Is the Mac Virtual Display feature better than working on a 27 inch 5K monitor? I assume you get a ton more virtual screen size… but I’m not sure how the actual display quality is in terms of sharpness and color, or whether it’s comfortable enough to wear most of the day working from home and writing code. Anyone use that feature as their primary monitor for coding?
I don't use this feature as my
primary monitor for coding, but I have used it for coding for hours at a time, and in any case can speak to the other questions:
"Better" is extremely subjective. But on the criteria you list:
It is
not better in terms of sharpness, at least at regular viewing distances of a Retina display. I don't know exactly what the effective minimum angular pixel size works out to on the AVP's displays, but I'm confident in saying that when viewing text it is not going to be as sharp as a high-pixel-density display unless you have bad eyes.
It's interesting, because with non-text content it feels
very sharp, because the color and framerate are so good, but text leaves nowhere to hide and I'd say, gut-feeling-wise, it's around what you'd get on a mid-sized 1080p monitor at regular viewing distances. Which is to say perfectly usable, but not fantastic.
Three caveats in the above statement:
One, my experience is affected somewhat by the prescription inserts (which due to astigmatism and digitally-corrected prism introduce a bit of aberration off center, something my physical glasses also have but seems a little worse on the AVP). It could be people who don't wear glasses, or have a weaker prescription, will have a better experience than me.
Two, my coding is via a Windows remote desktop session in a primitive IEC 61131 IDE that only supports black-text-on-white-background and without any anti-aliasing, which I think is about the least-forgiving environment possible, so it might be less noticeable in a better IDE with proper anti-aliasing.
And three, it's worth noting that the retina-sized pixels are absolutely real, so if you are using a very large virtual screen and you get close to it, the content remains equally good-but-not-great--it's not like what you're seeing is being downscaled out of the Mac, the issue is that there's a fundamental resolution limit to the AVP's displays.
In terms of color, the AVP has a very wide dynamic range and to my eye very good color, but I haven't tested enough non-code content on the virtual display to say how much of that is visible on the virtual display. I certainly haven't noticed any issues, at least--color wise it looks great.
In terms of comfort, that's less objective and will depend on your taste, but I'd call it good if not great. I can wear it for work for several hours at a time, for several days in a row, without it really bothering me, but it is relatively heavy and at some point just having a warm, enclosed headtset strapped to my face eventually makes my eyes kinda dry. Overall I'm fine using it for several hours a day, but 8 hours a day 5 days a week would probably be a strain, and at least I'd want to take regular breaks.
On the other hand, the fact that you can just make the virtual screen bigger and farther away is actually much more relaxing to my eyes than the distance my monitor usually is from my face; it wouldn't be practical to use a 15' wraparound ultra-wide monitor six feet away from you, but it is just a pinch away with the AVP and you can crank up the virtual environment so walls and furniture are not distracting, a HUGE boon for my small home office. My monitor literally extends several feet into the bookshelf right next to my shoulder, which has the added side effect of making the room feel bigger as well.
You'll also probably end up with a bit of a "goggle mark" on your face after a few hours. Hasn't really bothered me, but I was mildly annoyed that if I try to use the thicker face pad it complains that my eyes are too far away, so I can't although I'd like the extra padding.
As for the virtual screen size, absolutely no comparison. I have a 5K iMac one room away and didn't even
consider it an option over the AVP virtual ultrawide. I could have three IDE windows side by side, an HMI, and a browser with my flowcharts in it, all at the same time, which would be absolutely unthinkable on a 27" monitor, and is in fact measurably better than the 34" extra-wide plus 24" 16:9 oriented vertically that I use at my desk at work.
At one point I was doing something that I wanted to have WAY too many windows visible at the same time so I set the thing to non-retina resolution, blew it up to the size of a wall, and ended up with so much effective screen space it was ridiculous.
