Video: Would You Pay $2000+ for Apple's AR/VR Headset?

[kc9hzn]

And there is some value in doing math by hand. Or growing your own vegetables or baking your own bread or working on your car yourself. It doesn't eclipse the value of accessing a worldwide talent pool or allowing people to work when they are most productive, etc. Nothing is black and white these days. You throw away your relationship to horses for the Benz, and that's ok.

I’m saying that there’s significantly more value in in-person interactions than in VR interactions when in-person is possible. I was saying that even before I realized VR chat is based around cartoon avatar versions of yourself, so I’m more confirmed in my opinion. And there may be more value in video interactions than VR. Even if VR were great and ubiquitous, there would certainly still be contexts where you might choose video over VR (eg you’re trying to show your partner products at the store and see which one you should pick up, or you want to show your family your new apartment).

 

[duffman9000]

It’s fine, I’m not really challenging the fact that you have the income you claim to have. (While it is true that income is hard to verify online, that might have been a cheap potshot on my part, for which I do apologize. I found it hard to resist the self reported income and self reported sex life comparison.) Like I said, if you’ve got the disposable income and want a high end VR headset, by all means buy Apple’s when it comes out.

Maybe the dude was jealous, it was poorly written so I had a hard time parsing it. I think his main claim, though, was that this headset wouldn’t be a pro headset (I’m not sure his logic about it) and thus wouldn’t be worth the cost (and I took that as meaning relative to other $2k professional VR headsets, like the kind you might use in welding). He could be right about that, he could be wrong.

For what it’s worth, I just saw the Horizon Worlds commercial last night. I’m sorry, but I can’t get over the cartoony avatar business. If I’m in VR hanging with friends (most of my friends are people I know personally, even if I don’t live in the same part of the country as them anymore) or family, I don’t want to be a cartoony avatar of myself, I’d rather be my own avatar (and video chat excels at that, while still allowing photo filters or MeMoji type avatars if I want those things). Not to mention that cartoony 3D avatars seem fairly unprofessional for a work environment (at least at any place more formal than the most informal of Silicon Valley startups). (Of course, in reality, it’s an attempt at averting the uncanny valley, as 3D [least of all on a device as cheap as the Oculus Quest] isn’t good enough to generate a 3D CGI version of you*. You could possibly do something with deep fake technologies to graft your face and body shape onto existing 3D footage of a real human, but that would almost certainly be too taxing for the Quest computationally once you’ve got more than one or two people you’re trying to generate.)

* It might be good enough to create a 3D GCI image of Mark Zuckerberg, but not you or I!

I will evaluate Apple’s AR/VR and I hope it solves what I dislike about current VR. If they somehow solve these issues then I’ll spend money on 1st gen hardware.

For $2k+ it better solve a lot of problems. 4K micro LED displays. 120 Hz refresh rate. Capable hardware to drive those displays. Thin and light enough to wear comfortable enough to watch a movie. Solve the god ray problem like Sony will likely do on their next headset. I’m probably asking for the equivalent of magic.

 

[williedigital]

I’m saying that there’s significantly more value in in-person interactions than in VR interactions when in-person is possible. I was saying that even before I realized VR chat is based around cartoon avatar versions of yourself, so I’m more confirmed in my opinion. And there may be more value in video interactions than VR. Even if VR were great and ubiquitous, there would certainly still be contexts where you might choose video over VR (eg you’re trying to show your partner products at the store and see which one you should pick up, or you want to show your family your new apartment).

Almost anything is possible at a cost. The question is whether the benefits in the typical business meeting are worth the costs. I'd say rarely.

 

[williedigital]

It’s not that easy. Lasik is getting more and more affordable, but it’s likely never going to be as cheap as a pair of prescription glasses from one of those online stores that focus on generic prescription lenses. But sometimes vision quality degrades long term post-Lasik and you need LASIK again, and not all vision issues are a great fit for it.

Lasik already has cheaper long-term cost if you consider people typically replace glasses annually, often own multiple pairs at a time due to need for a backup, different contexts (shaded lenses for driving/sports), and fashion. And this ignores the 100s of millions of people who spend on contact lenses that are essentially a much worse stopgap version of laser correction.

 

[Bodhitree]

My apologies, didn't see it.

In short, I expect VR/AR to subsume a huge range of "real world" activities, from dating to dining out to tourism to education. I think it will be much more revolutionary than smartphones and arguably more than the internet.

At the highest level, anything that requires moving people from one place to another (visiting Machu Picchu) or where there are physical constraints on access (lecture hall size, anything with a line) are possible targets. Supplement this with experiences that go "beyond" real life (first person shooter game at Machu Picchu, the fantasy lands of movies, sex with an alien, etc.).

Now, I don't know if the tech is good enough yet, but I expect one day it will be, but mostly I am basing this on the fact that almost anyone under 40 I know is deeply, deeply into video games and NOT into real world interaction. Rather than dinner and a movie, they have already replaced this with delivery and networked gaming. The gen-z aren't even really into travel, partly because it is so easy and has lost it's class cachet, and partly because the world is radically integrating into relatively homogenous circumstances.

I don't necessarily think all these changes will be positive, or that they appeal to me, but I think if one goes deep into the world of a random 20 year old now, this looks like the rough outlines of the future.

Most interesting post I’ve read in a while. I certainly hope you aren’t correct, as most people have enough difficulties living in the real world and understanding themselves without getting lost in virtual worlds.

 

[Malus120]

IMHO, if it's going to be $2000 it's going to have to be a revolutionary device that makes every other VR/AR headset on the market look obsolete. In other words it needs to do for VR/AR what the iPhone did for smartphones (make them appealing to a mainstream audience)
If it can do that? Sure I, and many others may well be willing to part with $2000 even if that price seems absolutely out of this world right now.
OTOH, If it's just an "also ran" product like AppleTV? Hell no! I'm not even sure being a "best in class" product like the Apple Watch would be good enough to justify a price that's likely to be 4x more than PSVR2...

 

[moodler]

Most interesting post I’ve read in a while. I certainly hope you aren’t correct, as most people have enough difficulties living in the real world and understanding themselves without getting lost in virtual worlds.

Plenty are lost in virtual worlds already most of the time. Look at gamers, for example. It's easy to spend hundreds of hours completing those big console games.

But there are plenty of applications for VR that don't mean "further apart from reality".

For example, in 10 years, imagine your AR/VR glasses allowed you to connect to a humanoid robot on the other side of the world. There could be fleets of these things in parking bays or sitting around like scooters in many cities. The robot itself doesn't need to have much AI, apart from movement stuff like Boston Dynamics bots. So now, through your glasses, you can basically teleport yourself instantly across the world and walk around in it. Visit an office. Attend a live conference. Go climb Machu Pichu if you like. As someone who has travelled a LOT, that's pretty compelling IMO.

 

[Bodhitree]

Plenty are lost in virtual worlds already most of the time. Look at gamers, for example. It's easy to spend hundreds of hours completing those big console games.

But there are plenty of applications for VR that don't mean "further apart from reality".

For example, in 10 years, imagine your AR/VR glasses allowed you to connect to a humanoid robot on the other side of the world. There could be fleets of these things in parking bays or sitting around like scooters in many cities. The robot itself doesn't need to have much AI, apart from movement stuff like Boston Dynamics bots. So now, through your glasses, you can basically teleport yourself instantly across the world and walk around in it. Visit an office. Attend a live conference. Go climb Machu Pichu if you like. As someone who has travelled a LOT, that's pretty compelling IMO.

Well, I would still consider that being lost in a virtual world. It doesn’t seem compelling to me, compared to really going there and walking up that long path to Macho Pichu and seeing those incredible close-fitted granite blocks for yourself.

The whole thing about gaming and virtual presence is it gives you the impression you’ve done things that you haven’t actually done and that you might not agree to if you were really there. In most RPGs you are a brutal killer, slaying all kinds of creatures and beings left right and center. You do this almost without noticing. In the real world, you are not capable of that, or willing to do it. It just happens to be that the rules of the game cast you in that role, but it doesn’t help you grow or become more mature in any real sense of the word.

I think virtual worlds are a dangerous waste of time. They condition your mind to think you are something other than you are. It doesn’t help you get in touch with your deeper self, who you really are. Most people are lost in the real world, and getting hung up on some designer’s pre-authored vision is not helpful.

 

[Quotenfrau]

No it's too expensive.

Even the porn industry has not embraced the device. On torrent sites there are no movies for Apple VR.

 

[dwaite]

No it's too expensive.

Even the porn industry has not embraced the device. On torrent sites there are no movies for Apple VR.

It also doesn’t help that there hasn’t been a way to shoot spatial footage without equipment and assistance from Apple. Porn probably wasn’t as high on the queue.

Traditionally encoded 3D video plays fine, no Apple-specific files required.

 

[Nuno Lopes]

$2k+on a device for personal use would need to do at least on thing that I need every day yet much better.

The concept over all, the sum of its parts, does not yet justify the price tag as much as I love technology.

That one thing for me would be to provide the facility of large and wide portable external display for my Mac. A variable size external display. Something useful not only while at the office but anywhere I would go. And be extremely usable, comfortable with all the visual acumen of an high density display.

Today the size of laptop displays are a limiting factor in terms of usability. Both for productivity as well as entertainment.

Do that one thing very very well and the I would be overly interested in learning all the other benefits of such a device.

That one thing approach was for me what attracted me to the iPhone. Not only was a mobile phone, phone calls and messages, something that we were used to already, but also did very well the Internet in the pocket that we wanted. Previously the second was mostly done at the desk. Then I learned to use everything else and things evolved from that.

Cheers.

PS: I’m not interested as interested in another display to watch movies and series from Apple TV+ or whatever other provider. The price tag for that matter is way beyond value I would give to such a feature. I have plenty of displays for that.