Live data from Hacker News

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

hugo.blog

611–620 of 863 posts

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

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are drastically ahead. They have VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR headset at the moment (and for at least 5 years).

Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists? Also I'm pretty sure those VR games that are ran on a computer connected to a headset could display on any headset, Apple or Oculus. Cursory search reveals people have already been getting SteamVR to work on the VisionPro. Running stuff directly on the headsets is neat, but there's no headset on the market with enough power to match what you can have when plugg…

> Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists?

On the Apple Vision Pro?

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

#612
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'm kinda shocked that neither the Vision Pro or the Quest allow for actual AR development since the passthrough cameras aren't available to 3p devs.

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

#613
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…

> Apple has had the advantage of green field engineering it exactly how they want it to be from the ground up.

It's not quite green field on the software side, albeit mostly. Clearly they already have experiencing re-platforming a whole operating system multiple times. The underpinnings of macOS power everything from desktops to smartphones to watches to tablets already all with diverging user interfaces. They had a solid first-party foundation to build the interface they want; Facebook is ultimately a third-party to Android and is having to solve the same Android hardware integration problems as everyone else.

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

#614

No matter how much I contemplate about it, there was still no “killer” app that affords me to buy a VR set. I’ve tried them, it’s nice. But it really has no place in my life. And how could this change? Even with better displays etc. the whole idea of disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings is so strange to me that it seems irreconcilable. Can anybody relate?

>disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings which headsets are you referring to? surely not the ones in the article since they have very good passthrough

Passthrough will never be good enough so as to get rid of the sense of disconnect.

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

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are drastically ahead. They have VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR headset at the moment (and for at least 5 years).

> VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR headset Because the rest of the experience is so unpolished. I have a Meta Quest 3 and overall it doesn't exactly feel like they invested tens of billions into that ecosystem. The headset's UI is basically a 2D desktop with taskbar and app launcher covering a small fraction of the field of view, including some buttons that are so small it's tricky to aim at them…

> To this day I have not managed to just copy files directly onto the device, no USB connection (other than to Steam) works. Only some semi-reliable wifi transfer from a third-party application worked but that required enabling developer mode.

To echo this today I wanted to watch something on my vision pro so I was on the tv app on my phone, saw a movie I wanted to watch, and then after a good amount of time moved over to my vision pro.

Being the scatter brain that I am I forgot what the movie was, unlocked my phone and the movie listing view was there. In my head I was like “damn wish I could share this page over to my vision pro like I do for my ipad”

And that’s exactly what I did with Airdrop. The already existing way to share anything between apple devices. I would not be surprised if universal clipboard works as well.

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

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists? Also I'm pretty sure those VR games that are ran on a computer connected to a headset could display on any headset, Apple or Oculus. Cursory search reveals people have already been getting SteamVR to work on the VisionPro. Running stuff directly on the headsets is neat, but there's no headset on the market with enough power to match what you can have when plugg…

> Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists? On the Apple Vision Pro?

The point is that VR games are not "the only real reason".

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

#617
post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been trying to solve this problem since the VRML days in the '90s. I suspect you are underestimating the complexity of 3D data by a pretty huge extent. 3D is much, much, much more complicated than 2D, especially if you're trying to interchange between arbitrary applications that may have divergent needs. Start with this little thought experiment. What do you mean by 3d object? Do you mean a set of polygon…

Stupid question… isn’t all that wrapped in a container? Like in HTML with divs? So if you have a virtual lamp you want to copy, all the various elements that make up the lamp are in a VR equivalent object markup as . If you want to copy specific elements you can, but you’d have specific actions, e.g copy color etc. Maybe I’m missing something though and it’s more complex.

Don’t think about tag soup. Think about how you’d encode the geometry, and what that even means for anything but the most trivial object, like a cube.

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

#618
post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been trying to solve this problem since the VRML days in the '90s. I suspect you are underestimating the complexity of 3D data by a pretty huge extent. 3D is much, much, much more complicated than 2D, especially if you're trying to interchange between arbitrary applications that may have divergent needs. Start with this little thought experiment. What do you mean by 3d object? Do you mean a set of polygon…

Stupid question… isn’t all that wrapped in a container? Like in HTML with divs? So if you have a virtual lamp you want to copy, all the various elements that make up the lamp are in a VR equivalent object markup as . If you want to copy specific elements you can, but you’d have specific actions, e.g copy color etc. Maybe I’m missing something though and it’s more complex.

Ok now, I have a few separate colored lights pointing at the lamp. What color is the lamp? How about when it’s on?

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

#619
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…

None of this matters compared to the number of apps available. Given the high price of the Vision Pro and the resulting low sales, it would make little business sense for app developers to invest in creating apps for it instead of for the Quest 3.

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

#620
post #95
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll only buy a VR device if it's in the form of glasses, not big goggles I need to strap to my face.

My main concern with the vision pro is that all use cases I know of (other than gaming) work better with some sort of pass through HUD display like the HoloLens. They spent a ton of company resources, weight and power making the wrong form factor emulate the right form factor, and are shipping with zero killer apps. You can’t even let your friends play with it without getting it re-fit to their head at the Apple Stor…

The main use case Apple presented, productivity, works much better with an opaque screen, not pass-through. There's a reason we don't make transparent screens, nor transparent windows on our screens: text and images are much easier to read if they are opaque.
Post reply on HN