Apple Vision augmented reality headset maybe another Google Glass failure.

[jonovid]

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/14/24072792/apple-vision-pro-early-adopters-returns

with a lot of hype promoting the product as the next big thing in augmented reality technology.
would users be comfortable wearing a reality headset around their faces every day?
problems experienced by some users are-
experienceing motion sickness , uncomfortab with prescription eyeglasses
headset bridge over the nose not comfortable.  redness in the eyes . neck pain.
high sticker price of $3500
in my opinion VR  reality headsets are for game arcades, theme park attractions.
like skydiving membership, VR headsets may need to be custom tailored for a perfect fit, given the high cost of equipment set-up & training.

[PlainName]

in my opinion VR  reality headsets are for game arcades, theme park attractions.

Don't you think it would be cool to have your scope display right in front of your nose when your head is inside some cabinet as you try to fault find?

[SiliconWizard]

Can I also have 4 YT videos playing in each corner of my viewfield? And maybe a small pane with a ChatGPT prompt.

Who care about motion sickness. It's all due to our inner ear anyway - let's just mandate the disabling of inner ear for all, and we'll be able to buy and enjoy AR glasses en masse. The sense of balance is useless in the XXIst century anyway.

[BrianHG]

They are way too heavy and bulky.  Especially at their price point.  They should have had the bare minimum displays and cameras in the headset, while everything else should have been part of the battery pack.

[tszaboo]

would users be comfortable wearing a reality headset around their faces every day?

Someone poste videos of people wearing this in the gym working out, and "driving" teslas.
I think the appropriate response would be if both the car and the headset self destructs in a huge explosion if someone tries this.

[PlainName]

Remember when a mobile phone involved a separate brick (literally the size of one) with the big handset joined to it with a curly cable? "Way too heavy and bulky" would describe them perfectly, and yet people bought and used them. And because of that we have the neat mobiles everyone has in their pocket today. Instead of dissing the early adopters, perhaps thank them for moving the technology forwards to where you'd find it acceptable.

[Bicurico]

Real life
 is in 360° 3D High Resolution. It works without any additional hardware!

[thm_w]

They are way too heavy and bulky.  Especially at their price point.  They should have had the bare minimum displays and cameras in the headset, while everything else should have been part of the battery pack.

I'm sure they considered it but good point. Main glasses weigh 600g and battery weighs only 350g.

If you look at the teardown though its hard to see where you'd save that weight: https://www.ifixit.com/News/90137/vision-pro-teardown-why-those-fake-eyes-look-so-weird
Front glass is 34g.
The front displays, eye displays, and surrounding PCB's probably weigh a lot but that is part of the design, that can't be moved elsewhere.

I think it would only be the main PCB and the fan shown here: https://valkyrie.cdn.ifixit.com/media/2024/02/03115347/AVP-Layout-1.jpg
100g or so?

[Bud]

in my opinion VR  reality headsets are for game arcades, theme park attractions.

Don't you think it would be cool to have your scope display right in front of your nose when your head is inside some cabinet as you try to fault find?

Yep, would work perfectly for doing work in a high voltage cabinet with pitch & zoom gestures 

[PlainName]

in my opinion VR  reality headsets are for game arcades, theme park attractions.

Don't you think it would be cool to have your scope display right in front of your nose when your head is inside some cabinet as you try to fault find?

Yep, would work perfectly for doing work in a high voltage cabinet with pitch & zoom gestures 

Your bias is showing. There is no doubt that regardless of whatever benefit could be shown, you'll find some way to diss it.

[Bud]

I just lived long enough to become capable to smell bullshit, that is all.

[PlainName]

Man with a hammer, and all that.

[Wil_Bloodworth]

Remember when a mobile phone involved a separate brick (literally the size of one) with the big handset joined to it with a curly cable? "Way too heavy and bulky" would describe them perfectly, and yet people bought and used them.

I had one of those bag phones... and it sucked.  Had I known back then how bad they sucked, I would have not purchased one and it was very expensive.  Motorola something I think.  It was circa 1991 if I remember correctly.

I'm not hating on Apple's "try" but you won't see me walking around in public with one of these douchsets on my head.  I'm sure there are very practical and ideal use cases for these in the various scientific communities though.  They're only going to improve but it might take a while to get something the average user is willing to accept... this isn't it IMO.

- Wil

[David Aurora]

in my opinion VR  reality headsets are for game arcades, theme park attractions.

Don't you think it would be cool to have your scope display right in front of your nose when your head is inside some cabinet as you try to fault find?

This kind of stuff is what I was really excited about when they first announced it.

And even putting aside scope/meter integration which I suspect will be pretty niche and clunky (if any T&M companies support it at all), just being able to display usual workflow stuff like schematics/board layouts/job notes on one of these would be amazing. I've tried so many monitor positions around the workshop and I still constantly find myself grabbing my laptop or iPad or phone mid job and then trying to prop those up somewhere while I work. And even then as soon as I move along the bench to test something with a different piece of T&M gear then I'm moving stuff again so I can see it.

So yeah, the idea of wearing one of these and just moving my eyes or turning my head and seeing all the info I need crystal clear no matter where I am in the lab sounds amazing to me.

[Berni]

This thing is just a impressive tech demo rather than actual useful product.

The stuff that works on it is definitely impressive. However it is still more of a solution looking for a problem. So far the only problem it solves well is giving you a giant screen without needing the physical space for one or having to transport it (Like on an airplane or in a hotel room).

Having a screen in the corner of your vision while you work is an excellent use case for augmented reality. However needing to look at your work in a blurry way trough passtrough cameras and having this big thing strapped to your face is a high price to pay for the benefit of extra displays in your vision.

We still have to give it a decade or so for tech to catch up before we get a compact pair of glasses with high quality augmented reality displays inside them.

[PlainName]

So far the only problem it solves well is giving you a giant screen without needing the physical space for one

Obviously I haven't tried this Apple Vision but I have tried the Quest, and one of the things people raved about was the mulltiple virtual screens and (OK, I can't count) cinema-like films. I found neither to be actually useful or nice to use, so while the Apple kit has a higher resolution I am still dubious that one could comfortably use a headset instead of, say, a laptop when out and about.

Perhaps it's just the strangeness that impedes and, once one gets used to them, they turn out to be not so bad after all. Typing on a phone I find a terrible single-fingered experience, but some people double-thumb almost as fast as I can touch-type on a real keyboard, so maybe it's the person rather than kit.

[Berni]

Haven't tried the Apple Vision either but i do have a Quest 3 for a number of months now.

Never actually used it as a external monitor since i don't have a need for that functionality (I have plenty of desktop monitors around at home) apart from convenience of quickly able to go click a few things on a PC without pulling the headset off and grabbing a mouse and keyboard. My main use for it is VR gaming and it does a great job at it. This is what 90% of VR headset uses are for right now anyway (yet the Apple Vision has no support for games what so ever). Makes for a great sense of immersion with simulator type games without spending countless hours and dollars on a sim rig.

As for comfort... the Quest headsets are far from comfortable out of the box. You need to spend about 50$ extra in Chinese aftermarket accessories to get a better and much more comfortable way of attaching the headset to your head as well as fix some slight quality of life issues with it. After the aftermarket upgrades, then it is actually rather comfortable. The way the Apple Vision straps to the users head, it looks like it likely has similar comfort issues once used for >30 minutes.

Gaming in general tends to mask some of the issues, since there is enough stuff going on all the time that you might forget about comfort for a bit. This is not the case if you tried to use it as a serious productivity tool. Having physical controllers is also much superior to hand tracking. Sure hand tracking is cool and feels futuristic as heck when you first try it, but it pales to the super responsive and accurate tracking of controllers with IMU assistance, having buttons at your finger tips also makes UI interaction so much more versatile.

[PlainName]

I don't use the Quest (probably should flog it) because I just don't get on with the fully immersive environment. Anything that involves the player moving makes me feel very sick indeed (and for some time afterwards), but even some things that should be good tend to fail. Take, for instance, driving sims. You'd think it would be great to be able to turn your head and see what's alongside or even behind, but in practice the lack of inner-ear feeback means you can't tell if the scenery going past at an angle is because you're not looking straight ahead of the car is going sideways. So to prevent crashing I have to look solidly ahead just like with a normal game setup! And then feel nauseous for the effort to boot.

[ejeffrey]

in my opinion VR  reality headsets are for game arcades, theme park attractions.

Don't you think it would be cool to have your scope display right in front of your nose when your head is inside some cabinet as you try to fault find?

This kind of stuff is what I was really excited about when they first announced it.

And even putting aside scope/meter integration which I suspect will be pretty niche and clunky (if any T&M companies support it at all), j

I think this would be cool and useful, but 90% of the benefit could be solved by having ubiquitous, easy to use, seamless screen casting of test equipment to smartphones and laptops. 

We don't have that because it's hard, mostly a social problem satisfying a bunch of different people with different goals.  AR doesn't really change the equation here other than that maybe enough hype will coelece around it and get something launched.

[c64]

Real life
 is in 360° 3D High Resolution. It works without any additional hardware!