Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 244 posts

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#221

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

freehorse wrote: post #215
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only across time via parallax motion and depth refocusing, neither of which are available on the screen. And both of those signals are extremely secondary to binocular sight. There's a reason that people with strabismus lose depth perception. Their point stands. (Though Apple could technically do a parallax effect by face tracking if they wanted)

> There's a reason that people with strabismus lose depth perception. Still we don't stumble onto things nor do we fail recognise what is on a glass vs inside. Even if we do not have binocular depth perception, we actually perceive depth irl just fine. And people with binocular vision also fall for depth illusions just fine, too. The brain does a lot of predictive processing. It would be too inefficient to be constan…

It's good that you don't have trouble getting through life, but "just fine" is not a measurement. Lacking binocular convergence inarguably diminishes perception even if not 100% gone completely.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#223

Post by SSLy »

mschuster91 wrote: post #109
iknowstuff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

?? isn't it objectively the fastest ST core out there, topping MT benchmarks as well? Depending on the variant the M4 plays cyberpunk at 50-120fps so what are you saying?

The problem is the edge cases where people use hardware capable of absolutely ridiculous things that nonetheless are common-ish on Windows and expect macOS to be capable of dealing with as well. (Don't get me started on macOS and the un-disableable mouse acceleration override coupled together with Steam Link...)

LinearMouse is a bandaid for the latter problem.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#224

Post by joelday »

gambiting wrote: post #42
throwaway48476 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The glass transparency effect is just very computationally expensive.

I just don't understand how if Visa could render its transparency efects smoothly on Intel 920 grade GPUs with 128mb of ram.

Vista did translucency and a statically positioned reflection mask, whereas this glass effect involves refraction/tinting that samples from surrounding surfaces.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#225

Post by agos »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #213
potato-peeler wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles But if you close one eye, you can still make out the depth. Brain is still able to tell what is glass, what is on top of glass or below it.

Only across time via parallax motion and depth refocusing, neither of which are available on the screen. And both of those signals are extremely secondary to binocular sight. There's a reason that people with strabismus lose depth perception. Their point stands. (Though Apple could technically do a parallax effect by face tracking if they wanted)

they do parallax effect for some things, but not for all liquid glass widget (it would be interesting but probably too much)

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#226

Post by iknowstuff »

monster_truck wrote: post #136
iknowstuff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

?? isn't it objectively the fastest ST core out there, topping MT benchmarks as well? Depending on the variant the M4 plays cyberpunk at 50-120fps so what are you saying?

Benchmarks are one thing. Real world usage and I/O are another. There is no world where 50fps is acceptable in any game in 2025. Flagship GPUs on high end systems running Windows manage 4k @ max settings north of 60, nearly double that with RT off. To achieve anything close on a mac, you're dropping down to 1440p, at lower settings, with frame generation.

Lol ok buddy you’re not accounting for the 50W vs 500W difference. Gotta compare to windows laptops on battery.

They’re about the level of a 4060 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LWfM7Ktsal0

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#227

Post by freehorse »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #221
freehorse wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a reason that people with strabismus lose depth perception. Still we don't stumble onto things nor do we fail recognise what is on a glass vs inside. Even if we do not have binocular depth perception, we actually perceive depth irl just fine. And people with binocular vision also fall for depth illusions just fine, too. The brain does a lot of predictive processing. It would be too inefficient to be constan…

It's good that you don't have trouble getting through life, but "just fine" is not a measurement. Lacking binocular convergence inarguably diminishes perception even if not 100% gone completely.

Measurements actually support that [0]. I am pretty sure you could devise some scenarios where individuals with strabismus do not perform as well, but for most irl scenarios there is no difference. Compensatory mechanisms do the job just fine, and even those with normal eyesight do not rely solely on binocular convergence either. Our brains don't usually rely on a single signal to make sense of the world, and predictive processing plays a huge role for constructing the image of the world around us, which is also why depth illusions work. Even for those with normal binocular convergence, its contribution for making sense of depth is prob smaller compared to other perceptual cues.

[0] Zlatkute et al 2020, Unimpaired perception of relative depth from perspective cues in strabismus. R. Soc. Open Sci. 7: 200955. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200955

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#228

Post by philistine »

Gigachad wrote: post #54
dabinat wrote: post #28

It’s technically impressive that they’re simulating the way light travels through glass. But a lot of the time it’s so subtle that I wonder if they could have just used simple semi-opacity and it would have had 85% of the same effect at a fraction of the CPU cycles.

I'm not sure how but it doesn't seem to use that much processing power. My 5 year old apple watch seems to render the glass UI fairly well and I assume this thing has the bare minimum processing power.

Why do you insist that the Watch uses the same exact code to render the glass?

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#229

Post by citrin_ru »

It looks like a step in the right direction but for me the main iOS 26 problem is not the transparency but the shape, size and placement of controls (buttons) - they waste too much space. It looks like designers has not tested iOS 26 well on small screens (iPhone SE) or they don't care about iPhone SE owners.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#230

Post by citrin_ru »

monster_truck wrote: post #36
throwaway48476 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont mean to impugn, but that sounds like how someone would describe a toddler being given an ipad. I turn off animations and use apps with an OLED theme.

The first thing I do every time I install a new version of iOS or get a new iPhone is disable all of the animations and enable reduce visual motion in accessibility. Not only is it faster in the countless cases where overambitious UI designers subject us to >0.2s animations, but it dramatically extends battery life

In iOS <= 18 reduce motion works fine but in iOS 26 it just changes animation to be symmetrical and fast. It still an animation and being fast it looks almost like flicker. I don't like animations in UI but had to disable this option in iOS 26.
Post reply on HN