A few selections from her limited experience. It doesn't come out until next year so you're going to be waiting a while for those reviews.
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Calling ******** on VisionPro
- Thread starter mattspace
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Janky 3D meshes for Facetime seems to miss that the point of a video call is to see the actual person.
Like I said, I remain to be convinced of Apple's direction with this - while a unified software strategy, common open/save file dialogs (where does it store files?) etc are things generally missing from VR/AR currently, I don't think sicking goggles on your face for 2D work is sustainable beyond a marketing video.
Do people honestly believe they showed everything this device has to offer? It wouldn’t surprise me if they are holding out on us for some announcements or features until it’s closer to release.
Nah, I don’t think there’s anything funny about that.
MKBHD has almost 17 million subs on YouTube. That’s ever so slightly more than Macrumors’ 502.000.
That’s some reach MKBHD has. And macrumors, as much as I like it, is not exactly an Apple news site.
Seriously? Why can’t you let this go. If an iPhone can do it with half the cores with lower IPC and lower thermal and power headroom and without a signal coprocessor, then there’s no doubt the vision pro can do it. Every hands on impression mentions great AR features. The demo videos showed AR features. It can do it, you’re choosing to focus on the (super useful and main selling point for day 1!) single feature that is closer to “2.5D” than 3D, and even then ignoring that Apple made it clear even a simple “window” In VisionOS has depth and layers that you can reach through and around, and that 3D “window” can be moved and placed within real 3d space. You’re ignoring the dinosaur walking out of the wall, a demo people say and praised hands on, the butterfly that landed on mkbhd’s finger, and so much more. It does AR, you’re just being obtuse. Criticize all the weird and messed up crap about it, the price, the terrifying eyes, the absurdity of using it as a camera, etc. But “I bet it can’t it do the VR my 5 year old iPhone does” is a really weird hill to die on when it has at least 4 times the processing power, and 10 times the sensors of the iPhone in question.
I agree hardware wise. It’s just apple, they’re terrible at being anything but a consumer products company so I’m not holding my breath they’ll manage to break into industry with this.
Because we know the M2 is not particularly competitive on high resolution 3D when compared with the sorts of GPUs the XR industry generally targets for headsets that are comparable in price. And it's being asked to drive two sets of high resolution 3D.
AND we know that people in the media community of the Apple world tend to be radically uninformed about technologies and industries that Apple doesn't do - which is why Apple's last attempt at getting into VR was such a journalistic laugh-fest.
So the question naturally arises at to whether Apple would have actually prioritised the required technology to do immersive 3D, given they've never prioritised performant 3D in the past, calling their graphics performance "console quality" but omitting the part where it's Xbox One quality, in the XBox Series X era.
Yeah, see that's literally not what I said, my concern was that they weren't showing the AR use-case they literally just spent the last 5+ years saying was the main purpose of AR.
Eg:
Buy hey, I've only used VR to do actual 3D design work as a part of my profession, so I guess I'm not sufficiently informed about the requirements of the field
No one is saying you’re not informed. You’re just missing the point. This is a consumer device for things like 3d movies, and replacing laptop displays. It does “AR” in the sense of placing virtual objects convincingly into a representation of the real 3d space. Whatever super powered highly technical thing you want it to do, it doesn’t do. Because it’s not a super powered highly technical product. It’s a consumer toy. A display replacement. It’s the most powerful self contained headset in the world, bar none. By a huge margin, but it’s far less powerful than a tethered headset can be if connected to a high end consumer GPU let alone an industrial strength super computer.Because we know the M2 is not particularly competitive on high resolution 3D when compared with the sorts of GPUs the XR industry generally targets for headsets that are comparable in price. And it's being asked to drive two sets of high resolution 3D.
AND we know that people in the media community of the Apple world tend to be radically uninformed about technologies and industries that Apple doesn't do - which is why Apple's last attempt at getting into VR was such a journalistic laugh-fest.
So the question naturally arises at to whether Apple would have actually prioritised the required technology to do immersive 3D, given they've never prioritised performant 3D in the past, calling their graphics performance "console quality" but omitting the part where it's Xbox One quality, in the XBox Series X era.
Yeah, see that's literally not what I said, my concern was that they weren't showing the AR use-case they literally just spent the last 5+ years saying was the main purpose of AR.
Eg:
View attachment 2213939
Buy hey, I've only used VR to do actual 3D design work as a part of my profession, so I guess I'm not sufficiently informed about the requirements of the field
After all this I truly don’t understand what you think you’re arguing. Do you think positively or negatively of iOS AR? I literally cannot tell from your incomprehensible writing. You keep saying “iOS has been doing great AR for years” then saying “even supercomputers struggle to barely pull off AR.”
Figure out a better way to make your point please.
For the rest of us, VisionPro is the most powerful and advanced self contained headset in the world. If you’re impressed by the ikea app or the measure app, this blows them out of the water. If you find playing on the meta quest 2 immersive and fun, this makes that look like a child’s toy. If you like watching movies or doing work on your Mac, TV, iPad or even Nreal or similar HMD, this makes them all look like an ox drawn wagon on the interstate.
It’s a really cool device. But it costs too much, isn’t really ready yet, can’t be worn all day, and so much more. It deserves criticism. So, as someone with experience in a related field and a valuable insignt, figure out how to convey your criticism in a way we can understand. Because you’ve spent a day making arguments that sound like you’re saying this headset is less capable than a 5 year old iPhone. You’ve now made it clear that’s not your intended argument, but still failed to convey what your argument actually is.
The point is that it's being pitched as an "AR" device, that did not demonstrate any significant 3D capabilities in any of the promotional video, which is all that had been out by that stage. It's being pitched by a company with a history of underprovisioning 3D hardware, and claiming things like immersive spherical video are "VR".
More importantly, it didn't demonstrate the sort of AR pardigm that Apple had been pushing previously - AR on iOS was not "HUD-based spacial comuting" it was "mix 3D simulated objects into the real world".
My concern is that it was under provisioned for hardware to do the things other (tethered) headsets could do (such as a modern high quality version of the iPhone AR paradigm), and against which it will be competing - cause they're the pricerange.
I'm not *impressed* by the ikea app - merely that it was a VERY different paradigm of AR, from that being presented in the video, which was exclusively 2D computing and arranging flat things at distances in space. 3D AR, 3D VR is significantly more graphically intensive than simple mapping of 2D textures on flats placed at distances in space and a few simple 3d UI widgets (that's literally how the MacOS X display compositor worked after they implemented it as an OpenGL system).
Now, if it turns out to do all the VR & AR stuff, fantastic - it'll be overpriced compared to standalone systms, and low-performance compared to tethered systems, but it'll likely have a better unified operating environment and consistency for stuff like open/save dialogues etc. Apple seem to have avoided the problem that VR makes operating systems into obsolete dumb pipes, by makig the operating system exceptionally unified and rich so the apps don't have to provision as much. Great strategy.
But a great strategy that can't pump 90+ FPS at all times because it's underprovisioned on 3D hardware is a ticket to VomitVille. They might have avoided that by just skipping the immersive 3D stuff, and making it more a "hud for everyday life, and movie watching" and incapable of being more.
Got it. You didn;t watch the launch just reacted to a few images of the "2.5D" VisionOS home screen and how it displays apps that were written for 2D screens. Watch again, there are tons of moments with spatial VR, and every first impression mentions that it does a great job, to the point of brain breaking moments when you forget the thing you were reaching out for is only virtual. I assume that's oversold, of course, but this will do far more than the iOS VR in terms of virtual objects in real 3d space, the announcemnt and all later documentation and reactions confirmed it over and over.
Again, it's not going to have better 3d performance than a tethered 4090 machine, but that's literally and explicitly not the point or purpose it was designed for. There are headsets that already do that, the killer app here is VisionOS, which blends computing we already understand with real 3d spaces (and will continue to expand in capability as developers and users spend time with it)
Yeah one of the first things I thought after the release date announcement was “wouldn’t M3 be out by then? With a more advanced, efficient architecture?”
Seems like this thing should ship with M3 instead of M2 but maybe Apple will update everyone during the iPhone event and announce it actually ships with M3 (the same chipset fab as the upcoming iPhone 15 chipset).
IF they can get the wifi connection between the headset and the Mac to run fast enough, and distribute things properly, perhaps there's a scenario where big complex stuff runs on the mac, and the headset is concentrating on just the display. HTC manages to do wireless tethered VR on the XR Elite.
no, my use of XR is for work, designing sculptures that I can't start constructing until I have a good idea of how they look, how sight-lines work etc, and can then rent an assembly space. Stereoscopic vision is the key to that.
I wondered the same thing - about why all the demos seemed to be of floating 2D screens?
However, I did notice that the Ars Technica journalist demo mentioned a 3D dinosaur walking out of a portal into the actual room they were in. They said that it was the most impressive part of the demo and that having the creature as AR in their actual room was way more convincing than seeing it in a VR environment.
So I think Apple will build up to the type of 3D experiences we are looking for.
However, I did notice that the Ars Technica journalist demo mentioned a 3D dinosaur walking out of a portal into the actual room they were in. They said that it was the most impressive part of the demo and that having the creature as AR in their actual room was way more convincing than seeing it in a VR environment.
So I think Apple will build up to the type of 3D experiences we are looking for.
Yup, where my concerns come from is that new players in a young technology often get coverage by people who don't know what has gone before. So you can get a skewed perspective on the quality of the new thing.
This was a HUGE deal for Apple's last foray into VR - Everyone outside the Apple media circlejerk knew the Vega64 was barely capable of doing what they were saying it could do, to say nothing for the RX580 Apple was proposing as an eGPU VR driver. Gravity Sketch in their initial release held it as Vega64 only, excluding the Vega56 and below, which meant only the highest config of iMac Pro, Apple's top of the range machine, was supported.
Realistically, all it would have taken would have been for a quick segment of something like this (better production value, perhaps sitting at a table working on something smaller):
Showing a 3D use case where the 3D is inherent to the task being possible.
Also, Apple and NeXT have long histories of lying and outright faking product demos - the iPhone first demo was literally if one tap had been different, the phone would have hard crashed, NeXT once "demoed" a new computer that was an empty box playing a video stream from a laserdisk.
Nevertheless, IF it can do proper immersive VR, IF I can shut the world out, and do Architectural drafting and modelling in VR, and if the WiFi performance means it has something akin to wireless tethering, and it can do more with a Mac than just Airplay VNCing the Mac's display...
...then I'd buy one of these - it would probably replace a laptop in the "I need more screen space than an iPad while travelling" category. The price is pretty close to the price of the slots in a Mac Pro Vs. a Mac Studio.
It will be interesting to see what the story is with larger battery packs.
Go read uploadVR hands on , one of the best VR outlets , he will explain to you why its such a big deal.
Also note that in a 30min demo there is so much you want/can show , more so when ppl are watching a 2D video stream , conveying VR/AR though a 2D stream is not ideal , they needed to showcase a new product (we knew it was coming , most ppl didnt) and slowly bring the casuals up to speed on whats going on.
Im waiting to try it first hand and see what content will be available on day 1.
Also note that in a 30min demo there is so much you want/can show , more so when ppl are watching a 2D video stream , conveying VR/AR though a 2D stream is not ideal , they needed to showcase a new product (we knew it was coming , most ppl didnt) and slowly bring the casuals up to speed on whats going on.
Im waiting to try it first hand and see what content will be available on day 1.
They avoided it because that is explicitly the comparisons they are trying to avoid. Low resolution awful looking Quest games. It can run them but that’s not their vision for the device.
I don't think the platform is fully developed. There were a lot of tiny hints of possibilities - like a virtual keyboard but we saw no demonstration of one.
notably Palmer Luckey tweeted a "you are the one" gif in regards to apple vision pro
I might be missing something, but fully immersive 3D/VR worlds are a big focus in the developer talks. This still is a frame from a video with Unity talking about using hand tracking to manipulate objects in a 3D space both in an immersive VR sense, and optionally within an AR space (similar to your videos above).
There's also another dev talk showing a 3D object in AR space using Unity's tech (although this example is using the AR Emulator, and not live AR footage presumably because Apple wasn't sharing the official hardware with Unity people before the release)
There's also another dev talk showing a 3D object in AR space using Unity's tech (although this example is using the AR Emulator, and not live AR footage presumably because Apple wasn't sharing the official hardware with Unity people before the release)
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This is the answer. The OP has definitive stance on the topic that is wrong because he wasn’t spoon fed the answer at the Keynote and couldn’t be bothered to browse the WWDC sessions for exactly what they’re complaining about.