I’m guessing they’ll be like ski goggles with a transparent display overlay. So you can see the rest of the world but also have covered in part or entirely by content from the device.
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Report: Apple AR Headset With Rumored $2,000+ Price Tag to Enter Mass Production in Second Quarter of 2022
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Would make a lot of sense to have these powered by an iPhone. There has been an ungodly amount of power in recent A series chips that never seems to have a good use case for even half of it.
I always think of that community episode when I see news about VR goggles:
AR is the nail. Fully realized AR will be ubiquitous some day. But I don’t think the tech is even close and I think the footprint needs to be almost the same as normal glasses.
You mean the OLD Apple? Anything not in the works when Jobs passed seems to be NOT very awe inspiring.
I think at first it will be a very niche product, and I don't think an average user would have any use for a $2,000 set of goggles. The same way an average user has no use for a Mac Pro. It's like buying an F-1 car to commute. In the city. It makes no sense.
I can see something like this being used on interior architectural design and manufacturing workflow simulations like those used in auto assembly line development. I'm sure there are other uses on the design level I'm not thinking of simply because they're outside my element. In the long run, doing multiple simulations and mock ups before implementing final designs saves serious money throughout the design implementation and deployment cycle of these facilities.
So the right users would probably see really good integrated VR options as a real time and money saver.
If there's a revolution to be had, it's because Apple found a Killer App for their headset.
A potential killer app - the virtual office.
Do away with having complicated physical desks, stands, and monitors - just give me virtual displays that I can effortlessly move around.
Do away with having physical conference rooms - just let me and others appear in a virtual conference room. Or in a virtual auditorium. Replace all the faces on screens with avatars in virtual space. Physical gatherings for stuff like concerts, theater, and meetings shouldn't feel required anymore, and we shouldn't feel that something is missing.
A little interesting - we could have actual recordings of stuff like concerts. Not just video recordings that you can play back, but you could play back the actual event and choose to walk around and watch from other angles. You could do this with watching physical sports, too (the players would have to physically interact for contact sports, but the audience doesn't need to physically be there.)
You could do this with family gatherings. If you just want to sit around and talk, you can do that without having to be in person. If you just want to play board games, that can be done, too.
It wouldn't be a perfect replacement for physically being someplace or with someone. You couldn't experience food, weather, and nature together. Intimacy... I don't think this would be a good platform for that - the existing long distance products are probably better for that.
There's a ton of potential here. I think the proper rollout is to start with businesses. They'll start by sending out the headsets instead of the monitors and stands they send now. They'll not bother with having such large offices and parking lots anymore, saving them millions. From another angle, we'll have virtual concerts like Fortnight has been doing already, but they'll actually be done competently and not be lame - they'll be worth paying $2K for - it's in the same ballpark as people pay for physical meet and greets already. This leads to the headsets being widely available. Then people start having their regular social interactions with them, since they own the hardware anyways so there's no extra cost.
It's strange... this all seems so obvious, why have none of the existing headset makers done it? (Maybe it's not obvious - nobody else in the comments have said it yet... but this kind of stuff has been detailed in science fiction for decades.)
A potential killer app - the virtual office.
Do away with having complicated physical desks, stands, and monitors - just give me virtual displays that I can effortlessly move around.
Do away with having physical conference rooms - just let me and others appear in a virtual conference room. Or in a virtual auditorium. Replace all the faces on screens with avatars in virtual space. Physical gatherings for stuff like concerts, theater, and meetings shouldn't feel required anymore, and we shouldn't feel that something is missing.
A little interesting - we could have actual recordings of stuff like concerts. Not just video recordings that you can play back, but you could play back the actual event and choose to walk around and watch from other angles. You could do this with watching physical sports, too (the players would have to physically interact for contact sports, but the audience doesn't need to physically be there.)
You could do this with family gatherings. If you just want to sit around and talk, you can do that without having to be in person. If you just want to play board games, that can be done, too.
It wouldn't be a perfect replacement for physically being someplace or with someone. You couldn't experience food, weather, and nature together. Intimacy... I don't think this would be a good platform for that - the existing long distance products are probably better for that.
There's a ton of potential here. I think the proper rollout is to start with businesses. They'll start by sending out the headsets instead of the monitors and stands they send now. They'll not bother with having such large offices and parking lots anymore, saving them millions. From another angle, we'll have virtual concerts like Fortnight has been doing already, but they'll actually be done competently and not be lame - they'll be worth paying $2K for - it's in the same ballpark as people pay for physical meet and greets already. This leads to the headsets being widely available. Then people start having their regular social interactions with them, since they own the hardware anyways so there's no extra cost.
It's strange... this all seems so obvious, why have none of the existing headset makers done it? (Maybe it's not obvious - nobody else in the comments have said it yet... but this kind of stuff has been detailed in science fiction for decades.)
I'm so excited for Apple to enter this arena. Even though I'll most likely not be able to afford one, it's good to have more competition and innovation in this field. Future looks very promising in this regard.
Microsoft quickly realized that AR is only for the enterprise market. No human is going to pay $2,000 every 2-3 years for yet another device. And this is a device that’s largely a gimmick.
So now Microsoft has found the market for AR and things are going well. But the early dreams of the HoloLens being a consumer and enterprise product were quickly smashed.
So now Microsoft has found the market for AR and things are going well. But the early dreams of the HoloLens being a consumer and enterprise product were quickly smashed.
This is great! I will be able to play that extensive gaming library! Oh wait...
Agree completely. And let’s not forget Apple will have several “proof of concept” features ready at launch to demonstrate some of the possible future applications and inspire developers to get on the bandwagon (they did this with iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc.).
Idk, still looking for a use case scenario for iPad and Apple Watch.
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You can do AR from within a VR headset just fine - if you capture the real world using cameras and then display it to the wearer with additional content on top of it, it counts as AR. Current VR headsets already do this, but current consumer units aren't very good at it - e.g. the Quest 2 only has poor quality, low resolution black and white cameras, isn't fast enough to do high-resolution depth mapping, and isn't fast enough to capture the video stream at native fps, having to rely heavily on reprojection to make it tolerable for the wearer.
And you can theoretically do VR from within an AR headset. Current AR headsets do not have the ability to occlude real-world content, instead just drawing ghostly holograms on top of it, and also have very narrow fields of view. If you manage to solve those issues, then you could run an AR headset in "VR mode" by just occluding the entire real world and drawing content on the entire field of view.
This is why people go with names like "mixed reality", "XR", or "AR/VR", since there's obvious ways the devices can converge and both do the same things.
Since the second approach is only theoretical, that means that we're presumably talking about a VR headset capable of running in AR mode - but, given the price, hopefully much better quality than we have currently.
This makes sense to me. They should be used more as a tool, and not as a wearable.
If they priced it at $1000 that would signal that it was a mass-market consumer device and that is not where this technology is at this stage. This is a gen 1 product designed more as a proof of concept than as a product for everyone. It will likely be targeted at specific high value use cases that can justify the price. This will let Apple get a feel for what works and what doesn't in real life. It will let software developers work on what it means to build a good AR app.
When the tech is ready for the gen 2 device, then they can bring the price down to a more consumer friendly level and gear up for wider adoption. I don't think we are going to be at the stage of casual and constant AR immersion for a few more generations of tech and several years of development.
I sense another HomePod here. I know WHY its expensive and even understand it (to a degree). But at that price it'll never take off.
Why do you think the whole world is trying to force Apple to allow “read” apps “like Netflix.. cough cough” to provide us with a link, at least.
A link is all we need for that.