Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right • Hacker News Board

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

#701

Post by amelius » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #678

SergeAx wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oculus is a gaming device and doesn't have a "productivity" ambition. I believe it is because 3D glasses has very limited productivity application. But who knows, for people who think that 13" laptop is okay for work, Vision Pro may become something better for comparable price.

> I believe it is because 3D glasses has very limited productivity application. AR has tremendous productivity applications if the device is small and wearable enough. Imagine being up in your attic running cables and seeing a projection of the floor plan of your house so you can see where the different rooms in your house are. Or driving a car, except all the blind spots disappear and are filled in with vehicle-moun…

> Imagine never forgetting a name or a face, because every time you see even a distant acquaintance, your glasses can run facial recognition and make their name pop up by their face in real life.

This could work if they weren't wearing a VR helmet themselves.

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

#702

Post by philwelch » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:09 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #701

philwelch wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe it is because 3D glasses has very limited productivity application. AR has tremendous productivity applications if the device is small and wearable enough. Imagine being up in your attic running cables and seeing a projection of the floor plan of your house so you can see where the different rooms in your house are. Or driving a car, except all the blind spots disappear and are filled in with vehicle-moun…

> Imagine never forgetting a name or a face, because every time you see even a distant acquaintance, your glasses can run facial recognition and make their name pop up by their face in real life. This could work if they weren't wearing a VR helmet themselves.

I keep saying “glasses” because eventually the technology is going to get miniaturized to that extent, and you can facial recognize people wearing glasses. But you could also have a handshake protocol for the devices themselves.

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

#703

Post by treyd » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:10 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #520

treyd wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to pop into a friend's living room for a beer without worrying about them living in another country. The way a large number of young people do this is just by seeing their friends in voice chat on discord and then joining on their phone.

It’s not the same. Seeing your friend or family member trapped in a small box is very different from having out with a low fidelity version of them playing mini golf or ping pong. Immersion and presence are things that you won’t understand if you refuse to try VR for longer than 5 minutes.

I own a Vive and used to use it regularly.

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

#704

Post by cthalupa » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:12 PM UTC

I've been using my AVP pretty regularly since release day. I'm using it less now that the novelty is wearing off, but still fairly often.

Things I like:

1) It really is an upgrade vs. working on just my 16" MBP screen. I'm in the minority that actually finds the knit headband pretty comfortable, and can fairly easily go 3-4 hours with it on before it starts to bother me. I do wish there was the option to break specific OSX apps out into their own window or at least have multiple screens, but when I can put most of my work in a web browser or app that the AVP supports, it works extremely well. At worst, it's still more eyeball real estate than just the MBP screen itself.

2) ALVR/Moonlight actually work pretty well, if you have the WiFi infrastructure to support it. It works properly on my Unifi setup but it struggled a bit on a friend's wifi. But it's really cool to play PCVR games using such a high resolution display, as well as playing 2D games on a screen that appears far larger than even my 65" TV

3) 3D movies are insanely good on it. I've always wanted to really love 3D movies, but the downsides for both active and passive 3D really kept them from being a resounding hit with me. Not the case on the AVP. No compromise on brightness or FPS makes it a much nicer experience. 2D movies and TV are also quite nice, with the only real downside being the audio - it's reasonably good, and I can enjoy movies on it no problem, but it also doesn't match proper home theater audio. On the whole, though, I think it's the best personal movie watching experience you can get for 3.5k. A projector that even approaches the visual quality/relative screen size of the AVP is $5k+. Obviously, though, a real home theater setup can be enjoyed with more people. The individual nature can also be a strength, though - if you want to watch something without disturbing your partner, you don't have to have a TV on in the bedroom.

4) I feel significantly less disconnected from the world when using it than I have my other VR/AR headsets. I can function with it on moving around my house, etc.

Things I dislike:

1) I would love it if it was lighter and I could wear it all day, but it's not a huge deal for me.

2) The OS is miles ahead of my Quest Pro, but it still feels unpolished at times. When everything works it's perfect - but there are still some bugs. Until 1.1 released, something was going on with Safari that could bring the whole thing to it's knees until you rebooted it. Not sure if it was a memory leak or if it was something else, but if I had a web browser open for an extended period of time, it would eventually bring the whole system to it's knees. This is fixed, but I still have some (more rare) issues with apps going nonresponsive and not being closable via the usual X, etc., requiring a force quit. I'm sure this will all get fixed in time, but it's not the same level of polish I've grown accustomed to with Apple software.

3) I'd really like some way to sync audio to external sources. You can do some hackery with a Siri shortcut, but I'd love to be able to sit down on my couch, put on a movie, and watch it while making use of my sound system vs. being forced to go with the AVP speakers or bluetooth headphones.

All in all, I like it quite a bit. I don't know that I would recommend it, with the pricing being what it is - I think if you're a good fit for it, you already are interested in it or will be interested in it when you hear about it in general.

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

#705

Post by zarzavat » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #646

zarzavat wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not chicken and egg, it’s simply the reality about the hardware. Even Apple, with all their resources and a $3500 price tag, could only make a mediocre passthrough on a very heavy headset. The hardware isn’t ready for AR yet. Games are where it’s at for the foreseeable future. Games don’t need passthrough and they don’t need especially high resolution. Look at how much of the vision pro is about giving people a…

> Even Apple, with all their resources and a $3500 price tag, could only make a mediocre passthrough on a very heavy headset. The hardware isn’t ready for AR yet. Hugo disagrees: > thanks to a high-fidelity passthrough (“mixed reality”) experience with very low latency, excellent distortion correction (much better than Quest 3), and sufficiently high resolution that allows you to even see your phone/computer screen t…

I admit I don’t own one of these things but reviewers seem to be unanimous that the passthrough on the Vision Pro is both the best of any headset on the market, yet also very mediocre compared to seeing things through your own eyes, especially in low light.

Given that it’s designed to be used indoors, poor low light performance is a big problem.

There’s a latency/acuity tradeoff whereby the more post-processing Apple applies to improve acuity, the worse the latency and more nausea they create. It’s going to require a lot more research into hardware post-processing.

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

#706

Post by kossTKR » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #657

kossTKR wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Macrumors reports 200.000 sold vision pro's a few month's ago. So maybe 300.000 today? It's a type of gadget that hasn't become widely adopted yet and the usecases and killer features are almost non existent compared to the iPhones phonecalls + web browsing, music, videos, notes and many others. Really hard to gauge what success means here, but if we say that in a year it will sell 500.000 units, that's…

there is no killer feature where it sees mass adoption.. 99.9% of the population cant afford to drop $3,500 on a computer screen for their computer.

But that just makes it a bigger success right? Adjusting for the crazy price it's even more impressive if it sells almost 1/8 in the first year.

My impression is that it's going to fall in price in the next iterations though i agree with you right now it's not even targeted for the masses.

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

#707

Post by TheRealDunkirk » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #354

fouc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, "stymied by commercial concerns" is a great way to put it. I get the feeling that many companies/managers don't have enough courage to make a different set of tradeoffs.

A lot of the replies are pretty vague, like they’re just “good at product” or they just “understand this or that” as if it’s some kind of mysticism. But why, and how? What is the formula? I think this reply chain starts to get at why. I’m imagining a typical business school 2-axis chart where one axis is “willingness to take and commit to risks vs unwillingness/noncommittal” and the other axis is “acts independently…

You're getting close. Over the past 30-40 years, American corporations have focused more and more and more on profitability, and "making the numbers go up." They have sacrificed employee retention in order to pay executives eye-watering packages to focus on eliminating literally everything that doesn't contribute to that goal. They gutted all the R&D they can, years ago. Apple seems to be almost alone in retaining enough business acumen to think further out than the next quarter. It's not magic. They're just continuing to do what places like IBM and HP were famous for, decades ago. It's like the quip in Days of Thunder (and I have no idea why it sticks with me): "I'm not going faster. Everybody else is going slower." Wall Street has killed the future of America, and slowed human progress around the globe, in order to buy a bunch of already-filthy-rich people even more stuff.

Not that I'm bitter and jaded, as an engineer, or anything.

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

#708

Post by bleepblop » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:19 PM UTC

jwcooper wrote: post #700

bleepblop wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about it. If apple had dropped their vision pro with something like you can play Half Life Alyx on it like they did with Death Stranding with the M2chip/M3? they might have had a larger buyer pool.

They would have needed controllers and actually cared enough to support steam on it. There is zero chance Valve would release HL:Alyx without full steam support on the device. That being said, I get what you're saying - that a killer game could have helped the value proposition. They clearly didn't design it for that though, even based on how much lower their refresh rate is for hand tracking. It feels like a consump…

The irony is I can use steam link with an ipad. On top of that I can use it as a second monitor for when I am on the go among some other productivity. From what I saw with the vision pro, nothing compelled me in that department. And I have to agree with you, not having some sort of controller interface was an additional no go as well.

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

#709

Post by hattmall » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

toddmatthews wrote: post #668

kilroy123 wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the crappy version 1. Just like iphone and ipad v1. They sucked. It's very obviously better to wait a little longer for a future version.

Not sure I agree. When I first saw the 1st gen iPhone I was so impressed with it, I went out and got one a few days later. This is before the App Store. Yes compared to today it might “suck” compared to the latest version, but the first iPhone was super compelling by itself at the time and started selling very well

Yeah if the first version doesn't take off that's generally not a good sign. 1st Iphone did extremely well.

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

#710

Post by alsetmusic » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #481

Coming from a senior Oculus lead, the most interesting thing about this write up for me, is what it lacks: it says almost nothing about the software stack / operating system. Still 100% talking about hardware at the bottom and end user applications at the other end. But there is no discussion of the platform which to me is actually the highest value proposition Apple is bringing here. In short: Apple has made a fully…

> Think about what has to exist, to say, intelligently copy and paste parts of a 3D object made by one application into a 3D object made by another, the same way you would copy a flat image from photoshop into a Word document.

I own an AVP and this isn't something that can be done with it, to the best of my knowledge. Please explain how this is possible with the existing OS and apps.