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

arstechnica.com

311–320 of 465 posts

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

#311
post #273

Dual 8K Resolution, I am assuming it wont be 60Hz, it will need to be 90 or 120hz. I am not even sure top of the line PC can do that today. Even Dual 4K at consistent 120fps is pushing the limit. At VR headset range with 8K Per eye is a display that is nearly 3000ppi. My guess is that 8K is the wrong figure and it is actually derived from 3000ppi. Which is similar to Varjo [1] HMD. At lastly, this is "The Information…

Why will it need to be 90 or 120 Hz?

Motion Sickness. You can try it with FPS.

For me it is funny because the more realistic or better the graphics, a higher baseline frame rate is required. So my brain sort of work great with Counter Strike at 60 Fps, where the graphics are low Res and not any good by modern standard. Once it gets to very good / realistic level my brain sort of half interpret it as real thing. And expect "real" world motion. At this point 120fps feel so much better while 60fps cause me headache.

If we are not limited by computation constraint I would want to push for even higher frame rate rather than higher resolution.

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and as mentioned in the article it’s a common technique that all vr headsets are already doing

Nobody does that and it's not possible due to GPU latency. Eyeballs rotate very fast, up to 1000°/s. Fovea has just under 1° of high resolution. You gonna need to render 1000 FPS with 1 frame of latency to catch up. GPUs can't do that. They evolved for decades optimizing for throughput at 60Hz, not latency at 1000Hz.

IIRC snappy eye movement makes us essentialy blind not only during the movement itself, but for a brief time after the eye settles also.

Foveated rendering (where IR cameras look where pupils are looking, passing this info to PC and the frames rendering with high detail only in that spot) was already demonstrated to be working well and fast enough to not be noticable.

It is not present in any consumer VR headset, and the software side is also not yet plug&play

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

#313

The #1 use of VR headsets is porn and porn apps are growing. Porn apps have some advantages over video apps because * a VR porn app is 6DOF, VR video is 3DOF * a VR porn character has more presence. Their eyes can follow you, they can turn to face you, they can reach to your face, hands. * You can interact at a VR character. You can't with a video In other words, either Apple is going to need to support porn apps on…

What's the source on this? I see people keep saying that but from what I've seen, the #1 use of VR is as a gaming console, with a focus on games that embrace the fitness aspect of VR. The Quest 2 has an insane mainstream potential, too, and most people won't bother rooting it. Speaking of, I'm going back to beat saber. You might have been misled by its name if you think that's a porn app. :) Email's in my profile if…

One can make the argument that Beat Saber is the #1 use for VR right now. It not only tops Oculus' Top-Selling list by a comfortable 3x margin (assuming # of ratings are a good proxy for sales), but also the Most Popular section, ahead of YouTube, Rec Room and VR Chat. These are social (media) apps that are free, while Beat Saber costs $29 + additional in-game purchases. It's crazy how popular this game is within its niche. It's like a paid, single-player game had more downloads than WhatsApp on the App Store.

It's no wonder that Facebook gobbled it up years ago. Any Quest competitor that comes without Beat Saber is going to be though sell, and I assume that it would be strategically missing from any future Apple VR Store...

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

#314
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…

If the screens in the goggles themselves are 8k, the "monitor" is only going to be a small fraction of that unless you have your face up really close. (Although you could effectively have much higher than 8k when you do stick your face right up next to it.)

Would it need to display and confine your workspace to a "monitor"? Couldn't it show floating windows of some kind in 3D space?

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

#315
Off-topic: just want to say hi to people reading this comment thread in the future to see what we all thought about this product before it launched. Perhaps by then it'll become as ubiquitous as iPhone and you're all giggling at how naive we were for doubting Apple once again. waves

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

#316
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm... so even at 8K per lens, the floating display(s) is(are) how much of that 8K? So we're back to VGA resolution on your "virtual display". Yeah, no thanks.

The FOV of these devices is something like 100 degrees. There's not a lot of wasted space. Who knows what this theoretical Apple device is like though.

The FOV of AR headsets like Hololens is very far from 100°.

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering why Apple doesn't create a device that is much cheaper, has no augmented reality, and is just for consuming TV/movies with A/V quality matching that of the best cinemas. Pay off the device with a monthly subscription that includes Apple TV+. Something like $600-700 would get a lot of people interested.

The cheaper devices already exist. An Oculus Quest is basically that. However I don't think the refresh rate or image quality is really up to scratch. And if this were just a question of image quality, I wouldn't make a big deal about it, but poor image quality means something resembling motion sickness will set in pretty quickly, even if you're just watching a video. One time I tried to do some yoga while watching T…

The trouble with VR video and Oculus Go is that 3-DOF has high degree of discomfort when you try to move and the world seems to move with you. There has been some interesting work on synthesizing new viewpoints using deep learning with rather impressive results. That is something that could bring a level of immersion comparable to 3D content to video sources.

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

#318

The #1 use of VR headsets is porn and porn apps are growing. Porn apps have some advantages over video apps because * a VR porn app is 6DOF, VR video is 3DOF * a VR porn character has more presence. Their eyes can follow you, they can turn to face you, they can reach to your face, hands. * You can interact at a VR character. You can't with a video In other words, either Apple is going to need to support porn apps on…

You'd think so, but the VR market has grown substantially since 2018. Beat Saber, VRChat are games that you can sink thousands of hours into.

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

#319
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh. I've owned a VR headset for a long time now, and I think many people underestimate how fundamentally isolating being in VR is. Humans are social creatures and unless you live by yourself and want to escape into VR, you're a lot more likely to enjoy watching the big game with friends and family so you can shoot the shit, and share the experience. Don't get me wrong... VR is and can be a lot of fun, but I just don…

> Humans are social creatures Yes, humans evolved to live in groups. However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. That would scare the soul out of our ancestors. My point is that we can't always judge the technology by what's "natural" to us. Brain is extremely flexible, and children who grew up with VR might just want to live in it, instead of the "real…

> However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes.

Glancing around it seems quite apparent that we’ve done exactly that.

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

#320

This is the opposite direction for VR. We are at a prime time to be using algorithms that can read face gestures, track eye location, we need much better full body tracking. Users are happy with 2K per eye, but they're not happy on how nobody but Oculus Quest is making an affordable and well featured headset. It's even perfectly useable entirely wirelessly with Virtual Desktop. Apple has the arm tech to be making hig…

Absolutely, the walled garden of Apple combined with the high price tag will lead no where.
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