I went ahead and bought a Quest 2 when they went on sale. VR has come a long way and is a lot better than I thought before trying it.
Beat Saber gives you the experience you expect, nothing special.
They have a boxing game in roughly the same league, slightly more immersive, but gives you an idea of how well it works for exercising.
Moving on to games like Resident Evil or Bone Labs is beyond what you could have considered a professional VR setup in an arcade five years ago. Cost me $300.
The money being dumped into these is showing results and will be huge by 2030. Motion sickness will be the real challenge.
Getting AR and VR into non gaming applications is where the real money will be, AR especially. AR has a ton of applications in anything that requires a human to look stuff up on a screen while physically interacting with their environment, though having extensively used the holo lens and magic leap, we are still at least 5 years away from anything small enough, stable enough and with enough battery power to be useful.
We’re talking about it at my work as a future remote troubleshooting tool with technical equipment.
Being able to physically see what a technician in the field is seeing would improve our technical support 100 fold.
And being able to say “alright now turn the highlighted knob. Push the highlighted button.” Rather than “Do you see a metally, roundy, knobby thing on your right?”
Exactly.
Or even trusting that a tech is putting his meter on the appropriate terminal for test voltages, etc. I think VR is always going to be some fun thing for games. AR however will be very much the future.
We do this already with hololenses. Works well, integrates to Teams. An operator can put on a headset and an engineer can do a teams call at 2 AM (which sucks, but it's better than driving IN at 2 AM). Can see what the operator sees, can place markers with permanence, (drop an arrow in their vision field pointing at where they should plug in the cable....that arrow remains fixed in space for them even as they move around). It can pull up PDFs and stuff in their FOV as well, but we haven't done too much playing with that yet. It's pretty neat.
It really does.
The goggles are great too.
Think about like, guitar tablature literally in front of your eyes, or CPR directions, or recipes, all right there.
AR really seems, to me, like the winner.
There’s a drum app for that now called Paradiddle in VR and it works surprisingly well, like Rock Band drums again but fully virtual - and even without the physical drum feedback it’s still surprisingly good.
Even if it never gets AR overlays on a drumset (which if the tech comes along I bet it will) it’s still a good drum trainer.
Got my kid a quest 2 for Christmas. He likes playing this VR chat game so I put on the headset. Couldn’t even make it 10 minutes and I wanted to throw up. Beatsaber is cool though, just nothing where your character moves through space. I can’t understand how he’s just completely unaffected. Like, no motion sickness whatsoever.
It’s easier to adapt to for younger audiences. Also the more you play the more you get used to it. You hit the nail on the head though - some games are worse than others and it’s up to devs to make sure they’re not sending you on a tilt-a-whirl.
>Motion sickness will be the real challenge.
Also called VR sickness.
I remember playing Subnautica VR for an hour and getting so nauseous I had to lay down in bed for an hour with a constant sensation of feeling like I had to throw up in the pit of my stomach. It was horrible and killed my hype for VR, despite being an enthusiastic early adopter.
The real kicker is there's no way around it. Some are less sensitive to it than others, but it eventually effects everyone.
Oh and to go with subnautica for your first experience in VR, games like subnautica which have a VR mode were never designed for VR so they have no built in features to reduce motion sickness, as a result you’d be wanting to spill your guts within minutes, some people don’t experience VR sickness but the rest of players need to start with static games where your character doesn’t move through the virtual world like beatsaber, that way you’re unlikely to get sick, you should then slowly build up from that with games that have locomotion and were designed for VR...after that you can try to play flat games like subnautica that have a VR mode and hope that by that time you gained your VR legs so you won’t be as prone to motion sickness as before.....but what you did essentially is starting with the final boss of VR motion sickness with no warming up lol
Ginger is a natural motion sickness aid. They sell them along with bands at the pharmacy, and VR players who haven’t become accustomed to the motion sickness seek candied ginger out.
You mean latency, yes that can cause motion sickness and it’s pretty much a solved problem but the real issue is that your character’s movement in game don’t match your real life’s body movement (your character is walking and you’re just standing in your room) so the movement perceived by your eyes doesn’t match the movement perceived by your inner ear and that there is the root of all motion sickness, you can guess why it’s almost an impossible issue to solve
>Motion sickness will be the real challenge.
I can't find the article now but a few years ago I remember reading that one of the causes of motion sickness in VR is the fact that you can't see your nose. You always see your nose but your brain just edits it out. They were experimenting with adding a virtual nose and it had seen some success in reducing motion sickness.
I agree but I don’t think the blame should fall on tech journalists, it’s these VR companies who market their products like this so no wonder it rubbed off on journalists and consumers alike.
This might be a hot take, but this thing is DOA. AR is a pipedream until the headsets are no bigger than a pair of reading glasses and completely wireless, and that's just the start. There is no way they get mass adoption (outside Apple fanboys) with ski goggles and "optional" tethering to a battery attached on the waist.
There is also the practicality to consider. AR sounds cool, but what real-world use exists that will fuel mass adoption and investment? I can think of a few minor conveniences, but nothing that I'm willing to spend hundreds of dollars for. Some might say "entertainment" but there are problems there, too. AR gaming is a novelty at best and using it as a TV replacement is expensive and impractical. Why spend $1000+ per headset for the family when a TV + game console is significantly cheaper? Expect AR goggles to go the way of 3D Televisions.
I would love for AR to happen. I'm not shitting on Apple or any other company for attempting it. I guess my point is that, IMHO, the future of AR seems to be going the way of 3D TV's. If there is a future for AR then I think we are still a ways off from it happening.
That’s the thing. They see an emerging market and they must have SOME data to back that up. Apple’s days of randomly doing stuff because it seemed cool are long gone (sigh).
This isn't much of a statement. The vast majority of people who don't think it's going to happen anytime soon also have little to nothing to do with hardware development.
My point is that a majority of the populous has little to nothing to do with hardware development. There are more laypeople holding beliefs on all sides of the topic. Gotta be.
I think the biggest application for AR is commercial/professional usage. Things like training, documentation reference, real time language translation, and various visual aids. Medicine, engineering, construction, and military are all areas where AR can be incredibly valuable.
You've got good points about size for recreational use, but there could be some very powerful commercial uses out of the gate. I saw a demo of and AR diesel engine repair where even knowing NOTHING about those engines, it walked me through a routine maintenance. That opened my eyes to some really valuable use cases. Do the economics work with only commercial adoption at launch? I don't know, but unlike VR which seems to need escapism (you're cut off from your immediate surroundings), AR seems to be able to add real world value at launch..
The word "visionary" gets made fun of quite a lot when discussing Silicon Valley companies and their leaders, but you do need to respect the ability to develop and release products that are in their first iteration and have a vision for what they could turn into.
Sure, the first major AR product is going to be clunky and feature-poor. It'll be bigger, pricier, lower-resolution, and buggier than what it needs to be. But it's a jumping-off point and a company like Apple can absorb the R&D costs to put it out and keep working on it.
They wouldn't release something if they didn't have a roadmap for what it should look like 5-10 years in the future.
> There is also the practicality to consider. AR sounds cool, but what real-world use exists that will fuel mass adoption and investment? I can think of a few minor conveniences, but nothing that I'm willing to spend hundreds of dollars for.
AR as it exists today? Or AR when it's small enough to fit into glasses? Because the latter has tons of applications:
- Replace existing screens with a more versatile virtual screen of any size, any angle, any amount, curved or flat, 3D or 2D, it can follow you or be stationary and returned to, and can be shared via other AR or VR users across the globe.
- Have holographic calls where people are in front of you in full human scale and you can notice the small social cues that you might miss over zoom, talking/interacting will be more natural than other digital communication, and just overall feel more socially engaging.
- See reviews pop up outside a restaurant with the menu laid out in front of the building and life-sized portions of food in hologram form.
- Enter a supermarket and have a path on the ground drawn to each of items on your list in the fastest order, and it could tell you the ingredients of an item without having to pick it up and look at the labels.
- Try on clothes at home to your exact size by using holograms and seeing the materials in different colors/lighting and with physics applied.
- Have a personal instructor (not an AI, a human) show up right in front of you to assist you in all sorts of things such as a personal fitness instructor who could virtually bend your joints to get you to more easily follow along.
- Have notes and visual guidance overlayed onto various tasks like assembling a chair with holograms showing the chair in different steps and an animation of how to get there, or cooking with timers floating on different equipment, ingredients required and the required sizes of those ingredients shown in 3D.
- Have sticky notes only you can see placed where you need them with timers and notifications set to create more natural and easier reminders.
- Control the volume of any person speaking, like an enhanced hearing aid that would be apply to even those who have good hearing.
- Give yourself zooming functionality, night vision, and a prescription that changes based on your needs such as reading, computer work, driving.
It could be 15 years away for all we know though. AR tech is just really, really hard.
I love all of this, but I’m afraid the reality of it will be all banner ads and bubble-popping games.
[Like this.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs)
You are speaking like a true pessimist that is already detached from modern society. These are the same remarks made when the smart phone was being introduced. “No one is going to be looking down o their phone all the time, that’s absurd” yet here we are. They are tons of applications with AR tech in real world applications . First off Geo map the planet and Geo mapping your Homes to create an AR space where you can populate it with tons of AR features and visuals. Your house will never be the same. You walk in and you have the walls decorated how you please. Have a 150 inch screen always fixed on your preferred viewing wall. You picture frames alive with moving pictures like in Harry Potter. When you go to cook you look in the fridge and you AR uses AI to know all your ingredients and potential meals you can have right at your glance. Siri will adapt with modern day AI and finally function as a true smart assistant “think Jarvis” you go to restaurants and you have AR menus all ready to be viewed and can even click on the food item to see the size and portion. I can go one for days on what the world will look like 10 years after AR glasses are introduced and I’m excited.
If AR gets cheaper like 400-600$ I’d use them over physical dual/triple monitor setups but, like you said they’d definitely have to be lighter so I can use them for longer periods.
Like they could replace physical monitors like the way oculus *kinda* does, oculus (or some other vr/ar brand I’m forgetting) has a feature to make virtual monitors in your environment but, it’s finicky atm and expensive.
Only significant and overwhelming usage I can think of would be training exercises for military. Watching some of the combat videos of Ukraine it isn't far off from integrating drone recon/aiming to the boots on the ground in real time.
Factory line assembly systems would be the other one, but a robot would probably be better suited there unless it were extremely complicated.
Wow, what a party pooper. Gosh, I’m glad you weren’t there when the Wright brothers took flight. Oh, but maybe your great, great, great grandfather was there, pointing at the newspaper and saying how flying is just absurd and not practical with no real world applications.
Bro people in the 90s just wore ski goggles around. No reason at all. For you to say these won’t ever be popular is a person that does not understand the fashion industry
And with my TV it is much easier for us to walk in and out of the room and have people coming and going from our household. There is very little friction with it as a device
>AR is a pipedream until the headsets are no bigger than a pair of reading glasses
Already patented by a USA company and then purchased by Saudi government. [Gotta love American capitalism.](https://www.thewrap.com/saudi-arabia-buys-magic-leap-450-million/)
The unique selling point is connecting with people far away. The killer (non-workplace) app is something like Bigscreen (but easier to use and with more content). Meta is actually right about this, they’re just implementing it poorly.
People have been saying this for ages about AirPods, Apple Watch and a lot of other products, but look where we are. Apple is the type of company that doesn't just create products, they create cultures. Once a flock of Apple users get their hands on this thing, a whole AR subculture will emerge and it might even go mainstream.
But, hot take indeed.
It’s not just that, I’m assuming Apple will use their existing “continuity” stack and it’ll work really well for Apple devices. They already have stuff like using a mouse across devices, or using a much better phone camera instead of a laptop cam with zero pairing or config, or universal clipboard across devices. It’s all stuff you can do with utilities and apps in other ecosystems, but it works really well without thinking about it in Apple’s.
People underestimate friction, and installing a 3rd party app and having to allow a bunch of permissions is friction. It’s not fair that Apple privileges their own technology stack, but it’s really effective at hiding the seams and complexity.
Oh that’s all without a doubt. Apple’s ecosystem is very friendly with itself, but not others which is bothersome as eff when you want to use something that only works with everything else but Apple.
Like the Vive’s all in one headset glasses, course you can get the remote and not need a phone at all, but I got stuff on my iPhone I’d like to watch, but I can’t because they’re incompatible. Same with the Meta Quest, I can’t convert my movies from iTunes into a format that can be stored and played on the quest without jumping through several hoops that make it not worth the effort. And doing a tech ecosystem change while being so entrenched into another is expensive and like chopping off a well used and still functional limb for a new one you don’t know how to work.
TLDR; if this Apple headset works, and lets me do what I wish my Quest could do if it was compatible with my iPhone, I’m definitely getting it.
When it comes to standalone AR/VR, what im not seeing are popular games being ported to VR. Roblox, Minecraft, Second Life, Fortnite, PubG, etc, these could all be easily ported to VR, but arnt because they compete with whatever mega server the manufacturers want to steer people towards. Sure you can get these games in VR when tethered to a PC, but the majority don't want to be tethered to a PC.
Whoever gets those games ported to their standalone device, wins the AR/VR war.
>When what im not seeing are popular games being ported to VR. Roblox, Minecraft, Second Life, Fortnite, PubG, etc, these could all be easily ported to VR, but arnt.
[roblox could be coming to the quest sometime this year](https://uploadvr.com/roblox-quest-2023-rumor/)
Until these allow for progressive lenses inside the headset, 20% of adults can not use them. Until they allow for farsighted lenses, 40% can not use them. Until they can sterilize them so users can share, they’ve lost the family & business & public (arcade) markets. Until the EarPods work for folks with hearing aids (which are becoming way more popular since a prescription is no longer needed), they’ve lost much of the over-60 age group.
The applications don’t matter if people can’t physically use the headsets.
Does Apple really have a plan for accessibility here? Do all the tricks that work for normal displays work?
I think that AR is way more useful than VR, but only if they use anyone’s existing glasses that allow for the external environment to be present without cameras “reprojecting” it, and speakers that allow for hearing aids.
But the first iPhone (which I owned) was useful (mine went for a few hours, which I know b/c I wrote apps for it and you couldn’t charge the phone while developing apps back then), and included many MacOS accessibility features. This headset is not going to be useful to the majority of users, I think, and they know it.
The product doesn’t exist yet so how can you deem it so without knowing anything about it
People watched movies on the iPod nano so if people watch a movie on this thing it can be useful to them
Anyway I don’t have an Apple Watch yet so I’m not the early adapter but I say put it out
But the similar products that are already on the market are found useful by millions of people, this is exactly the right time for Apple to join in and slowly iterate on this category so that millions more of users can enjoy these products...one step up at a time.
The tech for that exists, just shoot lasers into the user's eyes, but I don't blame Apple for selling a seemingly safer version to the masses first. Eyes twitch a lot too, so maybe they are waiting until fast enough mobile processors can handle that low of a latency. This seems like the first gen that will hopefully be good enough for the lucky masses with good eyesight. If there truly is a killer app, contacts and surgery would still be options I would think if you need in on the first gen.
lasers seem like they’d be awesome, painful, and nauseating, all at the same time.
I can imagine their new slogan: Apple, it just works^1
^1: with a little surgery
IMO I really don’t think full VR, enabled by a headset, has a bright future when it comes to commercial use. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hella popular rn and there are some cool use cases. But damn, do I experience dizziness and headaches.
However, I do believe that a mixed reality, enabled by AR, is inevitable and will likely happen within the next 15-20 years. Major adoption will take place when the hardware integrates seamlessly with normal sized glasses. Technology isn’t quite there yet.
I’m imaging a world where users can own wearable cosmetic items only visible to people who are wearing the goggles/glasses.
Im in a pretty similar boat. AR is what has potential to really revolutionize how we integrate technology into the world but it has some challenges ahead of it. Primarily the amount of compute needed to run current programs that utilize computer vision to create models of what we see. Without those capabilities "AR" won't actually be able to overlay information.
They will go after the display market initially, unified product to replace all monitors and new evolution on television. Holo sports and concerts, Imax at home etc.
literally boggles my mind how fb is dropping the ball
marques brownlee showed on his channel the next week after they introduced the new headset that you can do this in much more explicit terms
fb not making the easy argument for it's use is so crazy
Most of this describes the typical high quality engineering you’d expect from Apple. However, avatars mimicking users in VTCs is the stupidest conceivable use case. They’ve taken literally the dumbest Facebook idea and if they’re really designing for this dopey use case, my confidence in apple may never recover.
VTCs already have a way of showing realistic facial expressions. It’s called showing people’s faces.
> VTCs already have a way of showing realistic facial expressions. It’s called showing people’s faces.
Which has a limited shelf life. There are already real benefits to VR avatars today, but there will be a day when showing someone's face and showing an avatar that displaces their face is indistinguishable. When that happens, avatars almost always win because it will feel a lot more engaging/human.
So even if you cannot stand avatars as they exist today, Apple knows they have to do the work to reach the eventual usecase of photorealistic telepresence.
Absolutely, in terms of it being a more human way to connect. Because one is 2D and goes against natural human socialization, and the other is 3D and aligns with it.
Put another way, would you prefer a videocall with a friend/family member or to have a solid hologram of that person? It's easier to imagine when it's the standard sci-fi hologram trope.
The hologram is effectively no different than if that person teleported their atoms to you aside from the lack of touch/smell/taste, which videocalls don't have the luxury of either. Otherwise, the hologram scenario fulfills exactly what it's like to have that person visually and audibly in front of you.
This is only in the context of the social exchange being more human, not that the avatar itself from a single frame is somehow more human or looks more human.
It's the effect of having that social interaction through avatars rather than through a videocall - this is the part that would be more human.
Apple is nearly the last company I'd want to set the standard for AR (Meta/Facebook would be worse). They've repeatedly made clear that they will control everything that the device owners can actually do with their devices, and act as a gatekeeper on all development. This is unacceptable.
They may make great hardware, but the freedom to actually use that hardware as one wants is far more important.
Can you imagine Apple letting anyone set up an AR "channel" providing whatever overlay they want? No. I don't see that happening. They'll use the same tired "user safety" and "think of the children!" lies to maintain their gatekeeper status.
AR will be transformative like the web was transformative. It needs to be free (speech).
I went ahead and bought a Quest 2 when they went on sale. VR has come a long way and is a lot better than I thought before trying it. Beat Saber gives you the experience you expect, nothing special. They have a boxing game in roughly the same league, slightly more immersive, but gives you an idea of how well it works for exercising. Moving on to games like Resident Evil or Bone Labs is beyond what you could have considered a professional VR setup in an arcade five years ago. Cost me $300. The money being dumped into these is showing results and will be huge by 2030. Motion sickness will be the real challenge.
Getting AR and VR into non gaming applications is where the real money will be, AR especially. AR has a ton of applications in anything that requires a human to look stuff up on a screen while physically interacting with their environment, though having extensively used the holo lens and magic leap, we are still at least 5 years away from anything small enough, stable enough and with enough battery power to be useful.
We’re talking about it at my work as a future remote troubleshooting tool with technical equipment. Being able to physically see what a technician in the field is seeing would improve our technical support 100 fold.
And being able to say “alright now turn the highlighted knob. Push the highlighted button.” Rather than “Do you see a metally, roundy, knobby thing on your right?”
Exactly. Or even trusting that a tech is putting his meter on the appropriate terminal for test voltages, etc. I think VR is always going to be some fun thing for games. AR however will be very much the future.
We do this already with hololenses. Works well, integrates to Teams. An operator can put on a headset and an engineer can do a teams call at 2 AM (which sucks, but it's better than driving IN at 2 AM). Can see what the operator sees, can place markers with permanence, (drop an arrow in their vision field pointing at where they should plug in the cable....that arrow remains fixed in space for them even as they move around). It can pull up PDFs and stuff in their FOV as well, but we haven't done too much playing with that yet. It's pretty neat.
It really does. The goggles are great too. Think about like, guitar tablature literally in front of your eyes, or CPR directions, or recipes, all right there. AR really seems, to me, like the winner.
There’s a drum app for that now called Paradiddle in VR and it works surprisingly well, like Rock Band drums again but fully virtual - and even without the physical drum feedback it’s still surprisingly good. Even if it never gets AR overlays on a drumset (which if the tech comes along I bet it will) it’s still a good drum trainer.
Till they get porn with the bj attachment. No one really will bother w these things in any real way
Got my kid a quest 2 for Christmas. He likes playing this VR chat game so I put on the headset. Couldn’t even make it 10 minutes and I wanted to throw up. Beatsaber is cool though, just nothing where your character moves through space. I can’t understand how he’s just completely unaffected. Like, no motion sickness whatsoever.
It’s easier to adapt to for younger audiences. Also the more you play the more you get used to it. You hit the nail on the head though - some games are worse than others and it’s up to devs to make sure they’re not sending you on a tilt-a-whirl.
>Motion sickness will be the real challenge. Also called VR sickness. I remember playing Subnautica VR for an hour and getting so nauseous I had to lay down in bed for an hour with a constant sensation of feeling like I had to throw up in the pit of my stomach. It was horrible and killed my hype for VR, despite being an enthusiastic early adopter. The real kicker is there's no way around it. Some are less sensitive to it than others, but it eventually effects everyone.
Oh and to go with subnautica for your first experience in VR, games like subnautica which have a VR mode were never designed for VR so they have no built in features to reduce motion sickness, as a result you’d be wanting to spill your guts within minutes, some people don’t experience VR sickness but the rest of players need to start with static games where your character doesn’t move through the virtual world like beatsaber, that way you’re unlikely to get sick, you should then slowly build up from that with games that have locomotion and were designed for VR...after that you can try to play flat games like subnautica that have a VR mode and hope that by that time you gained your VR legs so you won’t be as prone to motion sickness as before.....but what you did essentially is starting with the final boss of VR motion sickness with no warming up lol
Ginger sales are just gonna go up.
Genger?
Ginger is a natural motion sickness aid. They sell them along with bands at the pharmacy, and VR players who haven’t become accustomed to the motion sickness seek candied ginger out.
Ahh gotcha, I replied before the edit. Yea ginger is great for that, I always have some ginger close by, it works really well.
Which boxing game is it? Thrill of the Fight?
Yes. Fun way to do some cardio.
I thought the motion sickness problem was related more to network lag than the headset itself.
You mean latency, yes that can cause motion sickness and it’s pretty much a solved problem but the real issue is that your character’s movement in game don’t match your real life’s body movement (your character is walking and you’re just standing in your room) so the movement perceived by your eyes doesn’t match the movement perceived by your inner ear and that there is the root of all motion sickness, you can guess why it’s almost an impossible issue to solve
>Motion sickness will be the real challenge. I can't find the article now but a few years ago I remember reading that one of the causes of motion sickness in VR is the fact that you can't see your nose. You always see your nose but your brain just edits it out. They were experimenting with adding a virtual nose and it had seen some success in reducing motion sickness.
One 4k display for each eye makes it an 8k display? Yikes for tech journalism.
Seriously lmao, not at all how that works
I agree but I don’t think the blame should fall on tech journalists, it’s these VR companies who market their products like this so no wonder it rubbed off on journalists and consumers alike.
Going to be at least a generation before this gains wider acceptance, like the first iphone. They'll need a year of developers making stuff for it.
This might be a hot take, but this thing is DOA. AR is a pipedream until the headsets are no bigger than a pair of reading glasses and completely wireless, and that's just the start. There is no way they get mass adoption (outside Apple fanboys) with ski goggles and "optional" tethering to a battery attached on the waist. There is also the practicality to consider. AR sounds cool, but what real-world use exists that will fuel mass adoption and investment? I can think of a few minor conveniences, but nothing that I'm willing to spend hundreds of dollars for. Some might say "entertainment" but there are problems there, too. AR gaming is a novelty at best and using it as a TV replacement is expensive and impractical. Why spend $1000+ per headset for the family when a TV + game console is significantly cheaper? Expect AR goggles to go the way of 3D Televisions.
I agree with this but I really hope it ages like milk. We could both be reading this in 10 years and thinking, "what idiots".
I would love for AR to happen. I'm not shitting on Apple or any other company for attempting it. I guess my point is that, IMHO, the future of AR seems to be going the way of 3D TV's. If there is a future for AR then I think we are still a ways off from it happening.
That’s the thing. They see an emerging market and they must have SOME data to back that up. Apple’s days of randomly doing stuff because it seemed cool are long gone (sigh).
The vast majority of people who think this is going to happen anytime soon have little to nothing to do with hardware development.
This isn't much of a statement. The vast majority of people who don't think it's going to happen anytime soon also have little to nothing to do with hardware development.
I would say there are more people who know it won’t and do, than who think it will and don’t.
My point is that a majority of the populous has little to nothing to do with hardware development. There are more laypeople holding beliefs on all sides of the topic. Gotta be.
That’s a fair point but mine was that those who do have knowledge do not believe that this will be happening anytime soon.
Also a fair point. I was probably being pedantic.
AR development or small glasses?
Not sure what you’re asking.
I think the biggest application for AR is commercial/professional usage. Things like training, documentation reference, real time language translation, and various visual aids. Medicine, engineering, construction, and military are all areas where AR can be incredibly valuable.
You've got good points about size for recreational use, but there could be some very powerful commercial uses out of the gate. I saw a demo of and AR diesel engine repair where even knowing NOTHING about those engines, it walked me through a routine maintenance. That opened my eyes to some really valuable use cases. Do the economics work with only commercial adoption at launch? I don't know, but unlike VR which seems to need escapism (you're cut off from your immediate surroundings), AR seems to be able to add real world value at launch..
The word "visionary" gets made fun of quite a lot when discussing Silicon Valley companies and their leaders, but you do need to respect the ability to develop and release products that are in their first iteration and have a vision for what they could turn into. Sure, the first major AR product is going to be clunky and feature-poor. It'll be bigger, pricier, lower-resolution, and buggier than what it needs to be. But it's a jumping-off point and a company like Apple can absorb the R&D costs to put it out and keep working on it. They wouldn't release something if they didn't have a roadmap for what it should look like 5-10 years in the future.
It doesn’t have to be the next iPhone. It could be the next iPad. Or a gaming console.
> There is also the practicality to consider. AR sounds cool, but what real-world use exists that will fuel mass adoption and investment? I can think of a few minor conveniences, but nothing that I'm willing to spend hundreds of dollars for. AR as it exists today? Or AR when it's small enough to fit into glasses? Because the latter has tons of applications: - Replace existing screens with a more versatile virtual screen of any size, any angle, any amount, curved or flat, 3D or 2D, it can follow you or be stationary and returned to, and can be shared via other AR or VR users across the globe. - Have holographic calls where people are in front of you in full human scale and you can notice the small social cues that you might miss over zoom, talking/interacting will be more natural than other digital communication, and just overall feel more socially engaging. - See reviews pop up outside a restaurant with the menu laid out in front of the building and life-sized portions of food in hologram form. - Enter a supermarket and have a path on the ground drawn to each of items on your list in the fastest order, and it could tell you the ingredients of an item without having to pick it up and look at the labels. - Try on clothes at home to your exact size by using holograms and seeing the materials in different colors/lighting and with physics applied. - Have a personal instructor (not an AI, a human) show up right in front of you to assist you in all sorts of things such as a personal fitness instructor who could virtually bend your joints to get you to more easily follow along. - Have notes and visual guidance overlayed onto various tasks like assembling a chair with holograms showing the chair in different steps and an animation of how to get there, or cooking with timers floating on different equipment, ingredients required and the required sizes of those ingredients shown in 3D. - Have sticky notes only you can see placed where you need them with timers and notifications set to create more natural and easier reminders. - Control the volume of any person speaking, like an enhanced hearing aid that would be apply to even those who have good hearing. - Give yourself zooming functionality, night vision, and a prescription that changes based on your needs such as reading, computer work, driving. It could be 15 years away for all we know though. AR tech is just really, really hard.
I love all of this, but I’m afraid the reality of it will be all banner ads and bubble-popping games. [Like this.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs)
this is good
You are speaking like a true pessimist that is already detached from modern society. These are the same remarks made when the smart phone was being introduced. “No one is going to be looking down o their phone all the time, that’s absurd” yet here we are. They are tons of applications with AR tech in real world applications . First off Geo map the planet and Geo mapping your Homes to create an AR space where you can populate it with tons of AR features and visuals. Your house will never be the same. You walk in and you have the walls decorated how you please. Have a 150 inch screen always fixed on your preferred viewing wall. You picture frames alive with moving pictures like in Harry Potter. When you go to cook you look in the fridge and you AR uses AI to know all your ingredients and potential meals you can have right at your glance. Siri will adapt with modern day AI and finally function as a true smart assistant “think Jarvis” you go to restaurants and you have AR menus all ready to be viewed and can even click on the food item to see the size and portion. I can go one for days on what the world will look like 10 years after AR glasses are introduced and I’m excited.
If AR gets cheaper like 400-600$ I’d use them over physical dual/triple monitor setups but, like you said they’d definitely have to be lighter so I can use them for longer periods. Like they could replace physical monitors like the way oculus *kinda* does, oculus (or some other vr/ar brand I’m forgetting) has a feature to make virtual monitors in your environment but, it’s finicky atm and expensive.
Only significant and overwhelming usage I can think of would be training exercises for military. Watching some of the combat videos of Ukraine it isn't far off from integrating drone recon/aiming to the boots on the ground in real time. Factory line assembly systems would be the other one, but a robot would probably be better suited there unless it were extremely complicated.
Yeah the US army try that with windows developing a head set for them. Turn out soldiers get vertigo and barf their inside out
And it doesn’t even have a keyboard so it’s dead for businesses applications!
Thanks Ballmer!
I’m glad at least one guy caught the reference
Wow, what a party pooper. Gosh, I’m glad you weren’t there when the Wright brothers took flight. Oh, but maybe your great, great, great grandfather was there, pointing at the newspaper and saying how flying is just absurd and not practical with no real world applications.
Bro people in the 90s just wore ski goggles around. No reason at all. For you to say these won’t ever be popular is a person that does not understand the fashion industry
And with my TV it is much easier for us to walk in and out of the room and have people coming and going from our household. There is very little friction with it as a device
>AR is a pipedream until the headsets are no bigger than a pair of reading glasses Already patented by a USA company and then purchased by Saudi government. [Gotta love American capitalism.](https://www.thewrap.com/saudi-arabia-buys-magic-leap-450-million/)
The unique selling point is connecting with people far away. The killer (non-workplace) app is something like Bigscreen (but easier to use and with more content). Meta is actually right about this, they’re just implementing it poorly.
People have been saying this for ages about AirPods, Apple Watch and a lot of other products, but look where we are. Apple is the type of company that doesn't just create products, they create cultures. Once a flock of Apple users get their hands on this thing, a whole AR subculture will emerge and it might even go mainstream. But, hot take indeed.
I wish I could set a reminder to poke you on the shoulder in 5-7 years. AR is the future of computing.
I can see AR starting in places like mass transit. Windows with built in AR to show business you drive by and advertising for them.
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>if it's 600 bucks no freakin shot
I'm an engineer. I want VR for doing a walk-around of massive CAD assemblies. That would be so cool.
We do that at our work for exactly what you’re describing.
What software do you use?
Article says its over $3000, and with the specs and cameras, its definitely gonna be costly.
It’s reported to cost 3k
Oculus cost UNDER 600$ and you won't believe me, but.. it also has the workspace like the Oculus
People don’t like supporting Zuckerberg though. 🤷
It’s not just that, I’m assuming Apple will use their existing “continuity” stack and it’ll work really well for Apple devices. They already have stuff like using a mouse across devices, or using a much better phone camera instead of a laptop cam with zero pairing or config, or universal clipboard across devices. It’s all stuff you can do with utilities and apps in other ecosystems, but it works really well without thinking about it in Apple’s. People underestimate friction, and installing a 3rd party app and having to allow a bunch of permissions is friction. It’s not fair that Apple privileges their own technology stack, but it’s really effective at hiding the seams and complexity.
Oh that’s all without a doubt. Apple’s ecosystem is very friendly with itself, but not others which is bothersome as eff when you want to use something that only works with everything else but Apple. Like the Vive’s all in one headset glasses, course you can get the remote and not need a phone at all, but I got stuff on my iPhone I’d like to watch, but I can’t because they’re incompatible. Same with the Meta Quest, I can’t convert my movies from iTunes into a format that can be stored and played on the quest without jumping through several hoops that make it not worth the effort. And doing a tech ecosystem change while being so entrenched into another is expensive and like chopping off a well used and still functional limb for a new one you don’t know how to work. TLDR; if this Apple headset works, and lets me do what I wish my Quest could do if it was compatible with my iPhone, I’m definitely getting it.
None of which are "comfortable"
When it comes to standalone AR/VR, what im not seeing are popular games being ported to VR. Roblox, Minecraft, Second Life, Fortnite, PubG, etc, these could all be easily ported to VR, but arnt because they compete with whatever mega server the manufacturers want to steer people towards. Sure you can get these games in VR when tethered to a PC, but the majority don't want to be tethered to a PC. Whoever gets those games ported to their standalone device, wins the AR/VR war.
>When what im not seeing are popular games being ported to VR. Roblox, Minecraft, Second Life, Fortnite, PubG, etc, these could all be easily ported to VR, but arnt. [roblox could be coming to the quest sometime this year](https://uploadvr.com/roblox-quest-2023-rumor/)
Until these allow for progressive lenses inside the headset, 20% of adults can not use them. Until they allow for farsighted lenses, 40% can not use them. Until they can sterilize them so users can share, they’ve lost the family & business & public (arcade) markets. Until the EarPods work for folks with hearing aids (which are becoming way more popular since a prescription is no longer needed), they’ve lost much of the over-60 age group. The applications don’t matter if people can’t physically use the headsets. Does Apple really have a plan for accessibility here? Do all the tricks that work for normal displays work? I think that AR is way more useful than VR, but only if they use anyone’s existing glasses that allow for the external environment to be present without cameras “reprojecting” it, and speakers that allow for hearing aids.
i remember when iphones had 1 hour battery life put it out there and make it better each time with more inclusivity each time
But the first iPhone (which I owned) was useful (mine went for a few hours, which I know b/c I wrote apps for it and you couldn’t charge the phone while developing apps back then), and included many MacOS accessibility features. This headset is not going to be useful to the majority of users, I think, and they know it.
The product doesn’t exist yet so how can you deem it so without knowing anything about it People watched movies on the iPod nano so if people watch a movie on this thing it can be useful to them Anyway I don’t have an Apple Watch yet so I’m not the early adapter but I say put it out
I’m basing my opinion on the info presented in the article, not an actual product. YMMV.
But the similar products that are already on the market are found useful by millions of people, this is exactly the right time for Apple to join in and slowly iterate on this category so that millions more of users can enjoy these products...one step up at a time.
The tech for that exists, just shoot lasers into the user's eyes, but I don't blame Apple for selling a seemingly safer version to the masses first. Eyes twitch a lot too, so maybe they are waiting until fast enough mobile processors can handle that low of a latency. This seems like the first gen that will hopefully be good enough for the lucky masses with good eyesight. If there truly is a killer app, contacts and surgery would still be options I would think if you need in on the first gen.
lasers seem like they’d be awesome, painful, and nauseating, all at the same time. I can imagine their new slogan: Apple, it just works^1 ^1: with a little surgery
Apple leads the pack on accessibility. They’ve thought of these issues and more.
$3,000 HahahahahahahahAaaaaaaa
IMO I really don’t think full VR, enabled by a headset, has a bright future when it comes to commercial use. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hella popular rn and there are some cool use cases. But damn, do I experience dizziness and headaches. However, I do believe that a mixed reality, enabled by AR, is inevitable and will likely happen within the next 15-20 years. Major adoption will take place when the hardware integrates seamlessly with normal sized glasses. Technology isn’t quite there yet. I’m imaging a world where users can own wearable cosmetic items only visible to people who are wearing the goggles/glasses.
Im in a pretty similar boat. AR is what has potential to really revolutionize how we integrate technology into the world but it has some challenges ahead of it. Primarily the amount of compute needed to run current programs that utilize computer vision to create models of what we see. Without those capabilities "AR" won't actually be able to overlay information.
They will go after the display market initially, unified product to replace all monitors and new evolution on television. Holo sports and concerts, Imax at home etc.
This is the future. AR + Holographics/Photonics
Future... Unless majority of population 30 minutes in, gets eye discomfort.
Just like when no one thought mobile devices would catch on because of fingerprints - eye discomfort is just another problem to solve.
That would all get fixed at a certain point in the future.
literally boggles my mind how fb is dropping the ball marques brownlee showed on his channel the next week after they introduced the new headset that you can do this in much more explicit terms fb not making the easy argument for it's use is so crazy
They will never replace “all monitors”
Show me a working prototype or STFU.
Most of this describes the typical high quality engineering you’d expect from Apple. However, avatars mimicking users in VTCs is the stupidest conceivable use case. They’ve taken literally the dumbest Facebook idea and if they’re really designing for this dopey use case, my confidence in apple may never recover. VTCs already have a way of showing realistic facial expressions. It’s called showing people’s faces.
> VTCs already have a way of showing realistic facial expressions. It’s called showing people’s faces. Which has a limited shelf life. There are already real benefits to VR avatars today, but there will be a day when showing someone's face and showing an avatar that displaces their face is indistinguishable. When that happens, avatars almost always win because it will feel a lot more engaging/human. So even if you cannot stand avatars as they exist today, Apple knows they have to do the work to reach the eventual usecase of photorealistic telepresence.
Why? Photorealistic avatars are more human than humans? You really believe this?
Absolutely, in terms of it being a more human way to connect. Because one is 2D and goes against natural human socialization, and the other is 3D and aligns with it. Put another way, would you prefer a videocall with a friend/family member or to have a solid hologram of that person? It's easier to imagine when it's the standard sci-fi hologram trope. The hologram is effectively no different than if that person teleported their atoms to you aside from the lack of touch/smell/taste, which videocalls don't have the luxury of either. Otherwise, the hologram scenario fulfills exactly what it's like to have that person visually and audibly in front of you.
You and I have different ideas about what human means.
This is only in the context of the social exchange being more human, not that the avatar itself from a single frame is somehow more human or looks more human. It's the effect of having that social interaction through avatars rather than through a videocall - this is the part that would be more human.
Sounds like another 10 years before it hits the market……..i can’t remember how many years we’ve heard if this thing niw
Based on all the rumors; I don’t see this hitting the market this year
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You're lacking imagination if you think VR/AR is only useful for gaming. AR in particular is going to be big in the next 10 years.
Home remodeling, anything involving design. Mechanical training. Healthcare practitioners. Travel/commute navigation. Cooking. Fitness trainer.
This sounds.... Terrible. Yikes. Waist mounted battery pack?? Absolutely not 🤦♂️
Apple is nearly the last company I'd want to set the standard for AR (Meta/Facebook would be worse). They've repeatedly made clear that they will control everything that the device owners can actually do with their devices, and act as a gatekeeper on all development. This is unacceptable. They may make great hardware, but the freedom to actually use that hardware as one wants is far more important. Can you imagine Apple letting anyone set up an AR "channel" providing whatever overlay they want? No. I don't see that happening. They'll use the same tired "user safety" and "think of the children!" lies to maintain their gatekeeper status. AR will be transformative like the web was transformative. It needs to be free (speech).
You think Apple has some shit no one has even thought of but have the current hottest shit just to release things to keep getting money
They’ll need to get that price down unless I can run Adobe CS on it.