Live data from Hacker News

New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

arstechnica.com

61–70 of 465 posts

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#61
post #9

I could see this as a virtual office, as some of the comments speculate. If I had a set of AR glasses that projected what appeared to be an 8K monitor on top of my dining room table, and integrated with my MacBook Pro for input / output, and that had batteries to last a workday, I’d pay $2K/$3K. Even more if it worked well at brightness levels I’d have in my backyard. Never mind gaming, mobile high-quality virtual of…

You may be interested in https://immersedvr.com/. Some videos suggest that their coders use their VR workspace to code the app itself. Not exactly what you described of course :)

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#62
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem with foveation is its pretty noticeable and mildly annoying for not a huge gain.

Unnoticeable if done right .

I think part of the problem is the peripheral area where you wouldn't notice but still see is so thin that you don't save a lot. Maybe Apple has cracked it, though.

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#63
post #44
post #28

Apple CPU/hardware + Apple display technology + Apple software would easily justify the 3k price. And people would pay it. Not just because it's Apple, but because Apple has the means to vertically integrate the entire tech stack into a high end product that far surpasses what their competitors are capable of. Google Android software and Qualcomm hardware have been trying for a decade and still can't match Apple. So…

Rumors indicate this to only being a transitionary product for AR. Sorta like a dev kit, but not named that way.

The future of AR is VR. With 8K screens you just redraw reality.

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#64
post #29
post #9

I could see this as a virtual office, as some of the comments speculate. If I had a set of AR glasses that projected what appeared to be an 8K monitor on top of my dining room table, and integrated with my MacBook Pro for input / output, and that had batteries to last a workday, I’d pay $2K/$3K. Even more if it worked well at brightness levels I’d have in my backyard. Never mind gaming, mobile high-quality virtual of…

Why? I mostly have zero interest in being immersed in meetings. Most people aren't IRL most of the time. There's potentially value where people need to be on-site in other contexts such as repairing equipment.

Laptop + magical AR/VR headset means you can always have your 3 monitor workspace, even at the coffee shop. Plus, you get fully private screens.

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#65
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since they do mention eye-tracking they can heavily exploit foveated rendering which will make the resolution extremely high at the exact point where your eyes are looking and much lower in the outer regions of your vision. This is practically unnoticeable (if done right) and allows for much more interesting performance optimizations. Full 2x8K in 90Hz is impossible otherwise.

Part of the problem with foveation is its pretty noticeable and mildly annoying for not a huge gain.

Around the early/mid eighties, I got to play in a flight simulator for the new F1-11 avionics package Australia was buying (my dad ran the project building the sims).

It had a pair of Silicon Graphics Reality Engine IIs, one projecting a lower res image over the entire half-spherical screen, and the other driving a projector mounted on a gimbal that tracked the flight helmet - to display a high resolution image in the direct field of view of the pilot.

It was _possible_ if you tried, to "trick" the system so you could notice from the pilots seat what it was doing. But it was _remarkable_ the difference between sitting in the seat with the helmet on, and watching from behind where you could really obviously see the high res patch of sky moving around. Enemy planes turned from Space Invaders kind of pixel art into recognisable Russian fighter planes when the pilot looked at them. The "immersive reality" while flying the sim was amazing.

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#66
post #64
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I mostly have zero interest in being immersed in meetings. Most people aren't IRL most of the time. There's potentially value where people need to be on-site in other contexts such as repairing equipment.

Laptop + magical AR/VR headset means you can always have your 3 monitor workspace, even at the coffee shop. Plus, you get fully private screens.

That sounds utterly unappealing. If I'm in a coffeeshop I have zero reason to want to cut off from the outside world. Otherwise I wouldn't be in a coffeeshop. Most of the reason I'd work in a coffeeshop is for an ambient social vibe. And for many things I do a 13" laptop screen is fine. (And I probably wouldn't feel comfortable being utterly cut off from the environment in an urban space.)

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#67
post #52
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, I would be willing to use 16-bit colors for higher resolution.

16 bit colours on a pair of 8K screens is the best part of half a gigabyte per frame... I assume sir will be wanting 60 or 120 FPS as well? :-)

802.11ay can hit that at 15fps theoretically, and if apple culls peripheral video, it may need way less bandwidth!

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#68
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unnoticeable if done right .

I think part of the problem is the peripheral area where you wouldn't notice but still see is so thin that you don't save a lot. Maybe Apple has cracked it, though.

Might also be that peripheral vision is more sensitive to movement, and the edges where the lower res and higher res rendering meets could make for distracting discontinuities that look to the reptile brain (or the preprocessing in the retina/optic nerve/visual cortex) like a tiger...

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#69

8k seems... optimistic. The PPI of such a display would be off the charts. Not to mention the kind of hardware required to run such a device. The NVIDIA RTX 3090 can barely run a 3D 8k game at 30fps, let alone in 3D for VR. What would you even connect such a device with? Displayport and HDMI wouldn't support two 8k streams.

a) Deep-learning super sampling (DLSS) allows upscaling to 8K at a low cost. b) VR uses variable rate shading because we have a lower visual acuity in our peripheral vision. c) VR rendering typically "shares" a significant amount of the work between the two viewports. E.g.: one set of "commands" are rendered simultaneously into two buffers with different view transforms. Textures and meshes are cached once and render…

Especially if Apple keeps pushing their custom GPU's (which are already at 3nm). The current M1 GPU is somewhere between a GTX 1050 and a 1070 - so still a few generations old. With a bit more focus on the GPU part (and use a bit more power) they might be able to pull it off.

Re: New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3k price tag

#70
post #9

I could see this as a virtual office, as some of the comments speculate. If I had a set of AR glasses that projected what appeared to be an 8K monitor on top of my dining room table, and integrated with my MacBook Pro for input / output, and that had batteries to last a workday, I’d pay $2K/$3K. Even more if it worked well at brightness levels I’d have in my backyard. Never mind gaming, mobile high-quality virtual of…

I'm confused by people saying that they would use VR for work. My head hurts after one or maybe two hours of using it, and if I would work whole day in it?... ugh.

I'd imagine it would just be for meetings that benefit from being able to share a space and work together on the same models.
Post reply on HN