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Apple’s new headset meets reality

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Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#381

Post by ok_dad »

Dalewyn wrote: post #220
ok_dad wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSVR2 is only $550 for an amazing headset and people still complain about the price.

I'd pay $200 tops for a VR headset (not that I'd buy one even then...), given how jank the experience is, how much money I would spend to power and use the bloody thing anyway, and how quickly it will become antiquated. Anything more for something that is essentially a short-lived toy is a fool's errand. Fool in this case meaning someone with more money than they know what to do with. I'd get better value from a Loui…

PSVR2 has already paid for itself for me, I’ve used it everyday since launch. Guess I’m just a fool with more money than brains!

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#382

Post by crooked-v »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #336
cubefox wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the expensive VR headsets sold terribly, except for the cheap Oculus Quest. The lesson seems clear: When it comes to VR, people strongly favor price over quality. Which in turn suggests the Apple headset will fail. VR is perhaps like the original Game Boy: Not very powerful, no color screen, but low price and long battery life. It sold a lot, unlike the competition.

Have people ever really had a quality vs. price choice? With all the computing power being discussed, the quality may be well beyond what has been available in any previous headset. Much lower latency with much higher resolution graphics. If that is the case, there is no existing applicable lesson concerning price vs. quality. You may still be right, but my point is that if the quality is pushed enough, the price/qua…

I would say the current choice for high-end quality in the VR space would be a Pimax 8K ($1,387), a tracking setup and controllers (another $577 if you get the de facto standard equipment from Valve), at least a NVIDIA RTX 2080 with 10+ GB ($900, but you'll want something significantly more powerful to run anything beyond the bare minimum), plus of course the rest of the computer to keep up with that and extra-long cables and everything (add at least another $500-$1,000).

For comparison, the various leaks and analyst claims say that the Apple headset is going to have 3x or more the effective resolution of the Pimax 8K, with no dedicated space or desktop computer needed to drive it. That's a gigantic leap past anything that exists on the market right now, and at $3,000 it would be a significantly cheaper buy-in for anyone who doesn't already own a thousand-dollar GPU.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#383

Post by steve_adams_86 »

astrange wrote: post #269
mensetmanusman wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you lose it by not being sedentary.

It's diet. Exercise only interventions are ineffective. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221226721... Anyway, the modern answer is Ozempic.

It seems exceedingly unlikely that Ozempic will compare positively to regular movement and a healthy diet in the longer term. Even our most prized pharmaceuticals seem like hacks compared to behaviour-based solutions.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#384

Post by drdaeman »

catchnear4321 wrote: post #289
drdaeman wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is, if they develop and produce something nearly impossible - a wearable glasses-like (in terms of size and weight) headset that can project color images non-multiplicatively overlaying the reality in user's eyes. If they had somehow figured that out (I'm no expert, but I don't think anyone did - at least I haven't heard anything) and if there's a decent SDK then 3 grands is a discount price for such a device. B…

yet another vr headset that is measurably less awful while still not being good is still a massive advancement. apple can afford to iterate, and their high end and business customers can afford to participate in that process. it won’t be siri, but they wouldn’t be rolling it out if they didn’t have something that felt different.

Except that I'm pretty sure it won't work with anything but Apple ecosystem. No chance in hell it would work with existing SteamVR libraries or Oculus Stores.

And Apple's domain is currently entirely empty of any VR/AR/XR applications. While I expect Safari to get OpenXR^W WebXR support (IIRC it's still not there, right?), even if the hardware specs will be suporior, it is hard to call it an advancement (something that beats the existing user experience), when there's maybe only a few applications.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#385

Post by crooked-v »

danpalmer wrote: post #330
pzo wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The current leaks and analyst claims are saying an 8K screen per eye [1], with some kind of advanced eye tracking and foveated rendering to keep the GPU processing requirements under control. PSVR2 has already shown that at least the foveated rendering part is totally practical even at a much lower price point.

[1]: https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-vr-headset

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#387

Post by crooked-v »

cubefox wrote: post #223
ok_dad wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSVR2 is only $550 for an amazing headset and people still complain about the price.

Yeah. I think Carmack said even the Quest was still too expensive. The PSVR2 has the additional problem that it requires a PS5. It's not a standalone system. That's like a Game Boy for which you need to own an NES. Or like a Wii U console, where the tablet controller wasn't a standalone system, and which flopped, in contrast to the Switch.

The Wii U had the bigger issue that Nintendo never actually made it clear to a lot of people that it was even a new console rather than some kind of weird tablet add-on to an existing Wii.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#388

Post by asimpletune »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #191
ska wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble making sense of your point, I guess. You seem to try to draw a parallel between largely failed tech (VR) and largely successful tech (apple watches, etc), and then to massively popular consumer product (coke); then suggest there is 'bravery' in rejecting the 'way these creators want you to use their products' I sort of get the idea applied to VR as it has never really clicked for anything. But the…

Aye captain, I can see that. My premise is that watches failed (even though they sell millions of units) as the bar for success is higher for Apple, and they left a lot on the table by just putting a mini phone on your wrist. So I think screens on wrists is a dumb use of compute. Then I went in a roundabout way to say, a dumb use of calories / sugar is Coke. Sugar and Compute have better uses, so their lost potential…

Apple Watch has failed?

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#389

Post by crooked-v »

judge2020 wrote: post #307
coffeebeqn wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

The better option, though it's very rarely offered, would be arm-swinging that moves you along in the direction you're looking like a cartoon character in an animation loop. Completely serious about that - you can look at the success of Gorilla Tag, where all motion is based on you pulling and pushing yourself around with your arms, and despite being a frenetic game with constant motion, motion-sickness issues are nigh nonexistent.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#390

Post by danpalmer »

oblio wrote: post #375
danpalmer wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single M2 chip is able to play a recent-ish AAA game and decent-ish settings, on ~2k at >30fps, while also running the whole game itself and macOS. So for VR, foveated rendering could mean the difference between ~2k and 3k is a wash. And AAA games designed for VR tend to be a little more conservative on the graphics. And the chip will only theoretically have to handle half the other game work and no full macOS. Com…

> A single M2 chip is able to play a recent-ish AAA game and decent-ish settings, on ~2k at >30fps, while also running the whole game itself and macOS. Doing the math to the OPs numbers. 6k vs 2k = 3x. 90 fps vs 30 fps = 3x. That an extra 900% performance difference right there. Reality, out the window.

3k (there's supposedly an M2 per eye). 2k->3k = +125%. If foveated rendering can half the necessary pixel count, that's pretty much a wash.

FPS alone is +200%, but games are running above 30fps already so it's less than that. Add a reduction in system load due to not running the full OS, potentially framework improvements as we usually see at WWDC, and slightly reduced graphical fidelity that is typical for VR games, and we're back to the same ballpark.

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