This feels like one of those activities that's so drastically different that there may be serious health concerns about it. Wearing a VR headset to play a few hours of games a week still lets your eyes mostly exist in a natural light setting. When you're wearing a VR display the light is right up against your eyes with no possibility for them to look away to relax. When we're normally working we can glance out at a horizon (hopefully - sometimes you don't have a window) or at least let your eyes wander off to the ceiling and defocus. It seems like giving your eyes a chance to relax (i.e. having narrow glasses where part of your view field is out of focus) can be beneficial at delaying the onset of Myopia. The idea of wearing one of these for eight hours a day feels much worse than even staring at a phone in your hand when it comes to eye health.
Coding in Vision Pro
31–40 of 465 posts
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#32I tried to use the Vision Pro for work, and I'm not sure if it was just my eyes or what, but looking at code inside of that thing was just...exhausting. When I took it off, I looked at my regular monitors with a newfound love. I'd love for this thing to reach it's full potential as this 'work from a mountaintop, but really your garage' device, but I feel like until the resolution gets to the same as existing monitors…
Were you using macos virtual display? Using the passthrough to look at monitors is passable but not suitable for even a few minutes of use.
Not you you responded to but I tried both. I mean I never seriously thought the passthrough would be good enough, and it wasn't, but it was just barely legible and useful when I was trying to pair my AVP to my MBP. But I really tried to like MVD and I just couldn't do it. It wasn't clear enough and felt like an added "tax" on my mind, also I felt very limited compared to when using my external monitors.
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#33This is my goal and hope, but I'll temper OP's points with how things stand today.
Background: I got my AVP on Monday 5th (having gotten up before dawn to place my order when it first became available). I am a programmer with a multi-screen setup to maximize my usable workspace, which consists of editor, terminal, and browser windows. My hope is for the AVP to replace a set of fixed screens, and have in effect infinite screen space.
The AVP has worse Angular Resolution than a monitor, at average 34 Pixels-Per-Degree (PPD) vs a monitor's 64 PPD (more details in iFixit's writeup [1]).
This is an inevitable consequence of placing a screen so close to your eyes. The AVP's exceptional screen technology mitigates this (and for me completely eliminates the "screen door" effect that plagued earlier VR sets), but it can't beat Physics.
So for one thing, you cannot have the legible text density of, say, 2 27" monitors an arm's length away. In other words, the equivalent amount of text will take more space in your vision on the AVP.
This is understandable. But where the AVP really has a problem, but I really hope they improve, is window management.
Someone quipped that, from an app/window management perspective, the AVP is like sticking an iPad on your face, and I agree.
As someone who's used to moving and resizing windows around with Tiling window managers on Linux and SizeUp or Moom on macOS, the window management of the AVP is really awkward. Say you put your editor large front-and-center, but now want to switch to a terminal, or resize the editor to put a reference on the side? The hand control may feel magical, but you're going to be doing a lot of it to move and resize your windows.
But these are software UX problems, and I'm gambling on Apple fixing them over time.
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/90409/vision-pro-teardown-part-2...
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#34I like the comparison: like a good pair of earphones for your eyes. That’s a nice succinct summary and gets to when and how the device operates best - when detaching from your surroundings helps you in some way. That marginal value every day isn’t for me but I can see how it could be for many, especially as the price drops over time.
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#35Any idea how the author was able to have multiple desktop screens? What app is he using for this? I thought it only allowed you to mirror one screen per Mac and from my experience it is quite laggy.
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#36At first I thought it would be weird, but after a few minutes it all felt very natural and a deep work focus was achieved without me really realising it. I tried to grasp some of the awe I experienced in this blog post.
You have a great humorist writing style. I enjoyed the read and it just makes me want one even more. I just went to an Apple Store to demo the Vision Pro and walked out feeling like I had a religious experience. I was overcame with emotion over that immersion demo, those baby rhinos completely blew my mind. I'm booking another appointment soon to get another taste. I really hope the price becomes manageable for consu…
Have you tried the Quest 3?
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#37At first I thought it would be weird, but after a few minutes it all felt very natural and a deep work focus was achieved without me really realising it. I tried to grasp some of the awe I experienced in this blog post.
How is the resolution? I never tried a Vision Pro yet, but that was my main gripe with my Rift. Indeed, IME, the ‶real world″ size of the windows is nothing, it's their angular resolution that is a make or break.
The original Oculus Rift had 1080x1200, VisionPro has 3660x3200, field of view is similar. In virtual monitor terms that means a Rift can display a 640x480 monitor and the VisionPro a 1920x1080 one. Still quite far away from Retina, but should be pretty usable, especially since it allows making the virtual screens bigger than a real monitor can be.
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#38I tried to use the Vision Pro for work, and I'm not sure if it was just my eyes or what, but looking at code inside of that thing was just...exhausting. When I took it off, I looked at my regular monitors with a newfound love. I'd love for this thing to reach it's full potential as this 'work from a mountaintop, but really your garage' device, but I feel like until the resolution gets to the same as existing monitors…
I returned mine today after attempting to use it for work for a few hours at a time over the last week. I felt the same eye strain with my Mac as a mirrored display.
Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously.
After a few days the eye strain seemed to get worse and worse, until yesterday it give me such a bad headache I decided that was enough.
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#39This is my goal and hope, but I'll temper OP's points with how things stand today. Background: I got my AVP on Monday 5th (having gotten up before dawn to place my order when it first became available). I am a programmer with a multi-screen setup to maximize my usable workspace, which consists of editor, terminal, and browser windows. My hope is for the AVP to replace a set of fixed screens, and have in effect infini…
OPfftopic: the text preview bar following your wireless mac keyboard around is the standout AR feature for me. If that sounds unimpressive, I agree; I have yet to experience truly impressive AR on the AVP. But it's still early, so I'm hopeful.
Re: Coding in Vision Pro
#40My biggest problem is that it is sometimes difficult to read the keys on my keyboard. I really wish that it could do object recognition on my keyboard and re-render the keycaps. This would be especially useful in "environments", which make the keyboard disappear entirely.
I was surprised Apple didn't have this. My Meta Quest 2 had a super crappy version I tried for all of 2 minutes. The AVP passthrough and rendering content behind your hand (cut out?) both leave some to be desired. The little indicator that floats over your keyboard is cool, touch bar coming back from the grave. But I felt like I couldn't dial in the environment past the point where I could still see my keyboard/hands because of the "keyboard disappearing" issue.