Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

Racing sims are the killer app, because depth perception really helps with sense of speed, and tight corners on a monitor are often outside the field of view and you can't just turn your head to look at them.

Even then, it's not something I can do indefinitely. I've played GT7 on a friend's PSVR2, and sometimes elevation changes in particular tend to mess up the brain for a moment. It's somewhat disconcerting. Also, as someone who wears glasses, there's just no way to make the headset fit entirely correctly, and it tends to slip over time and the view becomes blurry.

Outside of that... control schemes are the major issue for me. You can't just blindly walk around in your room without falling over things, so movement is highly unnatural in VR unless you're in a cockpit. And the various attempts at making the player manipulate something with those hand controllers are just embarrassingly bad. I think this is one of the reason why so many VR games feel like toys you play with once before discarding them as a failed experiment.

The only other killer app are pinball simulations. It's surprising how much depth perception can make it so much clearer what the ball is doing, and the downsides of VR don't matter because you're stationary and only need two buttons.

I like racing sims, so I was interested in VR in the early days, but after experiencing it, I decided for now that I just don't want the associated hassle.

> the whole idea of disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings is so strange to me that it seems irreconcilable.

to me, this is the entire point of VR. you want to virtually see something other than what your eyes can see in reality. a situation where you want to be fully immersed into this other space. i totally buy into that.

the confusion of use to me is the AR aspect of it. that's where the limitations take center stage. the limited FOV can't be ignored in AR. my brain buys into the suspension of disbelief for VR, but for AR my brain knows it's my real world, just limited.

In terms of straight VR I'm completely with you. As someone who doesn't game they hold no attraction.

The disconnection is also my big issue with VR.

However, as an AR platform, whether it's pass-through or some future passive system, I can see a time when I might get one. I can imagine a significantly better version of the VisionPro that replaces my laptop as my "big" computing device.

I think the form factor is the feature. In the same way that my tablet doesn't do anything my laptop can't do, but it's form factor makes it useable in different scenarios. I know people who exclusively use iPad Pros as their all-purpose "big" computing device, never touching a laptop.

Before it becomes widespread I can see it being adopted in specialist situations, many of the same things that the Microsoft AR hardware was never good enough for. Hololens was amazing to experience, but no where near amazing enough to actually be that useful. Passthrough AR like the VisionPro might actually manage it.

I don't think it will become something everyone has, but it will fill a slot in the mix of technology for some people, along with smart-watches, phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Each appeals to different people.

Now, whether the technology ever quite gets there is the big question for me. I think a lot has to improve in the hardware if they can ever make it something I would want to use on a daily basis.

Why not? The device has a very similar form factor and the use case is the same, except they’re missing the partnerships with Netflix and YouTube. The Walkman was also an incredibly popular device for years. Not to undersell the iPod, either, but I think the innovation was as much in the distribution channel (iTunes) as the product design.