Working in the Vision Pro [video]

I thought it would be funnier if she was packing her clothes in luggage and she threw her keys to him as she said "I'm leaving you"

Context: I spend a lot of time in VR (gaming), have used VR as a productivity tool, and have ordered an AVP.

> Turning your head ~90 degrees to the left just to be able to see Slack(or any other windows) is for me an productivity nerf, not a boost.

I agree, or at least _mostly_ agree.

I definitely wouldn't have a window that I regularly use that far away from my "resting" position. I might put something like Discord or IRC over there, but that's a place for something that is a mild distraction - something you'd like to look at every once in a while, but not at the expense of changing your primary workspace and fully breaking context.

> In my life I experimented with 3 monitors, 2 monitors, one monitor, ultra widescreens, square aspect ratio displays, and a mix of several of those, etc. and I find the best productivity setup is when I have everything centered in my narrow/focused field of view, regardless of how many displays there are or what their aspect ratio is.

> If I have too many or too wide displays, needing me to turn my head/neck to the side to see what's on them, it's just useless real estate and extra shit I have to manage and organize, wasting my brain power and concentration on managing the multi-monitor setup instead of on work.

I like multiple displays, but like you, I quickly reached a point where it created more effort than it prevented. Learning to use macOS's built-in virtual desktops was a huge deal for me. I use them extensively.

> FWIW, currently I have a single 32 inch(27 would work too) 4k display straight in front of me, and switching workspaces via Meta Key + Scroll wheel is way more desk-real-estate, monetarily and energy eficient and more ergonomic than moving my neck to another display on the side that's just sitting there displaying a picture that nobody's looking at 90% of the time.

This seems similar to me.

I have a 32" 4K display at eye level. My 16" MBP acts as a secondary display, centered below it. I use the MBP's keyboard and trackpad, but what I'm working on is on the upper monitor. The laptop display is relegated to "secondary/communications" usage.

For example

Right now, I have three virtual desktops on my monitor:

    * blank - where new apps and windows open by default
    * browser - for me that's Arc. I have five "spaces" open in Arc, including one for "personal" and one for "killing time" (that's where HN lives)
    * terminal - this is a full-screen Kitty instance. I'm running fish+tmux, use neovim for my editor/IDE, and all of my projects are running in Docker. I currently have three tmux windows, with two, two, and four panes open respectively.

My laptop screen has a ton of other, less-often-used stuff:

    * default - lots of random windows that I'm not actively referencing. I don't always bother to close them, as I don't use this desktop often enough to care
    * Slack
    * Calendar
    * Discord
    * Notion
    * Messages

I use a lot of full-screen apps, and doing it this way lets me focus on one thing at a time. I can use keyboard commands (Ctrl+arrows) or gestures (three-finger swipe) to move between desktops on either monitor, or Ctrl+up to display them all at once if I'm looking for something.

> Anyway, back on topic, this video feels like justifying the purchase with flashy multi window gimmicks instead of showing actual ergonomic improvements. The proof will be in the pudding. Will the author stick to that sprawling neck twisting setup long term, or will he switch back to a more conventional setup once the novelty of his new toy wears off and his video got enough views?

My hope is that I'll be able to use my existing workflow - or one very similar to it - even when I'm not at my desk. Initially that will be by setting a single large macOS screen directly in front of me, and one or more native visionOS/iPadOS apps below and above it. Most of the things I'm using my laptop screen for today are available as native apps, so I think that will work.

Longer term, I hope either Apple's virtual desktop solution matures or Immersed's release on visionOS will solve my issues. I'd used Immersed in the part to work in VR, and it works very, very well. The only headset I have that supports it is a Quest 2, and its resolution is too low to consistently work in a terminal in VR for me. I have a Pimax Crystal QLED as well (which I use for gaming), but haven't been able to find a good virtual desktop solution for it on Mac.

> FWIW 2, I have a Quest 3 for gaming, and could never use that for work due to the limited narrow FoV(~110°) that make it more like "binoculars vision" than actual virtual/augumented "reality". And according to the experience of MKBHD(Marques Brownlee) on YT, the Apple VP has an even narrower FoV than that. Ouch! That does not sound optimistic for productivity at all. IMHO 130°+ should be the norm for FoV going forward. Anything narrower and I feel like I'm wearing horse blinkers.

My Quest 2's FOV feel about like the minimum for being productive for me, and it's 97º horizontal. My Crystal is 110ºh x 96ºv (it can do up to 125ºh with difference lenses), and that's more than sufficient for flying a jet fighter in War Thunder. I've not laid hands on an AVP yet, but I'm already hearing about optical issues at the edges of the FOV. That's consistent with what I see from the other headsets I've owned or used - your peripheral vision is mostly important for context; you really only need about 30º that's crystal clear to be effective. That's doubly true with foveated rendering and eye tracking; anything outside that cone isn't something your eyes are going to resolve in detail anyhow.

I do plan to use my AVP all day, at least for a while. I expect that there will be a moment where things "click". My brain will have adapter to the world with the computing overlay, and I'll be seeing a difficult (or impossible) to describe vision of the future.

That said, I don't think that'll be practical long term. I'll do it long enough to get a taste for it, then I expect that I'll be using it in my office chair 90% of the time. I am looking forward to being able to use it while traveling (while my wife is driving, on an airplane, in hotels, etc.) to access my productive environment, though. That will be its primary utilitarian use.

The reason I'm willing to spend the money is that I want to get in as early as possible on developing for the platform. I fully expect that the product line will survive and grow, and that in a handful of years they'll be smaller, lighter, cheaper, and as ubiquitous as smartphones are today. I want to be selling apps during that initial wide adoption.

Have you considered mounting them one above the other? That's more effective IME.

Alternatively, one horizontal and one vertical is nice if you're a terminal-heavy user.

I thought it was just a funny thing that the author added in to highlight the effectiveness of the passthrough. It never occurred to me that it might have been intended to be "organic".