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

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481–490 of 863 posts

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

#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 realized spatial operating system, while Meta has made an app launcher for immersive Unity/Unreal apps for vanilla Android. You can get away with an app launcher when all you want to support is fully immersive apps that don't talk to each other. But that fails completely if you are trying to build a true operating system.

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. The operating system has to truly understand 3D concepts internally. Meta is building these features but it is stuck in a really weird space trying to wedge them in between Android underneath and Unity/Unreal at the application layer. Apple has had the advantage of green field engineering it exactly how they want it to be from the ground up.

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

#482
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…

I think that’s probably the reason for why they are not talking about it and focusing on specs instead, they know.

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s genuinely better than a 5k monitor. In the recent update it now lets you mouse off your Mac and onto vision apps just like iPad hands over. It made me switch my desk setup to have the desk attached to my chair so I can have 360 range of screens. The resolution is stupidly high. I’ve attempted a coding workflow in all of the quests and it just wasn’t possible. It’s awesome in vision

please take a picture of this setup

Unrelated-but-related -- your username is fantastically appropriate for this discussion. I'm imagining a website with the same name, filled with images of people whose headsets have permanently melted onto their faces, like a Dali painting :D

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s genuinely better than a 5k monitor. In the recent update it now lets you mouse off your Mac and onto vision apps just like iPad hands over. It made me switch my desk setup to have the desk attached to my chair so I can have 360 range of screens. The resolution is stupidly high. I’ve attempted a coding workflow in all of the quests and it just wasn’t possible. It’s awesome in vision

Does it require light to work? What about space? Could you e.g. work in a dark closet, as an extreme example? Do those semi-realistic virtual avatars work for non-FaceTime apps like Zoom?

You can but you need IR lights for it to work

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

#485
post #434

My two cents (as an owner of a Vision Pro): 1) This is a beta product and I wouldnt recommend it to anyone that is not a developer or in a position to create apps for it, 2) this is going to have as big of an impact on humanity as the computer or the internet did and every engineer or aspiring entrepreneur should pay it attention. This device is magical. Yes it's too heavy, yes there are not enough apps, yes sharing…

> this is going to have as big of an impact on humanity as the computer or the internet did I see statements like this about AI too. How can something be bigger than the technology it is built on? The AVP is a computer. AI is a computer accessed through the internet... any computing device that accesses another computing device is further extending the "impact of computers and the internet." I don't get it. Maybe I'm…

If you look at it as purely additive, then sure. If you look at it like this, the era or the horse drawn carriage ended with the motor car, it doesn't get to claim any of the car's influence, despite being a precursor, then no.

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

#486
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…

This has been my main complaint with Oculus all the way since the Rift days. At that point I assumed it was forthcoming within a few years yet here we are 8 years later and somehow it's not all that different. I don't understand how Oculus/Meta isn't drastically ahead at this point on software.

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a lot of tablets before the iPad but it wasn’t until the iPad that tablets really took off as a serious market segment. Ditto with AirPods and Bluetooth earbuds. In the past, once Apple started pouring R&D money into a specific product type, the entire industry around it tends to advance very quickly. I’m optimistic about the Vision Pro, and I actually think the n+2 Meta release will be much better off for…

My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do this, over and over? Why are they the only ones who seem to be able to knock a product category out of the park and legitimize it? Is it just the vast amount of money? Are they the only ones who can create products? Is everyone else that bad? Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes…

One of the reasons for this is that Apple is a design-centric company. They really prioritize aesthetic and functional design, and they have a customer base that will allow them to flex these muscles in building luxury lifestyle products. Consumers respond to that. Products like that tend to have a segment-defining quality.

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

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it this way, then: having used a Vision Pro for two weeks (I bought one and returned it) I would gladly take a greater field of view in exchange for a slightly lower pixel density, and it would be a very easy decision. I had some major issues with the Vision Pro, but pixel density was not one of them.

Narrow FOV means you have to keep your eyes "locked forward" and people don't realize how much they look at things by moving their eyes.

When I did the AVP demo I was impressed by how quickly my eyes would relax and drift away slightly from looking at something after initially focusing on it. It took some conscious effort at first to maintain steady eye focus on an object whilst actuating it with a gesture.

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

#490

I think the description of the VisionPro as a dev kit is spot on. It's also a beta product in many way. Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product, they have made no attempt to make it even remotely affordable to most people. But they also know that every aspect of the hardware will improve over the next decade, and as it does they will have ironed out many of the problems with how we use AR/VR and w…

I am happy and avid user of Meta's recent Ray Ban Smart Glasses as Im a sunglass wearer (think a huge part of the population are too) and use my phone to take pics a lot. Now do that reliably through Meta's glasses and Zuckerberg just showed the latest Meta glass beta which you can ask "what mountain am i looking at," at it audibly tells you.

Im betting Apple will release similar smart glasses like Meta's in the next year or two.

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