281–290 of 1001 posts
This is the first inverse of Apple. It's the first device that doesn't live with you on the journey... everything from "the throw it out the window macintosh," iPod, iPhone, Air, iPad... you name it, was about going with you where you went. It's striking... This is a shift of epic proportions.
But when I go on holiday / a long trip / a weekend away, I have to hunch over my laptop.
Now I can pack this thing and have 15 massive monitors. Heck, I can set up a little bridge-of-the-enterprise situation where I know where to turn my head to get the status of system x. This could really change how I work once it's all ironed out.
My goal is just to learn programming in VR/AR for myself. Assuming this is gonna be a leading XR platform in the coming years, does it make sense to focus exclusively on learning ARKit/RealityKit? Or there are some "true cross-platform XR" stacks are being actively developed?
I vaguely remember some initiatives from Kronos group, but have no idea how this landscape currently looks like. Would really appreciate some elif5 brief into current state of XR programming.
Facial expression matching on your avatar.
The ability to make an avatar of yourself is kinda cool, but match the eye-tracking and other internal cameras you now have a way to have your avatar facial expression match your real-life expression. And THAT is what flattens the uncanny valley.
Regardless of a 2D 'Teams/Zoom' meeting or a special 3D Facetime, you will (A) always be looking directly at the camera, and (B) your facial expressions will convey all the hidden subtext that missing in communication done via voice-only.
This is a WIN over having a webcam pointed at your (messy) room too.
I am not an Apple fan. I do hope that this can inspire the spark that gives us the VR killer app.
- Google Glass -- tried and failed
- Facebook's 'meta' -- slashed development
- Metas space glasses -- now defunct, idk if they even even shipped
- Magic leap -- did they end up shipping?
- Microsoft surface -- looks like it was rolled out to 'enterprise' but does anyone actually use it?
- Numerous headsets on the market causing nausea, eye strain, head aches, and social ridicule (lmao)
Many big companies tried to do this but didn't really get past the gimmick stage. So yeah, it seems like a massive risk that Apple took or is taking to do this. Hopefully they've done enough to push the concept past these usability hurdles. I mean: as a tech guy this would be awesome if it delivers.
Even if they come down in price by an order of magnitude, that's still too pricey to buy one for everyone in my house and an extra or two for a friend.
Totally see the value for certain specific business and industry uses though. My company has a product that help keep line and construction workers keep utility information up to date in real time by scanning poles, cabinets, transformers etc and identifying them along with positional information. This could be amazing for something like that and the price tag will just be a business expense.