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Notes on Vision Pro

notes.andymatuschak.org

251–260 of 700 posts

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#251

> But it does put an enormous amount of pressure on the eye tracking. As far as I can tell so far, the role of precise 2D control has been shifted to the eyes. I've been researching eye tracking for my own project for the past year. I have a Tobii eye tracker which is probably the best eye tracking device for consumers currently (or the only one really). It's much more accurate than trying to repurpose a webcam. The…

Heads up: PSVR2 has eye tracking, I know it’s used in some games. Might be something to look into.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they showed a PS5 Controller being used?

1) Console controls are not a suitable alternative to proper VR controllers 2) What makes you think the PS5 controller was connected to the headset, and not the headset being used as a TV showing the output of a PS5?

But the latter is ideal. I just want PS5 shown in Vision Pro rather than a sub par VR game.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#253
post #133

From years of observing first-hand how hard it is to develop software, I’m shocked that Apple continually makes products that fit their aesthetic (eg. The crown and headband evoking the Apple Watch) and have coherent and mostly-baked software on launch like this. Is there a book about how they’re able to operate at scale and deliver such consistent things? Do they just have an insanely good product team? How do they…

Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda is the closest, modern look inside Apple's product development that I've found. Focus is on the development of the software for the original iPhone and is a great book.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#254
post #68
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fitness and gaming wasn't demoed much yesterday, but are going to be insane on the Vision Pro - so I guess it was just too obvious to demo. Or is it? Also Meta could catch up if it was just software. But how big of a deal is the M2+R1? Anyway the metaverse was already being retracted, else this Vision Pro could have hammered Meta. Clearly Occulus has to evolve to match VisionPro. Controller has to be optional. It has…

> Also Meta could catch up if it was just software. This was Microsoft's warcry for years : who cares if Apple has better software? We have better hardware. Well guess what, software matters and it matters more than hardware. If you have both, you have literally a generationally-defining product (e.g. the iPhone), but even if you just have the software, you'll still eat your competitor's lunch. Why does everyone have…

> This was Microsoft's warcry for years: who cares if Apple has better software? We have better hardware.

What on earth are you talking about? Microsoft is a software company first. They rode the Windows advantage for more than a decade and didn't have anything to do with the hardware, because they aren't a hardware company. Windows ran (and was preinstalled) on everything, from the lowest tier of trash to the highest end machines, and Microsoft didn't care about the quality of the hardware, because they owned the platform that everyone used for computers. Office is another software product that still doesn't have any real competitors and is one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows.

On the flip side, when exactly did Apple have better software than Microsoft? Their office suite is barely usable for anything outside of the most basic use cases. Apple beat Microsoft in mobile, and Microsoft kept its head in the sand and assumed the Windows advantage would live forever and didn't wake up until Ballmer was gone, after Apple had started eating their lunch in the laptop space, but the assumption was that Windows was so good people wouldn't switch, not that Apple had bad hardware and good software, if only you could run it somewhere else.

Microsoft is named for being SOFTware for MICROcomputers, they don't have a blind spot around software. This is some Soviet revisionism or something.

> Meta's about to get a rude awakening because "we can fix the software later." As if technical debt doesn't exist and as if you can so easily get engineers that eagerly want to clean up someone else's mess.

I don't know, Meta is probably the largest employer of PHP developers in the world, I bet they can find people willing to do some other masochistic shit too.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#255
I was hoping to see more paradigm shifting user interface ideas. I think those exist inside Apple Park, but are waiting for their time. It's telling that this was announced at the developers conference. The focus now is on the platform, and I think mind-blowing user experiences will come later. (At least I hope)

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#256
post #49

Does anyone know how these notes are generated? Is it a custom site, or something off the shelf?

It’s custom.

If you got time and energy in the near future, please, consider slightly enhancing it according to the average web surfers expectations. Particular irritants were the broken scrolling (bound to a container), the broken footnote links and the forbidden content behind links. Additionally the classic escape hatch, Safari Reader, didn’t work.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#257
post #133

From years of observing first-hand how hard it is to develop software, I’m shocked that Apple continually makes products that fit their aesthetic (eg. The crown and headband evoking the Apple Watch) and have coherent and mostly-baked software on launch like this. Is there a book about how they’re able to operate at scale and deliver such consistent things? Do they just have an insanely good product team? How do they…

You could say the same about Dyson or Oxo or Bodum. Having a single esthetic and coherent product line is a choice. On the face of it, it sounds like a company would want coherency, but in practice it means leaving a lot of money on the table for every single of your products. Any consistent design decisions means anyone who's not pleased by it has no option in your lineup to go to. That's of course a gamble Apple is…

porsche also.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#258
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reviewer on YouTube said the Apple Vision is a bit heavy because they used a metal frame for some reason. (No comment about foreheads)

You can safely treat “reviewer on YouTube” as “stranger at a bar” in terms of accuracy. They get paid to get clicks, not to deliver accurate or expert advice, and that heavily favors “why don’t they just…?” comments glossing over challenging engineering decisions.

I think it was MKBHD who seems to know his stuff

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#259
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess it was just too obvious to demo. Or is it? Gaming can't be good, because there's no controllers. Even if the hand and eye tracking is absolutely S-tier, you're never getting something like button input from swinging your empty hands around, twitching your fingers. Just the occlusion from the back of your hand would be enough enough for that to be impossible. Fitness might be more doable, but even then I thi…

I hate VR controllers. I'd prefer to play VR games without them. I'd prefer they do hand and eye tracking to determine what I'm doing, like look at a zombie and and go pew pew pew with my finger guns. The only VR headset I've tried that can do hand tracking (Oculus Quest) sucks at it and games there didn't pick up on it as an input at all, as far as I know. However, just because VR controllers won't exist for the App…

Why do you hate VR controllers?

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#260
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Apple's visionOS page, re: Accessibility ( https://developer.apple.com/visionos/ ) "And for people who prefer a different way to navigate content, Pointer Control lets them select their index finger, wrist, or head as an alternative pointer." This reads to me like they've got you covered (at least in principle).

Hopefully you can just set one eye as dominant. I as well have one good eye, so just using that one for tracking should be fine.

They have a training process at the beginning that learns your eyes. It asks you to ‘point’ to various points in space. I’d imagine it would be able to detect a dominant eye with that, and prefer it over a slower or non-tracking eye.
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