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If you want to see a use case for these, I highly recommend this video by Heiichi Matsuda: Hyper-Reality

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What’s scary to me is how quickly I adjusted to her augmented view of the world. When the system had to reboot and I saw what her surroundings really looked like, I found myself missing the virtual dog! I’d better stay away from these things.
 
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Dual 8k?

So what you are saying is it can’t even be driven by an M1 MacBook Pro?

VR is a totally, totally different, very complex and extremely demanding technology. Beyond having to physically drive two (in this example 8K) displays the system has to be able to render the content at at least 90fps baseline (there are technologies to help work around this, but fundamentally they have serious flaws and if you want a good experience you need at least 90 real fps in many titles), AND you have a tremendous overhead with the stereoscopic rendering (assume your title will require 3X the power JUST to make it run stereoscopically), PLUS you need to render a wider FOV than with a traditional display, AND you need to render way, way out beyond the visual FOV all the time anyway so that when a person turns their head there is enough of the scene pre-rendered to stay-ahead of the head movement. The M1 is a great chip, but it's not close on the GPU side. Not in the ballpark at all.

I've played Stereoscopically for well over a decade, and that's demanding enough, but at least you didn't need ultra-wide FOVs and 90fps. Moving to a Pimax 5K+ and even driving *that* HMD at resolutions high enough to be nice a crisp (an absolute minimum of 4K per eye, with everything beyond that being nice but not absolutely critical) requires immense GPU power (plus plenty of CPU power).

So this thing, when Apple releases it; it means that Apple's got something else up their sleeve that can power it properly. They've got to be really taking gaming performance and GPU performance and latency very, very seriously if they are going to drive a dual 8K HMD. That's good news for every Apple fan.

We also need to see what the FOV of this HMD is. A lot of the HMDs give you serious "tunnel vision." Many users don't mind that much, but then again a lot of us can't stand it (hence the drive towards wider FOV HMDs).
 
Dual 8K? Okay, I'm listening, this would start to justify that price tag. That's a heck of a lot of screen to drive though. I see these as basically dev kits, and they want to price it so high consumers won't want to buy it until the mass market ones are ready

Are 8K displays small enough for a headset even possible? What kind of pixel density would that be? Wouldn't it be enough higher than "Retina" (too dense to see the pixels) to be overkill?

Not at these magnification levels/distance, the lower the resolution here creates a screen door effect over everything you see. The idea here is by magnifying two tiny 8k screens you still have enough pixels to smooth out the screen door and make it look closer to reality
 
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Having two separate 8k screens basically doubling the horsepower needed. Plus, I've heard that VR/AR needs higher refresh rates due to being so close to the eyes (correct me if I'm wrong).
You’re wrong :).
It has nothing to do with distance from eyes. It’s mostly because the displays are low persistence: they only flash the image for a fraction of the frame time. The rest of the time the display is black. Anything less than 90Hz, and you can start to perceive flicker. The exact flicker threshold seems to differ by person, though.
 
VR is a totally, totally different, very complex and extremely demanding technology. Beyond having to physically drive two (in this example 8K) displays the system has to be able to render the content at at least 90fps baseline (there are technologies to help work around this, but fundamentally they have serious flaws and if you want a good experience you need at least 90 real fps in many titles), AND you have a tremendous overhead with the stereoscopic rendering (assume your title will require 3X the power JUST to make it run stereoscopically), PLUS you need to render a wider FOV than with a traditional display, AND you need to render way, way out beyond the visual FOV all the time anyway so that when a person turns their head there is enough of the scene pre-rendered to stay-ahead of the head movement. The M1 is a great chip, but it's not close on the GPU side. Not in the ballpark at all.

I've played Stereoscopically for well over a decade, and that's demanding enough, but at least you didn't need ultra-wide FOVs and 90fps. Moving to a Pimax 5K+ and even driving *that* HMD at resolutions high enough to be nice a crisp (an absolute minimum of 4K per eye, with everything beyond that being nice but not absolutely critical) requires immense GPU power (plus plenty of CPU power).

So this thing, when Apple releases it; it means that Apple's got something else up their sleeve that can power it properly. They've got to be really taking gaming performance and GPU performance and latency very, very seriously if they are going to drive a dual 8K HMD. That's good news for every Apple fan.

We also need to see what the FOV of this HMD is. A lot of the HMDs give you serious "tunnel vision." Many users don't mind that much, but then again a lot of us can't stand it (hence the drive towards wider FOV HMDs).
Yes let’s hope so as currently VR on a mac is a non starter. I see this device as a mixed reality / AR and not fully VR, as Apple dont seem interested in that area.
My 2080 super struggles with real time viz on my PC [well it becomes a nice heater in summer and turns the room to a sauna].
 
8k is a term made for TVs, that means a roughly 8000 x 4000 resolution. VR displays are almost always square, or close to square, so it’s hard to know what 8k means in that context.
I could see 4K x 4K resolution per screen, which would be the equivalent of a single 8k TV screen in total resolution, but 8K x 8K per screen seems unrealistic at this point.

I don’t think the software library will be a big concern. Beat Saber is the only popular game that is a standalone-VR exclusive for Facebook. I think most other standalone VR games would be ported over.
 
There is an audience for this, but I’m likely not it. Of course things can change, but I suspect the early adopters will have to make the sacrifice. I’m sure within a few generations it will come down in price, lots bugs fixed, defined use cases appear. We’ve all seen this, it’s amazing exactly why I have not bought a HomePod or AirPod Max yet.
Ehh I agree with waiting for the early adopters to review Apple’s AR/VR stuff, buttt the HomePod and AirPods Max are awesome. I love both products. Worth it for the build quality, sound quality, post-purchase support, synchronization and ecosystem IMO.
 
Its not that Apple doesn’t do it well, its the fact that it’s hard for any company to get off the ground in the gaming industry with sony, Microsoft and nintendo being so popular.

if they were to get a somewhat decent gamestore then it would change things but thats still far away.


Also, you and I have the same looking pussycat
No, it’s that they don’t do it well. No standard controller and tiiiiiny internal storage prevent the Apple TV being a competitive gaming platform, and poor graphics cards stop the Mac being a competitive gaming PC.
 
I wish I could just pre-order it now.
Can I aks why? Personally I’m unclear what problem Apple is trying to solve with this device. I love VR gaming (I bought a Vive on release), but I suspect that’s not Apple’s target audience with this.
 
My thoughts as well. Plenty of trinket iOS games but will developers buy in if Apple releases something more robust? Could Apple actually put out a true console?
They should just make it compatible with Steam VR/WMR. But I don't have faith that they would.
 
I don't care what Apple officially names this thing...I'm calling it the iBarf.
 
A 3k VR headset will be a fail. Apple should follow the Oculus Quest2 directions, 350€ , wireless and invest in good games. I have the OQ2 and I think is the best gadget i ever had in terms of value for money , and believe me I have had a lot of stuff....
 
I didn’t think Apple even considered Virtual Reality? I thought Augmented reality was the future because it doesn’t take you out of the real world.
 
Looks like another device regular people will have to wait years for until the early adopters pay for the entire research and development budget and beta phase and marketing to be over when they'll reduce the price to $1k for the rest and that first gen headset is obsoleted. But hey, $3,000 is a small price to pay to be able to say you got to play with one of these early. At least other companies will create much cheaper headsets that do 80% of what these do for the rest of us until the pay for a public beta stage is over. I think theres a chance the price tag is a lie to get people to buy a $1,500 unit because it sounds so much better than a $3,000 one. This sort of technology wouldnt need much more than a year or two in order to become affordable. Especially when you're not going anywhere with it and use it primarily to watch movies and take virtual strolls to places you're not allowed to go anymore.
 
Apple has a lot of work to do to catch up with Oculus and the Quest 2.
This. One you game in VR you'll have a tough time going back to 2D. Oculus has the price point and the apps. Will people really pay an extra $2,500 for "not Facebook"?
For $3K I'd expect it to ship with a full haptic suit and a 360 treadmill.
 
I’ve suspected that AR/VR was a big part of the reason to completely abandon existing GPU vendors along with Intel for future Macs. Whatever Apple Silicon GPU powers these will likely be the same part that goes into the high-end laptop and desktop Pro Macs. Powering dual 8K displays at the refresh rates needed for VR requires a chip that’s highly competitive with with high end cards and Apple will want to do that in a low power portable form factor.
 
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$3000.
Not aimed at mass-market then. And mass market is what VR needs, imho. Quest 2 is the best bet so far - would be wonderful to see Apple target that end of the market too.
 
Sounds incredibly sophisticated. We are talking about virtual REALITY, which should come without visible pixels, as reality does not have them. Then, Apple just came up with that M1 chip with obviously smashing capabilities. Look at the internals of a MacBook Air, searching for the "Motherboard". Cram that M1 chip into that VR Headset and you are set.
 
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