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Apple’s new headset meets reality

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301–310 of 527 posts

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#301
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Time Cook ultimately like Steve Ballmer? He has continued and consolidated to build a golden prison with the construction of a monopoly and increase the money generated incredibly.

A “monopoly” in what product category?

Monopoly (noun): Thing I hate that is incredibly popular, and I’ve got all bitter and twisted about it.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#302
post #96
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR and AR are a solution looking for a problem. It's admittedly a cool tech demo. I enjoyed my time playing Half Life: Alyx and The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners on my Valve Index before I decided to sell it out of disuse. The article says that Apple has a glasses product and a VR/AR product that sounds similar to a Quest Pro. So if we look at the glasses product it immediately runs into a lot of issues. Do I want…

I don't think it's a solution looking for a problem. I'd be willing to put them on at work and see which pins on a piece of hardware do what instead of looking back and forth between a datasheet. Lots of examples exactly like that, especially if the glasses are fed sensor data so the temperature/pressure appears right beside the area it is measuring.

How is this feasible at all? Not only all the tech for the AR device to be light and have decent battery life, but the software you describe would need optical recognition of what you're looking at, then match that to the manual of the object to tell you what the pins do. All on a device with significant size and heat constraints.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#303
I’m curious if they did anything with the eye tracking technology they bought from SMD. We were in the process of buying one of those headsets when they abruptly closed shop and sold out. -$35k at the time per unit.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#304
post #275

From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware: Portable and with external cameras to allow for orientation and "mixed reality". Maybe Apple is on the right track here, since the Oculus Quest has sold more units than all the other VR headsets combined. But there is one big difference: Apple's headset will be a very expensive premium product (a…

It seems like consumers just don't want VR/AR. We've had compelling experiences for a decade. But it seems like only a subset of console gamers, already a small population, care to buy a VR headset.

Part of it is that the cost to play VR - which is primarily the time cost - is too high for the experience you get out of it. For example, the only games that provides a true VR-only experience you can boot up on a dime are Beat Saber and VR Chat - other VR titles tend to follow the pattern of " but in VR". To add, you need 2x the processing power since you need to render the game twice, so you are going to take a hit in visual fidelity, AND you typically want 90fps or higher to avoid motion blur, which raises the bar for playing any high-fidelity VR game (at least until generalized foveated rendering APIs become available and headsets implement it).

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#305
post #299
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that, dear reader, is how we ended up with hundreds of bland copy-cat Android phones to the iPhone. There's something to be said, mentally, for working somewhere that's inspiring. A shitty office in yet a clone of all the other office parks, buried in office-park-landia of San Jose, is not it. Even a stroll through the secret underground parking lot at Apple is inspiring with all the exotic cars that are owned by…

That doesn't really ring true. iPhones are the baseline and Android has that plus the cheap models plus all the whacky weird and wonderful. iPhone has good build quality and reliability - it's the Toyota Corolla. But if there had been no Android then there would be no large screen iPhones, maybe no push on the camera specs. If Apple make a foldable it'll be because they saw Android do it and waited until they could d…

No, the iPhone is the Lexus.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#306
Time will tell, but I think Tim Cook is the greatest CEO of our generation. Yes, Steve, Musk, Zuck, Gates etc are genius inventors, entrepreneurs and designers; but in terms of executions and day-to-day CEO stuff, I can't think of anyone better than Tim. I hope the headset is a success too.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that. A For example, I think a 300 USD standalone gaming console could be the next Game Boy, or the next Switch, in terms of sales numbers. The benfit/price ratio just has to be good enough and it could really take off. Even with fairly primitive graphics.

There is the Quest 2 at that price. The problem is that it’s at least right now just not a great gaming platform. I played the crown jewel - half life alyx (by connecting to a gaming pc that can run it), and it was fine but quite awkward. The default movement scheme is one where you teleport around the room because walking is too nauseating I guess.

The thing with locomotion is that you don't actually have infinite space to walk - if you did, or if a 99.9% perfect multi-directional treadmill was available, then it wouldn't be that big of a deal to just walk throughout the entire level. So developers have to offer some other way to navigate levels and mostly-open environments, that either being smooth locomotion (hold a joystick in the direction you want to walk/are facing) or teleportation.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#308
post #169
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear your killer features and don't care for them at all in any way to put on glasses for them. I only need real navigation on holiday and I'm pretty sure not taking some expensive glasses on travel. Neither when hiking nor in a foreign country. And all the other Infos? I don't even use my smartphone for them. Why would I wear an expensive headset to compare a 3€ product?

I hear your killer features and don't care for them at all in any way to carry a tiny computer for them. I only need real navigation on holiday and I'm pretty sure not taking some expensive pocket computer on travel. Neither when hiking nor in a foreign country. I just print out the directions from MapQuest. K.I.S.S. And all the other Infos? I don't even use my desktop PC for them. Why would I carry an expensive hand…

>I only need real navigation on holiday and I'm pretty sure not taking some expensive pocket computer on travel. Neither when hiking nor in a foreign country. I just print out the directions from MapQuest. K.I.S.S.

This is actually what happened historically. Various pocket devices existed for navigation (e.g. by Garmin), but they never got too popular until the smartphone became popular for entirely different reasons. Only after the smartphone become really common, then it was reused for existing applications where the benefit existed but was not that big compared to alternatives. AR/VR will need a killer application first, only then it might be reused for navigation.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#309
post #275

From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware: Portable and with external cameras to allow for orientation and "mixed reality". Maybe Apple is on the right track here, since the Oculus Quest has sold more units than all the other VR headsets combined. But there is one big difference: Apple's headset will be a very expensive premium product (a…

It seems like consumers just don't want VR/AR. We've had compelling experiences for a decade. But it seems like only a subset of console gamers, already a small population, care to buy a VR headset.

There hasn't been any compelling reason that makes it necessary for me to use VR/AR. It's still at the "fun" category, which make it hard to justify spending much money for "fun". Especially when the low-end headsets is about the price of a phone or a (low-end) GPU, which undoubtedly can have more uses And play more games.
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