Resolution aside most headsets kinda feel like wearing a scuba mask because of a narrow field of view. How was the vision pro? I assume this should be public info since it was shown to the press and devs.
To be honest I don't know the actual FOV number. It feels better than some VR headsets I've tried and on par with others. The lenses are definitely a more exotic shape than the ones on my Vive so they're able to get closer to your eyes and have better quality in all areas of the FOV. I feel like for work stuff and entertainment it's definitely good enough, though you might struggle living in it full time haha.
1. You can drink stuff but have to be careful. Hand-eye coordination gets a bit wonky the closer you are to your face. I've done it and it works though!
2. Never tried sleeping with it... I don't see why it would be any worse than other headsets though.
3. I've never used it outside, but that was for secrecy and not technical reasons.
4. Honestly not sure, maybe an hour without taking it off at all but I've definitely been in it for the majority of a few hour spans many times. At the time the main blocker was the beta OS and not comfort or battery (I would keep the battery pack plugged into the charger most of the time).
5. Nope! We were all super careful with them because prototypes are expensive, much more so than the consumer product. It's not something you could just casually drop while using like your phone though.
4. So the battery can be charged while plugged into the headset. What happens when you pull the battery from headset? I am guessing insta black. Does it have some power-saving mode where only R1 is feeding images from cameras to displays without any computing possibilities?
> (I would keep the battery pack plugged into the charger most of the time).
This sounds like the battery can be charging while using the headset, right? Which imo makes the 2 hour battery life much more understandable – if you're stationary in the device most of the time then you only have to rely on the battery when you move. If you can plug in to charge when you're back at your desk/couch, it's not really a limiting factor (for the use cases Apple is pursuing).
That can't be right. The human FoV is huge, more than 180 degrees. To cover that range without visible pixels requires much more than "4k" type resolution.
Either one of those statements can be right. Not both at the same time.
It's time someone with real measuring equipment looks at of these and gives a more technical review than just "wow Apple magic".
> That can't be right. The human FoV is huge, more than 180 degrees. To cover that range without visible pixels requires much more than "4k" type resolution.
I'm not so sure. Human vision is only sharp in a coin-sized area at any time. If you fix your eyes on a single word in your comment you can't actually read the entire comment, for example.
In other words, you don't need 4k in your entire FOV you just need to ensure that most of the pixels are spent in the middle of the viewing area.
I believe that it would be possible to have the screens in the headset generate a very distorted image, where the edges are compressed to a small area of the actual screen and therefore low-res, while the lenses stretch this image to fill the viewing FOV. Kind of like anamorphic movie lenses, or even how wideangle lenses distort the edges more than the center.
I have no idea if Vision Pro does this but it seems theoretically possible at least.
each eye is not getting "4k resolution" they are claimed to be each capable of rendering a 4k screen in natural resolution.
meaning a couple 4k screens can be rendered in the visible area without a noticeable difference in quality to real screens at a similar "apparent" distance
Not sure why people are still repeating this erroneous line of thinking. Humans can’t look in two different places at once like a chameleon. The eyes focus on the same point and the stereo images overlap almost entirely - the difference in point-of-view between your two eyes is tiny, they are next to each other! (Try alternatively closing one eye). If you’re emulating a pixel from a screen in VR you’re going to have to draw that same pixel in both eyes. You do not get 2x the pixels.
The exception to this is at the edges of your vision, where each eye does see a unique portion of the field, but by definition that’s not where you’re looking.
> meaning a couple 4k screens can be rendered in the visible area without a noticeable difference in quality to real screens at a similar "apparent" distance
This is impossible at the resolution stated. The headset would have to be 8K or more per eye in order to achieve this, which it most definitely is not.
With Apple's marketing power, I really would expect them to claim a higher resolution number if it was that high. After all, why not? If it's actually 5K they would shout it from the rooftops. All they've said is "more pixels than a 4K screen", also we know this type of lens distortion causes some waste.
We also know 23 million pixels for the whole system. So, 11.5 million for one display. a 4K display is 8.2 million. So it's not a whole lot more than 4K, and lower than their own 5K display (which has 14 million), which matches what they claim ("more than a 4K display"). That's not enough to cover the full field of human vision and still have pixels so small they can't be seen.
With corner waste it's just barely enough for one 4K display this way (and stretched to the full limits of vision it will be pretty unwatchable so close). You can't display two as you mention, because AR/VR projection works by using the 2 screens to display the same content just from a slightly different position (parallax) causing the 3D effect. The more overlap between the eyes the better and more comfortable the 3D effect (some headsets try to get an ultrawide FoV this way but shoot themselves in the foot with low overlap).
If it has a really wide FoV its sharpness will be pretty much on-par with a quest 3/Pico 4, if it's got the same FoV it will be a lot sharper. I expect the truth to be somewhere in between. Wider than a Quest and also sharper, but pixels visible if you look well and not quite full human FoV.
What I expect Apple will have done is sacrifice a bit of vertical FoV for horizontal FoV. Vertical FoV is important in VR (especially 'roomscale') because of orientation issues, and not quite as important in AR. Also most of their marketing material promotes a seated position so moving around is not an issue. Most VR headsets have an almost-square resolution per eye, but I expect this one to be closer to 16:10 (maybe not quite that wide). I think it will come out at around 4300x2600 pixels per eye which is slightly over 11 million pixels.
Still very impressive (which it must be at that price point obviously!). But real-world and not magic. Makes sense because Apple's engineers, as good as they are, are bound by the same laws of physics we all are. Their marketeers would love us to believe otherwise though.
It's really time for some real-world specs on this thing instead of marketing blah. But I think Apple specifically doesn't want this, it's no wonder they let only the most loyal media outlets (like Gruber) get as much as a short hands-on with this thing. And even those experience are white-gloved in detail (they even prepared custom adaptive lenses). They just want to keep the marketing buzz on as long as possible.
Norm from Tested, a highly credible source for VR, actually mentions the FOV is akin to Valve Index's: https://youtu.be/f0HBzePUmZ0?t=825
This is actually a bit disappointing since I would rather not have to move my entire head to look at a virtual side monitor. It seems like the technology is there now and many companies are looking into it, hopefully other headsets will be released with higher FOVs: https://youtu.be/y054OEP3qck?t=283
Another noteworthy point from that video: Apple has bought Limbak, an optics specialist that was formerly tied with Lynx R1's optics. This means Lynx can no longer use Limbak's future optics that, admittedly, fall short in scaling to higher resolutions. Now, Lynx has shifted its gaze to hypervision optics, intent on preventing a similar acquisition by another tech behemoth like Apple.
I just read Gruber's review. When he says "field of view" he's not talking about total degrees of arc, he's talking about what one might think of as "zoom," in this instance. He says things don't appear larger or smaller when you remove the headset.
The actual quote from Gruber was "There is no border in the field of vision — your field of view through Vision Pro exactly matches what you see through your eyes without it."
I’m still curious how things will look in low light. All the demos were in an optimally lit room, but what about when you dim the lights and the camera has trouble picking up the room?
> Vision Pro and VisionOS feel like they’ve been pulled forward in time from the future. I haven’t had that feeling about a new product since the original iPhone in 2007.
LLMs are not so impressive when you understand how they work approximately. This new Apple thingy is very impressive even though it’s much easier to understand. Apparently even if yoou worked on it from the beginning.
