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Apple’s new headset meets reality

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Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#321

Post by erichocean »

bredren wrote: post #80

>underscoring the narrative that the company’s biggest victories were initiated under his predecessor, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs What does the author consider to be a victory? Tim Cook was elevated because he had the operational capability to grow Apple. Jobs did not consider Cook to be a product design person. But Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could design products. By any stretch of the imaginatio…

> Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could design products

Tim Cook's first major executive move as CEO was to fire Scott Forstall.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#322

Post by skinpop »

pradn wrote: post #275
cubefox wrote: post #138

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.

It's just not good enough yet.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#323

Post by danpalmer »

cubefox wrote: post #138

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…

> From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware

That's not really accurate. The rumours suggest optics at least as good as the Meta Quest Pro ($1k), possibly with a substantial move forward from there. They suggest resolution of 3k per eye, significantly above the Meta Quest Pro, and using Micro LED for a big improvement on the screen door effect, brightness, quality. Then there's the compute, with 2x M2s, this is quite possibly going to be able to run AAA VR games (if they're compatible with iOS) – the M2 is running some AAA games on things like the MBA, and this one has an M2 per eye.

These rumours might turn out to be rubbish, but they seem to be credible rather than speculation, and they would suggest a high price tag. If this was a Meta Quest Pro "Ultra" it might be >$2k based on Meta's pricing, so Apple charging $3k for it given their "tax" (and high production quality) feels about right.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#324

Post by chaostheory »

Turskarama wrote: post #207
yayr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is something different if your screen is only a few square centimeters or if you are in a virtual environment. At least I do not agree to your point of view. For example running something like MS Flight Sim with decent realistic visuals is absolutely impossible, forget any other sims that require high quality characters, nature or anything else with a high polygon count or AI rendering

The far bigger problem for VR is simply crispness of text and objects at a distance. High poly counts are relatively unimportant, there's a new Zelda game out with graphics that wouldn't have been amazing ten years ago doing pretty well that would probably run just fine on a quest.

You need a PPD of about 35 - 40 for reading comfortably. 50 is retina quality.

Even with the Meta Quest Pro, it only gets to about 24. The same goes for the HP reverb g2. For $1999, the Varjo Aero PCVR headset comes at 35 PPD, but at that price it doesn’t include the $3000 -$4000 PC to run it or the $600 base stations and controllers. It’s also wired to the PC

At $3000, i am guessing that the Apple headset will be 35 or higher PPD

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#325

Post by [deleted] »

nerdjon wrote: post #37

I continue to believe that IF (and that is a big if) anyone can make AR/VR a mainstream market it would be Apple. Just for the simple fact that Apple has in multiple occasions done 2 things: 1. Come out with something that shapes the rest of the industry. I mean how many times has Apple done something and within a year or 2 basically the entire industry follows. 2. Not captured a large (or majority) percent but conti…

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#326

Post by chaostheory »

SXX wrote: post #165
yayr wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think with respect to compute/GPU capability the Apple headset will be vastly superior. One of the major issues with the Quest is the lack of graphics quality that can be brought to the virtual environments. Unless you run it via Link to a PC with a top end GPU it is just a toy. Having VR experiences like the recent Unreal Engine provides is simply orders of magnitude away for Quest in the current state... Thats on…

Problem is: Apple mostly ruined their relationship with Epic, Meta and even Valve. Whatever excellent VR tech they come up with will be mostly ignored by the game industry. Good part of iPhone / iPad success was due to the excellent apps ecosystem. Who gonna make VR experiences for Apple new VR ecosystem? F2P game companies? I guess they won't be interested either because Apple will try to bite off a lot of profits f…

Valve has only made one VR game to date

I’m not aware of Epic making any VR games

Meta doesn’t make new games for other platforms even now. They’ve culled many od their own game studios. The only issue would be Beat Saber. Imo it’s still VR’s killer app. Still, there are plenty of passable clones and similar games that are good enough

The bigger issue is that Apple doesn’t like games. They never did. They only tolerate games now because of the revenue it brings in. Apple Arcade is a good start, but it still doesn’t convince me that they’re serious about catering to anyone beyond casual gamers

The other big issue is that market for VR and AR pre-Apple remains small. Because of that, there are barely any AAA games. I can count them on one hand. It’s also arguable if they’re actually AAA games when many of them are really dated games.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#327

Post by eviks »

Gigachad wrote: post #265
dogsgobork wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In retrospect, every invention is obvious. I think it's fair to say that Apple went a bit beyond just slapping bluetooth onto their existing headphones. The instant pairing experience alone makes them stand out against the standard competition.

I remember the release and all of the reddit and HN comments were to the tune of “this is stupid” “you’ll lose them” “they look dumb” “now I have to buy a cable to connect the two” The idea that you could have two, disconnected pods seems to have been quite bold.

You can also find a group of comments holding any opinion

The obvious idea of wireless is anything but bold

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#328

Post by intrasight »

themagician wrote: post #106
jmull wrote: post #102

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and if there really is a viable Apple-scale device here. The overarching XR vision makes sense to me -- that you could instantly drop into any kind of environment you might want to, whether for work or entertainment or socializing. But who creates these environments, and for what purpose? They seem like they'd be quite expensive if done well, and if not done well, you…

For me it comes down to optics. I've tried damn near every VR headset ever made, including many that never made it to production, and they all suffer from the same core issue: poor optics. Even industrial headsets that costs thousands are still using flat screen and lenses with fixed focal points (with few exceptions, but even then nothing truly extraordinary). Current optical designs mean that there is a large out o…

My prediction is that negative refraction materials will arrive in a few years. Optics problems solved.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#329

Post by nr2x »

avalys wrote: post #242
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One product often left out, which may have started with Jobs, but delivery should be attributed to Cook is the new Apple HQ. The initial impact has crumbled due to Covid WFH. > However, this campus may turn out to be a force multiplier going forward. If so, it is a victory, but not in the minds of consumers. Curious, have you ever actually talked to anyone that worked there? While I have admittedly only talked to a…

Apple Campus 2 is about a superblock away from Apple Campus 1, so unless we’re talking about someone whose 5-minute commute doubled to 10 minutes, no one’s commute doubled in any sense where the comparison is meaningful.

More traffic congestion right by there tho.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#330

Post by danpalmer »

pzo wrote: post #313
cubefox wrote: post #138

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…

According to some rumors headset will have 2x M2/M3 chips so it will have a lot of computing platform. If they provide some dock so that headset can be used Mac mini/ultra style as desktop + VR/XR is more like a bonus then this could still sell well.

This is effectively a reasonable graphics card per eye. Sure it's no Nvidia 4090, but the M2 is running recent games with very good graphics on Macs.

Combine that with foveated rendering, possibly implemented deep in Metal, and being careful about graphically intensive applications, and this could be high FPS on 3K resolution, and be a significant step up in immersion.

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