that bluetooth trackpads *are* supported

 

[lovehateapple]

Mac Virtual Display does not work when your Vision Pro is in Guest Mode.

This is lame. It makes true share-ability between multiple people, like a couple or family impossible. I don't care if there are security or privacy issues involved. I would only be sharing an AVP with someone I trust, like family members, but if they can't connect to their macs it makes the AVP worth far less in terms of value for the (high) price.

 

[seek3r]

This is lame. It makes true share-ability between multiple people, like a couple or family impossible. I don't care if there are security or privacy issues involved. I would only be sharing an AVP with someone I trust, like family members, but if they can't connect to their macs it makes the AVP worth far less in terms of value for the (high) price.

this is one of the reasons I'm still surprised they went with an ios-like implementation over a mac-like one. ios doesnt really have a multi-user concept, the OS is capable of it (it's still darwin under the hood) but there's no user-land user management. It's annoying enough on an iPad, which Apple has pitched as a computer replacement, but it's worse on this. For the most part people consider iPads single user account devices, and base ipads are cheap, but this is a $3500 computer with a new interface, it should support multiple users. I suspect they'll add it eventually, but, like windowing, they seem to be determined to reinvent the wheel (poorly in the case of window management) on core user land os functions in ios+ so it'll probably be different and more limited than MacOS on that.

 

[tobybrut]

this is one of the reasons I'm still surprised they went with an ios-like implementation over a mac-like one. ios doesnt really have a multi-user concept, the OS is capable of it (it's still darwin under the hood) but there's no user-land user management. It's annoying enough on an iPad, which Apple has pitched as a computer replacement, but it's worse on this. For the most part people consider iPads single user account devices, and base ipads are cheap, but this is a $3500 computer with a new interface, it should support multiple users. I suspect they'll add it eventually, but, like windowing, they seem to be determined to reinvent the wheel (poorly in the case of window management) on core user land os functions in ios+ so it'll probably be different and more limited than MacOS on that.

Those annoyances you have on iPadOS and iOS are intended. You're not supposed to need access to most things. Sandboxing, power savings, and security are the prime requirements for any OS that goes into something like this and macOS simply doesn't have that security or power savings. The device has a battery 1/2 the size of a MacBook Air, but uses enough power for a MacBook Pro, which explains the 2-3 hours of battery life. With macOS, expect battery life closer to one hour. Also on macOS, it's too easy to get to important file system files that will corrupt the OS and macOS is far more susceptible to viruses and malware. You want your most secure OS on a device like this.

I wish Apple made guest users easier, but I put it down to things Apple hasn't gotten to yet, such as the inability to rearrange icons on the "desktop". That should come before more advanced guest user features.