I owned one and this article is perfectly accurate. This guy hit the nail on the head on everything.
Passthrough is massively oversold, even if it's technically impressive. They set expectations way too high.
The comfort is the #1 reason I don't own a Vision Pro anymore. I feel exactly as the author put it, "relieved," when I take it off.
I feel significantly more disconnected from my family when I have it on because I have no easy way to share my content with them. A massively improved guest mode, better casting, or something else would go a long way here.
The eye tracking + tap is incredible, but Apple tried to shoehorn this into everything. It should have been the primary mode of interaction with a detailed/precision interaction when needed. Eye tracking + tap is simply not good enough for power user use cases. It was such a relief to go back to my Quest after Vision Pro because the controllers were so precise and easy to use.
And finally, I'll mention that the OS + standardization of UX is HUGE. The Quest feels like a crappy Chinese clone in comparison. Every single window has a completely different way of moving, adjusting, etc. Sometimes you click in the center, sometimes you click under, sometimes you can't move it at all. On the Vision Pro, everything is standardized. I'd love to see Meta fix this.
> I feel significantly more disconnected from my family when I have it on because I have no easy way to share my content with them. A massively improved guest mode, better casting, or something else would go a long way here.
This whole paragraph sounds downright dystopian.
“A family that shares content together, stays together”
I also feel like the lack of precise/physical controls is going to make gaming a non-starter. Which is really the main reason I’m excited about VR in the first place.
> I owned one and this article is perfectly accurate. This guy hit the nail on the head on everything.
Strangely enough, I don't own one, but just assumed this guy had hit the nail on the head with everything. Everything else I've read felt like it was pushing an agenda, this guy's writing just seemed like it was accurately weighing the pros and cons as he saw them.
I've been complaining that flutter is the next flash, meaning that by rendering their own UX instead of using the platform's they're basically making dead end apps. They'll claim devs just need to reship their apps with the latest version but that's means all old flutter apps are abandonware. It also ignores that the next platform they'll run into the same problem again.
agree very much here. apple - we're missing many intuitive gestures. lets ditch the cursor paradigm eye tracking is set to work on. in the real world we have proprioception that lets us accurately interact with the environment without looking at what we're doing.
>Passthrough is massively oversold, even if it's technically impressive. They set expectations way too high.
As a Vision Pro owner, kinda, but kinda not?
I have a really low-power glasses prescription (-1/-1.5) and I've come to the conclusion that everyone saying this has the priviledge of being born with perfect (irl) vision. It's intentionally a little bit out of focus to obscure the screen door effect, which I understand might be disorienting to people who've never had to wear glasses.
But taking that into account, it's incredibly clear. If you've used any other pass through, it's night and day. I will frequently put on my headset having forgotten that the cover is on, and when I take it off my brain genuinely reads that as uncovering a transparent lens. The slightly reduced HDR, slight desaturation, and almost imperceptible visual snow all added up still don't detract enough from that to say it is not close to "lifelike".
It's not perfect, but it's incredibly close - and probably better than a good chunk of the population's uncorrected vision.
I mean, the comparison images in the article almost make the point for me. The left image, when adjusted for brightness/contrast (which the human vision system does automatically absent other stimulus, e.g. when all you can see is the headset) has a greater resemblance to what a cloudy day looks like IRL compared to the completely oversaturated, amateurly HDR'd image on the right.
I bought Vision Pro and used it as is for three weeks, then put it away for a couple weeks because of degree of difficulty for me, definitely NOT a techie.
On a whim I went to the optometrist, got examined and a prescription for glasses (I use over-the-counter 1.25x readers from CVS), then uploaded the Rx to Zeiss using their iPhone app, and ponied up $149 for their optical inserts.
Since the inserts arrived and I put them in, my experience overall with VP has been better: still way too difficult and confusing, but movies and TV shows, which were the only redeeming factors in my initial three weeks of use, seem really, really crisp and vivid, more so than initially.
Take these observations with a grain of salt, after all, it's a series of one 75-year-old retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist's experiences.
But if you've already dropped 4k, well, that's a lot of sunk cost to write off without trying everything possible to make it work.
> The only way to check progress over slow hotel wifi was to look at the progress circle, which is also the cancel button. I was aware that every time I checked progress, I was one finger-spasm away from cancelling the whole download.
oooof
> Every app on Quest has to reinvent how buttons work, how a scroll view works, how far away from the user the content should be etc.. and every app works differently.
kinda shocked there's not a Material Components equivalent for Quest. I guess it's designed like a game system (where custom menus are standard), but that's a reinforcing loop. As long as there's no standard component system, it'll continue to be game-centric.
Now I'm not sure what their army of designers were doing?
This is 101 of product design - put in place a standard UI Guidelines. This is particularly important for a 'platform' player like what Meta is aiming for (Ex. from other platform/OS - Windows UI Guidelines, Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, Google's Material Design, etc..)
> I was downloading Star Wars for my flight back to London. The only way to check progress over slow hotel wifi was to look at the progress circle, which is also the cancel button. I was aware that every time I checked progress, I was one finger-spasm away from cancelling the whole download
Oh god this.
The last 10 years of UX trends where everything has to be two or three different actions behind a single tap or tap and hold does NOT translate well onto AVP. Most iPad apps are nigh unusable, esp those with high information density. Vision is not quite as precise as a mouse cursor but it definitely not as imprecise as a tap, but only when the UI is predictable. Because where you are looking is also how you read, every informational field also needs to include either both the information and the action, or they need to be separated out.
So far there is no bigger culprit than the native Music app. The bottom of the player has like three nested buttons that all do different shit. The same place you look to see what song is playing is also a hidden progress/playback scrubber and also a shortcut to switch to the miniplayer if you happen to look at the eye catching album art icon directly next to the title of the song. It’s maddening.
Try hanging up a call on your smartphone and your counterpart hanged up a a fraction of a second before you. Now you call someone (pretty deep down) in your recent call list.
Or click "Connect to Bluetooth headset" in Windows. Congratulations, your headset just connected itself, so you now you disconnected it.
YES! I counted 5 discrete actions that I had to perform in sequence in order to turn off Vision Pro. Why not an On/Off switch? Or are they saving this for Gen 2?
The Apple Music team is off doing their own BS. The Music app is also trash in other platforms with terrible UX.
The Home tab in the music app shows exactly 1 tile of information on my 15 Pro Max. That's 3.6 million pixels and they couldn't be bothered to fit more than 1 item without scrolling.
One of the most important and key points I hope Apple iterates on in an upcoming version is some type of universal undo action.
It's immensely frustrating to be watching a video in the photos app and swipe a tiny bit wrong only to lose all current progress in the video even after you swipe back. Even scrubbing controls for long videos (1+ hours) can be super finnicky and it's tough to select accurately. The traditional scrubbing method of holding while moving vertically to scrub at slower speeds doesn't seem to work either.
As a result, I'm often catching myself in frustrating situations where I'd like to just __UNDO__ whatever action I previously took was. Either jumping around a video to the previous timestamp, or undoing the close safari tab button I didn't mean to select, or any number of other things I accidentally press due to the options being just a little too close to each other.
It's just a mild annoyance, but it's something that would massively improve my experience with using the device, as someone who has spent a LOT of time in it nearly every day since release.
> Every app on Quest has to reinvent how buttons work, how a scroll view works, how far away from the user the content should be etc.. and every app works differently. On visionOS, all of this is handled by Apple, and every app looks and feels the same.
I remember the days when EVERY application in Windows had "File" in the upper left hand corner. You could make a good bet that "Edit" was next and "Preferences" was somewhere in there as well.
Being "good with computers" back then had a lot to do with knowing the standard layout of applications to help guide you through where things ought to be or, at least, could plausibly be found.
I applaud Apple for keeping this going in this modern world we live in of SAAS websites that each do their own thing.
> The biggest innovation with Vision Pro is visionOS. visionOS provides native app frameworks, so developers can build apps for it. That sounds ridiculously obvious, and yet its something Meta have failed to offer for years. Every app on Quest has to reinvent how buttons work, how a scroll view works, how far away from the user the content should be etc.. and every app works differently. On visionOS, all of this is handled by Apple, and every app looks and feels the same.
Meta does have standardized utilities for translating movement to touch/drag/etc. interactions on arbitrary virtual surfaces:
But it doesn't seem (AFAIK) to answer the other side of this, which is the UI design system so apps have a consistent look and feel. Which is perhaps more common coming from a game development perspective, but ever since the Mac OS shareware days, Apple's understood that it's empowering to a certain kind of developer if you make it easy/the default path for them to build experiences that match a standardized look and feel. I'm honestly surprised that Meta didn't at least make an optional SDK for this.
I think this is inevitable when you look at the original team at oculus, there were a lot of gaming folks (John Carmack was their CTO!) and I have no doubt that lives on in the culture today, for better or worse.
I doubt a UI toolkit or standard OS primitives were even on their radar.
I agree that Meta has tried but their solution is really completely different than a more traditional OS UI. Meta provides low level convenience functions SDK for the various native app development frameworks (mostly Unity and Unreal) to access the hardware and facilitate common movements, but the actual UI implementation is up to the app author resulting in a helter skelter hodge podge of varying UI from app to app. Even in the first link you provided above, after introducing many alternate concepts then it shows screenshots of wildly varying interfaces across multiple apps.
Because apps on Quest are universally games, and those pretty much never use standard controls. They don't even all use the same engine, so Meta would have to provide a UE SDK, a Unity SDK, etc.
I never felt this was remotely an issue with the Quest, and more than it is with desktop games.
That is completely psychotic blacking out single frame screenshots for copyright reasons. Copyright is truly out of control and just comically ridiculous at this point.
It's not blacking out on purpose, rather it's a side-effect of the DRM chain. The DRM content is rendered outside of the UI chain, so it cannot be captured as part of a normal screenshot or video. The same happens on macOS (and even windows) if you try to screen record while watching DRM L1 content such as Netflix, Apple TV+, etc.
>But using without the Light Seal is a massive improvement. You’re closer to the screen, so it reduces the tunnel vision and expands the effective field-of-view. And rather than a black edge, you have a frame, with outside visibility.
Same thoughts for Quest 3. I use mine exclusively without the light seal now. It is a huge improvement in the ability to just casually use the thing among friends and not seem like a weirdo, and having your peripheral vision massively adds to the overall comfort of the experience. I've found paradoxically that it increases the feeling of presence for passthrough when it feels like you're just looking through a pair of glasses instead of something suction-cupped to your face. This whole idea of "locking in" to VR and closing out the outside world needs to go away. True AR that doesn't remove you from the world is the only future for these devices.
This goes ditto for controllers. The vast majority of people have never held a game controller in their lives. We (as gamers and nerds) take it as second nature, but I've seen it as the single biggest barrier to entry with demoing VR to random folks. Sticking with hand/finger based gesture tracking and rejecting controllers was the absolute best decision Apple made for Vision Pro.
>This whole idea of "locking in" to VR and closing out the outside world needs to go away.
Why?
>True AR that doesn't remove you from the world is the only future for these devices.
Again, why? What if I want to be removed? I bought my VR headset during the pandemic precisely for indoor escapism.
I want to be transported and immersed into another universe, not see AR stuff floating around between the same four walls of my tiny apartment that I see all day everyday. It would drive me nuts and I can do that stuff on the cheap with my phone/Ipad.
Nah, it is going to make them always a bridesmaid instead of a bride.
Meta is able to offer immersive experiences where a much larger world is mapped into your virtual space and you can move around and grab things and use tools through controllers. Apple is offering hardly anything in comparison except for a $3500 replacement for a $350 TV. Or, “boy I just flew in from an AR experience for 15 minutes and boy are my arms tired” or “I am in terror at looking at anything because it might trigger an irreversible action”.
I'm still very curious exactly what people had in mind for this. Like, from all reports, it is a very good VR headset. But... what do people think they will use a VR headset for?
Heck, the PS5 VR headset seems to be having trouble selling, and it is very good at what it is designed for. Anyone buying the PSVR2 knows they are getting it to play games. Solo games, at that. Yes, you can do a party mode for Beat Saber and a few other games. No, it isn't much more compelling than any other "group" version of video games. It is very immersive, though.
So, what did the non-gamer community hope for from this? What is there to feed those hopes?
It's a very good XR headset. My primary use is to use it as a portable display, so I'm not chained to my desk all day. Also great for travel. Great to watch movies too.
Since it runs most iPad apps, it can be used for some light productivity workflows even without a Mac. You can use Bluetooth keyboard if you need to type a lot, but the virtual keyboard is surprisingly decent for quick replies.
>So, what did the non-gamer community hope for from this? What is there to feed those hopes?
There are still so many people who have never touched VR who are somehow hyped up and convinced this is somehow more magical or more special than everyone elses headset.
Basically it's just the normal reality distortion effect. Sooooooo many comments of "the original iPhone wasn't perfect either". So?
I'm most interested in the virtual screens (no more large monitors) and the opportunity for AI assisted instructions / guidance as I do tasks like home repair.
+1 on guest mode. Handing the headset to someone else is a high-friction point with the calibration that needs to be done on every swap. Oftentimes I want to show someone the current experience without needing to setup a mirror and handing over the headset is the most intuitive way to do so.
On Macs (and presumably iOS devices with a keyboard hooked up) it can be produced by pressing ⌥⇧K and will render so long as the receiving text field can render a system font that contains the symbol.
Fellow Vision Pro owner here, I recognise many of the articles critiques, yet I do still enjoy working in augmented reality. Like he says, it is a impressive "v1" product.
I know that I might be a little biased as I really organised my work flow around using iPad, selecting apps that work for me.
The transition to VisionOS is much easier then, as most of the apps are simply there in 3D space. I have tried to connect my MacBook, but then you have this weird mix of UX concepts (mouse, keyboard, look+tap), that's not for me.
In my experience I find it comfortable enough that I forget sometimes that I am looking at digital content. Here on X I added a few photos to give you a little extra context of how I work: https://x.com/wlmiddelkoop/status/1769765197948850463?s=20
“ The most practical solution is to use a physical keyboard, via Mac Virtual Screen or connecting one directly, but this is a bandaid solution. ”
Just silly. If you cannot easily input data without and extra accessory than it’s just a fail in this case. Imagine building the headset and then booking up a keyboard and then sitting next to an outlet because it doesn’t hold a charge very long…… almost like using a laptop may be more efficient.
Honestly looks like we are still a few years away from cool cyberpunk level VR/AR.
I would love to hear from people that have tried to use this headset whilst wearing prescription glasses. Is Apple's own statement "You cannot wear Apple Vision Pro while wearing eyeglasses." accurate?
I just tried on mine for only a few seconds. Technically, it seemed to work. However, because I had to remove the prescription lenses, the device wanted to redo hand and eye setup, so I quickly took it off again.
Notes on the experience...
- On the solo loop band I had to turn the knob to loosen the strap a lot to get enough clearance to position my glasses within the device. The dual loop band probably would not work at all (I didn’t try).
- My glasses are just barely narrow enough to fit within my light seal (25W). It's definitely not a guarantee everybody's glasses will fit into their own light seal.
- Once in, the eye tracking was very off, basically unusable. However, I did not do gaze calibration with my glasses on. That would probably improve things, but I suspect the device will always have issues correctly tracking gaze through glasses because normal glasses lenses can distort your eyes more than it’s expecting.
- There's really not much space between your glasses and the inside lenses on the vision pro. It seems like your glasses would start rubbing up against the inside lenses very easily, causing permanent scratches on one or the other.
So technically you can, but I would not recommend it. I’d rather just spend the $150 for the official lenses.
As long as I cannot install applications of my own choosing onto a headset, the entire thing is dead to me. Imagine macOS having such a restriction, for a supposed future of computing.
I was surprised the video playing over water which seems to be one of the best demos of the device, the reflection is running a frame behind the video above the water so when a cut happens theres an obvious mismatch in the reflection.
Doesn't feel it would be difficult to fix this with video playback, sorta thing I'd expect Apple to solve.
The delusion of tv scuba goggles is exactly why big tech has no taste, it’s out of touch. All you Raspberry Pi guys, no non techie person is looking at these toys like the first iPhone back in 2007.
We really need a new Steve Jobs to shake things up. Someone to say “this is stupid, show me again in 15 years”. When they’re actual glasses and cost less than $1000
Agree with his assessment on passthrough. I think it's the #1 disappointment I've found with the Vision Pro. It's good, def better than other devices I've used but it's no where near as good as it has been described.
That being said, video experience, other graphics are a lot better than I expected.
This article is 100% accurate. I found myself agreeing with everything written here.
Hopefully someone at Apple reads this and takes it to heart when deciding what to improve for a V2. I might actually buy one if they address some of these problems, despite having been avoiding the hype until a coworker bought one and let us try it.
Passthrough was really disappointing. That part actually kind of shocked me, so many reviews online stating they forgot they were wearing the headset. I can't imagine how, though - it's like looking through drunk goggles. The rendered content was unbelievable though.
I own a Valve Index and the Vision Pro blew it out of the water for pixel density. Mind-blowing.
The Vision Pro has been a massive disappointment for me and my colleagues. I was ready for the flood of Hacker News articles praising its capabilities as well as tips and tricks, including "look what I did today with it!". This discourse was promised to me by many regular HN commenters and I can't believe we're at a state where the general feeling is that the Vision Pro doesn't live up to the HN hype.
HN has always seemed ambivalent to me. There's a crowd of enthusiasts for it but a surprisingly strong contingent of sceptics (about VR in general, but also specifically this device).
My take is however that yes at this point, Vision OS has failed to hit the aspirational goal of launching XR into the mainstream. There's no App store gold rush, after the initial couple of weeks of hype most people forgot it exists, and I'm truly surprised that Apple seems to have even fumbled the ball on content. That seemed like the easy part to me, but no new environments, nothing new to watch, the Apps hitting the store are mostly toys and really zero things that haven't been done before or fully explored on other devices. Nobody is raving about watching sports on it. etc etc.
What I really hoped was that the novel features of the Vision Pro would kick off a new wave of creativity in terms of what is possible. When I saw people pulling 3D objects out of web pages and onto their desk it really seemed like this could be a true start of something.
The one upside I think is that the slightly anemic launch is probably going to bias Apple to be more open and less controlling than they would otherwise. I hope so.
I like to think there's some level of self-awareness on HN. You can be excited about it as a tech nerd (with salary to afford such an expensive device), while recognizing that it's not going to attract the average person.
The pervasive blocking of copyrighted content in screenshots and screen sharing sounds mildly dystopian. The article lists several examples where this actually hurts the Vision Pro (in terms of ability to share cool moments or being able to demo it), so I wonder why the feature made it in? Is it a move by Apple to make sure immersive videos don't get pirated and made available to Quest and Vive users, or is there external pressure from studios?
FWIW, this is also the case for many video platforms on Mac and iOS (and I assume Windows and Android as well). It's not limited to Vision Pro. I believe this is because of studio pressure.
My unvalidated assumption is that if I can take screenshots of a movie on my Mac, I can also record the full content and duplicate the movie. Thus, this is a copy protection measure.
I feel confident that it's Apple trying to appease its media partners. I think after Apple pulled the rug out from under the music industry, the film and television industry panicked. They were unwilling to make a deal where content was not chained down with a stake to the ground.
In my opinion, there are two kinds of people who work in Hollywood:
- People who make movies, who probably don't care if you pirate the movie much because the studio is going to screw them over in their pay anyway. These people want as many folks to see the movie in all its different ways as possible.
- People who run the studios, whose salaries, bonuses, etc, are all attached to investors, who want to see the film returns increase. These people want you to see the movie, but only you, only after you pay, for each viewing, in the time, place, and conditions they set.
leetharris|1 year ago
Passthrough is massively oversold, even if it's technically impressive. They set expectations way too high.
The comfort is the #1 reason I don't own a Vision Pro anymore. I feel exactly as the author put it, "relieved," when I take it off.
I feel significantly more disconnected from my family when I have it on because I have no easy way to share my content with them. A massively improved guest mode, better casting, or something else would go a long way here.
The eye tracking + tap is incredible, but Apple tried to shoehorn this into everything. It should have been the primary mode of interaction with a detailed/precision interaction when needed. Eye tracking + tap is simply not good enough for power user use cases. It was such a relief to go back to my Quest after Vision Pro because the controllers were so precise and easy to use.
And finally, I'll mention that the OS + standardization of UX is HUGE. The Quest feels like a crappy Chinese clone in comparison. Every single window has a completely different way of moving, adjusting, etc. Sometimes you click in the center, sometimes you click under, sometimes you can't move it at all. On the Vision Pro, everything is standardized. I'd love to see Meta fix this.
throwup238|1 year ago
This whole paragraph sounds downright dystopian.
“A family that shares content together, stays together”
archagon|1 year ago
petesergeant|1 year ago
Strangely enough, I don't own one, but just assumed this guy had hit the nail on the head with everything. Everything else I've read felt like it was pushing an agenda, this guy's writing just seemed like it was accurately weighing the pros and cons as he saw them.
nox101|1 year ago
How about flutter apps like https://flutter.github.io/samples/web/material_3_demo/
I've been complaining that flutter is the next flash, meaning that by rendering their own UX instead of using the platform's they're basically making dead end apps. They'll claim devs just need to reship their apps with the latest version but that's means all old flutter apps are abandonware. It also ignores that the next platform they'll run into the same problem again.
spr-alex|1 year ago
LordDragonfang|1 year ago
As a Vision Pro owner, kinda, but kinda not?
I have a really low-power glasses prescription (-1/-1.5) and I've come to the conclusion that everyone saying this has the priviledge of being born with perfect (irl) vision. It's intentionally a little bit out of focus to obscure the screen door effect, which I understand might be disorienting to people who've never had to wear glasses.
But taking that into account, it's incredibly clear. If you've used any other pass through, it's night and day. I will frequently put on my headset having forgotten that the cover is on, and when I take it off my brain genuinely reads that as uncovering a transparent lens. The slightly reduced HDR, slight desaturation, and almost imperceptible visual snow all added up still don't detract enough from that to say it is not close to "lifelike".
It's not perfect, but it's incredibly close - and probably better than a good chunk of the population's uncorrected vision.
I mean, the comparison images in the article almost make the point for me. The left image, when adjusted for brightness/contrast (which the human vision system does automatically absent other stimulus, e.g. when all you can see is the headset) has a greater resemblance to what a cloudy day looks like IRL compared to the completely oversaturated, amateurly HDR'd image on the right.
bookofjoe|1 year ago
On a whim I went to the optometrist, got examined and a prescription for glasses (I use over-the-counter 1.25x readers from CVS), then uploaded the Rx to Zeiss using their iPhone app, and ponied up $149 for their optical inserts.
Since the inserts arrived and I put them in, my experience overall with VP has been better: still way too difficult and confusing, but movies and TV shows, which were the only redeeming factors in my initial three weeks of use, seem really, really crisp and vivid, more so than initially.
Take these observations with a grain of salt, after all, it's a series of one 75-year-old retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist's experiences.
But if you've already dropped 4k, well, that's a lot of sunk cost to write off without trying everything possible to make it work.
At least that was my thinking.
killjoywashere|1 year ago
[deleted]
bsimpson|1 year ago
oooof
> Every app on Quest has to reinvent how buttons work, how a scroll view works, how far away from the user the content should be etc.. and every app works differently.
kinda shocked there's not a Material Components equivalent for Quest. I guess it's designed like a game system (where custom menus are standard), but that's a reinforcing loop. As long as there's no standard component system, it'll continue to be game-centric.
achow|1 year ago
This is 101 of product design - put in place a standard UI Guidelines. This is particularly important for a 'platform' player like what Meta is aiming for (Ex. from other platform/OS - Windows UI Guidelines, Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, Google's Material Design, etc..)
throwaway2203|1 year ago
wpm|1 year ago
Oh god this.
The last 10 years of UX trends where everything has to be two or three different actions behind a single tap or tap and hold does NOT translate well onto AVP. Most iPad apps are nigh unusable, esp those with high information density. Vision is not quite as precise as a mouse cursor but it definitely not as imprecise as a tap, but only when the UI is predictable. Because where you are looking is also how you read, every informational field also needs to include either both the information and the action, or they need to be separated out.
So far there is no bigger culprit than the native Music app. The bottom of the player has like three nested buttons that all do different shit. The same place you look to see what song is playing is also a hidden progress/playback scrubber and also a shortcut to switch to the miniplayer if you happen to look at the eye catching album art icon directly next to the title of the song. It’s maddening.
actionfromafar|1 year ago
Or click "Connect to Bluetooth headset" in Windows. Congratulations, your headset just connected itself, so you now you disconnected it.
Just brilliant, overall.
bookofjoe|1 year ago
ProfessorLayton|1 year ago
The Home tab in the music app shows exactly 1 tile of information on my 15 Pro Max. That's 3.6 million pixels and they couldn't be bothered to fit more than 1 item without scrolling.
FumblingBear|1 year ago
It's immensely frustrating to be watching a video in the photos app and swipe a tiny bit wrong only to lose all current progress in the video even after you swipe back. Even scrubbing controls for long videos (1+ hours) can be super finnicky and it's tough to select accurately. The traditional scrubbing method of holding while moving vertically to scrub at slower speeds doesn't seem to work either.
As a result, I'm often catching myself in frustrating situations where I'd like to just __UNDO__ whatever action I previously took was. Either jumping around a video to the previous timestamp, or undoing the close safari tab button I didn't mean to select, or any number of other things I accidentally press due to the options being just a little too close to each other.
It's just a mild annoyance, but it's something that would massively improve my experience with using the device, as someone who has spent a LOT of time in it nearly every day since release.
crummy|1 year ago
euroderf|1 year ago
alexpotato|1 year ago
I remember the days when EVERY application in Windows had "File" in the upper left hand corner. You could make a good bet that "Edit" was next and "Preferences" was somewhere in there as well.
Being "good with computers" back then had a lot to do with knowing the standard layout of applications to help guide you through where things ought to be or, at least, could plausibly be found.
I applaud Apple for keeping this going in this modern world we live in of SAAS websites that each do their own thing.
btown|1 year ago
Meta does have standardized utilities for translating movement to touch/drag/etc. interactions on arbitrary virtual surfaces:
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2022/11/22/buildin...
https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/unity-isdk-...
But it doesn't seem (AFAIK) to answer the other side of this, which is the UI design system so apps have a consistent look and feel. Which is perhaps more common coming from a game development perspective, but ever since the Mac OS shareware days, Apple's understood that it's empowering to a certain kind of developer if you make it easy/the default path for them to build experiences that match a standardized look and feel. I'm honestly surprised that Meta didn't at least make an optional SDK for this.
AlphaSite|1 year ago
I doubt a UI toolkit or standard OS primitives were even on their radar.
kfarr|1 year ago
IshKebab|1 year ago
I never felt this was remotely an issue with the Quest, and more than it is with desktop games.
zmmmmm|1 year ago
The page you linked to is full of links to Unity APIs / SDKs. So meta doesn't have them, Unity does.
jdprgm|1 year ago
russelg|1 year ago
HaZeust|1 year ago
1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
ramesh31|1 year ago
Same thoughts for Quest 3. I use mine exclusively without the light seal now. It is a huge improvement in the ability to just casually use the thing among friends and not seem like a weirdo, and having your peripheral vision massively adds to the overall comfort of the experience. I've found paradoxically that it increases the feeling of presence for passthrough when it feels like you're just looking through a pair of glasses instead of something suction-cupped to your face. This whole idea of "locking in" to VR and closing out the outside world needs to go away. True AR that doesn't remove you from the world is the only future for these devices.
This goes ditto for controllers. The vast majority of people have never held a game controller in their lives. We (as gamers and nerds) take it as second nature, but I've seen it as the single biggest barrier to entry with demoing VR to random folks. Sticking with hand/finger based gesture tracking and rejecting controllers was the absolute best decision Apple made for Vision Pro.
wilsonnb3|1 year ago
Designing the UI around hand/eye tracking was smart but not supporting VR controllers at all is stupid.
Reminds me of how stubborn they were about bringing mouse support to iPads.
Rinzler89|1 year ago
Why?
>True AR that doesn't remove you from the world is the only future for these devices.
Again, why? What if I want to be removed? I bought my VR headset during the pandemic precisely for indoor escapism.
I want to be transported and immersed into another universe, not see AR stuff floating around between the same four walls of my tiny apartment that I see all day everyday. It would drive me nuts and I can do that stuff on the cheap with my phone/Ipad.
unknown|1 year ago
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PaulHoule|1 year ago
Meta is able to offer immersive experiences where a much larger world is mapped into your virtual space and you can move around and grab things and use tools through controllers. Apple is offering hardly anything in comparison except for a $3500 replacement for a $350 TV. Or, “boy I just flew in from an AR experience for 15 minutes and boy are my arms tired” or “I am in terror at looking at anything because it might trigger an irreversible action”.
taeric|1 year ago
Heck, the PS5 VR headset seems to be having trouble selling, and it is very good at what it is designed for. Anyone buying the PSVR2 knows they are getting it to play games. Solo games, at that. Yes, you can do a party mode for Beat Saber and a few other games. No, it isn't much more compelling than any other "group" version of video games. It is very immersive, though.
So, what did the non-gamer community hope for from this? What is there to feed those hopes?
Eugr|1 year ago
Since it runs most iPad apps, it can be used for some light productivity workflows even without a Mac. You can use Bluetooth keyboard if you need to type a lot, but the virtual keyboard is surprisingly decent for quick replies.
mrguyorama|1 year ago
There are still so many people who have never touched VR who are somehow hyped up and convinced this is somehow more magical or more special than everyone elses headset.
Basically it's just the normal reality distortion effect. Sooooooo many comments of "the original iPhone wasn't perfect either". So?
numpad0|1 year ago
Or, what other than VRChat factors for AR/MR/VR/XR/"Spatial Computing Device" to not go flatline and fold?
toddmorey|1 year ago
kromem|1 year ago
It's a shame, as it could have been pretty great.
humean1|1 year ago
arp242|1 year ago
airstrike|1 year ago
if anyone else is wondering like I was, this was a fun read: https://superuser.com/questions/1205451/how-can-i-display-th...
wilg|1 year ago
> In text, don’t write the name Apple Vision Pro by combining the symbol with Vision Pro.
> Correct: Get started with Apple Vision Pro.
> Incorrect: Get started with Vision Pro.
https://help.apple.com/pdf/applestyleguide/en_US/apple-style... (p. 28)
jwells89|1 year ago
willemlaurentz|1 year ago
I know that I might be a little biased as I really organised my work flow around using iPad, selecting apps that work for me.
The transition to VisionOS is much easier then, as most of the apps are simply there in 3D space. I have tried to connect my MacBook, but then you have this weird mix of UX concepts (mouse, keyboard, look+tap), that's not for me.
In my experience I find it comfortable enough that I forget sometimes that I am looking at digital content. Here on X I added a few photos to give you a little extra context of how I work: https://x.com/wlmiddelkoop/status/1769765197948850463?s=20
riwsky|1 year ago
imwillofficial|1 year ago
roody15|1 year ago
Just silly. If you cannot easily input data without and extra accessory than it’s just a fail in this case. Imagine building the headset and then booking up a keyboard and then sitting next to an outlet because it doesn’t hold a charge very long…… almost like using a laptop may be more efficient.
Honestly looks like we are still a few years away from cool cyberpunk level VR/AR.
carefish|1 year ago
netruk44|1 year ago
Notes on the experience...
- On the solo loop band I had to turn the knob to loosen the strap a lot to get enough clearance to position my glasses within the device. The dual loop band probably would not work at all (I didn’t try).
- My glasses are just barely narrow enough to fit within my light seal (25W). It's definitely not a guarantee everybody's glasses will fit into their own light seal.
- Once in, the eye tracking was very off, basically unusable. However, I did not do gaze calibration with my glasses on. That would probably improve things, but I suspect the device will always have issues correctly tracking gaze through glasses because normal glasses lenses can distort your eyes more than it’s expecting.
- There's really not much space between your glasses and the inside lenses on the vision pro. It seems like your glasses would start rubbing up against the inside lenses very easily, causing permanent scratches on one or the other.
So technically you can, but I would not recommend it. I’d rather just spend the $150 for the official lenses.
dagmx|1 year ago
1. There’s very little space for your glasses and you’ll end up scratching both your glasses and the optics
2. You’ll partially obscure eye tracking.
3. Eye tracking will be significantly warped across your glasses. You’ll have drastically reduced quality. This is extra bad if you’re astigmatic.
Prescription inserts or contacts are the correct way to use these kinds of devices for strong reasons.
satvikpendem|1 year ago
dhg72|1 year ago
whywhywhywhy|1 year ago
Doesn't feel it would be difficult to fix this with video playback, sorta thing I'd expect Apple to solve.
pipeline_peak|1 year ago
We really need a new Steve Jobs to shake things up. Someone to say “this is stupid, show me again in 15 years”. When they’re actual glasses and cost less than $1000
brentm|1 year ago
That being said, video experience, other graphics are a lot better than I expected.
junon|1 year ago
Hopefully someone at Apple reads this and takes it to heart when deciding what to improve for a V2. I might actually buy one if they address some of these problems, despite having been avoiding the hype until a coworker bought one and let us try it.
Passthrough was really disappointing. That part actually kind of shocked me, so many reviews online stating they forgot they were wearing the headset. I can't imagine how, though - it's like looking through drunk goggles. The rendered content was unbelievable though.
I own a Valve Index and the Vision Pro blew it out of the water for pixel density. Mind-blowing.
matt3210|1 year ago
Freedom2|1 year ago
zmmmmm|1 year ago
My take is however that yes at this point, Vision OS has failed to hit the aspirational goal of launching XR into the mainstream. There's no App store gold rush, after the initial couple of weeks of hype most people forgot it exists, and I'm truly surprised that Apple seems to have even fumbled the ball on content. That seemed like the easy part to me, but no new environments, nothing new to watch, the Apps hitting the store are mostly toys and really zero things that haven't been done before or fully explored on other devices. Nobody is raving about watching sports on it. etc etc.
What I really hoped was that the novel features of the Vision Pro would kick off a new wave of creativity in terms of what is possible. When I saw people pulling 3D objects out of web pages and onto their desk it really seemed like this could be a true start of something.
The one upside I think is that the slightly anemic launch is probably going to bias Apple to be more open and less controlling than they would otherwise. I hope so.
RockRobotRock|1 year ago
wongarsu|1 year ago
BryantD|1 year ago
My unvalidated assumption is that if I can take screenshots of a movie on my Mac, I can also record the full content and duplicate the movie. Thus, this is a copy protection measure.
sircastor|1 year ago
In my opinion, there are two kinds of people who work in Hollywood:
- People who make movies, who probably don't care if you pirate the movie much because the studio is going to screw them over in their pay anyway. These people want as many folks to see the movie in all its different ways as possible.
- People who run the studios, whose salaries, bonuses, etc, are all attached to investors, who want to see the film returns increase. These people want you to see the movie, but only you, only after you pay, for each viewing, in the time, place, and conditions they set.
adamwk|1 year ago
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