Apple undoubtedly faces a tough time trying to convince people to spend three and a half thousand dollars on a its upcoming headset. To ensure potential buyers...
Apple hopes to convince people to buy its $3,500 Vision Pro headset using free 25-minute in-store demos::undefined
As someone who wears a VR headset for about 8 hours a day on average and has for nearly ten years now, I can say our definition of gimmick varies somewhat.
Apples headset of course won’t do well, but it sounds like it will raise awareness that it isn’t a gimmick or a fad. And people that try it, will buy a practical modern headset instead.
The newest generation of headsets are as clear as a 4k monitor, despite not having enough actual pixels to literally display a 4k monitor at a comfortable viewing distance. There is a sort of free temporal anti-aliasing gained by the fact that your head will never be in the same exact place frame to frame, which effectively works out to percievably double the resolution clarity. A modern headset does have enough pixels to display more than raw 1080p at a comfortable viewing distance.
So even if you are not using them for actual VR, at the very worst, they replace a 4k screen at whatever size and distance you choose to have it at. I recommend about 20 feet away and scaled up to about 60 degrees accross your field of view. Unlike a monitor placed 3-4 feet from your face, or a TV 8-10 feet away(or a phone screen less than a foot away), 20 feet is very comfortable for your eyes. So you won’t get eye strain anymore.
And as for what environment that screen is in? Anywhere… including your real reality. The current generation of VR headsets has near-perfect clarity of a well-lit room that seamlessly blends with whatever virtual content you want to superimpose on it. The clarity goes down with worse lighting conditions, either with too much range of brightness, or not enough light in total.
Usually I will put my virtual screen beside or below the TV that the rest of my family is watching. Until it gets too dark out that the comparatively bright TV screen just gets washed out by camera optics(hopefully we get settings for this in the future, it could very much be fixed in software), then I move my screen to cover the TV, which is of course placed in the most comfortable viewing position from our recliners. I choose whether I want to hear audio from and see outside of the headset, or whether I want to ignore the outside world and focus entirely on my virtual screen.
And that is just the least interesting thing you can do with a VR headset, and enough to already justify the 500 dollar price tag of a practical VR headset. As an incredibly low latency remote 4k monitor you can place wherever you want, at whatever size and distance you want. Even if it would be through a wall. Still incredibly comfortable to view for way too many hours in a row.
You could also use a VR headset to do VR stuff. I occasionally do that too. It’s also good and more than worth the purchase price, as there is nothing else like it and no other way to experience that.
And then of course there is the porn. Even completely ignoring that exists, VR would already be awesome and very worth the price. But most people with VR headsets don’t ignore that it exists, even if they pretend they do. And let me tell you, there is also nothing else like that. But, you have to be careful/selective, as with all porn, most of it is terrible. You can find some good stuff for free, but as always the best stuff is not free.
Suffice it to say, the future really is VR, just like it really was computers, cell phones then smartphones, even if the first computers, cellphones and smartphones didn’t feel at the time like they were gonna catch on. Try telling someone when the first iPhone came out that people were going to spend hours playing games on their phones, and that phone gaming was going to be literally 3x the size of the next biggest gaming market. The next biggest being computer games. Then consoles.
There isn’t a more up to date version of this info graphic, 4 years ago mobile was only double computer. And VR has significantly increased since then, the Quest 2 wasn’t even released yet for this infographic. Quest 2 sold 20 million units, that’s just one headset, the highest selling one, but there are other reasonably popular ones too since then. And Quest 3 has been out for a while now. And again, just one of the popular options.
I read your whole comment and didn’t find even a single sentence that made VR appealing to me. Much less the idea of spending over 8 hours a day with a VR headset on.
ADD: In other topics, are you perchance interested on buying a 3D TV? I have a sale for you…
As someone who wears a VR headset for about 8 hours a day on average and has for nearly ten years now, I can say our definition of gimmick varies somewhat.
Apples headset of course won’t do well, but it sounds like it will raise awareness that it isn’t a gimmick or a fad. And people that try it, will buy a practical modern headset instead.
The newest generation of headsets are as clear as a 4k monitor, despite not having enough actual pixels to literally display a 4k monitor at a comfortable viewing distance. There is a sort of free temporal anti-aliasing gained by the fact that your head will never be in the same exact place frame to frame, which effectively works out to percievably double the resolution clarity. A modern headset does have enough pixels to display more than raw 1080p at a comfortable viewing distance.
So even if you are not using them for actual VR, at the very worst, they replace a 4k screen at whatever size and distance you choose to have it at. I recommend about 20 feet away and scaled up to about 60 degrees accross your field of view. Unlike a monitor placed 3-4 feet from your face, or a TV 8-10 feet away(or a phone screen less than a foot away), 20 feet is very comfortable for your eyes. So you won’t get eye strain anymore.
And as for what environment that screen is in? Anywhere… including your real reality. The current generation of VR headsets has near-perfect clarity of a well-lit room that seamlessly blends with whatever virtual content you want to superimpose on it. The clarity goes down with worse lighting conditions, either with too much range of brightness, or not enough light in total.
Usually I will put my virtual screen beside or below the TV that the rest of my family is watching. Until it gets too dark out that the comparatively bright TV screen just gets washed out by camera optics(hopefully we get settings for this in the future, it could very much be fixed in software), then I move my screen to cover the TV, which is of course placed in the most comfortable viewing position from our recliners. I choose whether I want to hear audio from and see outside of the headset, or whether I want to ignore the outside world and focus entirely on my virtual screen.
And that is just the least interesting thing you can do with a VR headset, and enough to already justify the 500 dollar price tag of a practical VR headset. As an incredibly low latency remote 4k monitor you can place wherever you want, at whatever size and distance you want. Even if it would be through a wall. Still incredibly comfortable to view for way too many hours in a row.
You could also use a VR headset to do VR stuff. I occasionally do that too. It’s also good and more than worth the purchase price, as there is nothing else like it and no other way to experience that.
And then of course there is the porn. Even completely ignoring that exists, VR would already be awesome and very worth the price. But most people with VR headsets don’t ignore that it exists, even if they pretend they do. And let me tell you, there is also nothing else like that. But, you have to be careful/selective, as with all porn, most of it is terrible. You can find some good stuff for free, but as always the best stuff is not free.
Suffice it to say, the future really is VR, just like it really was computers, cell phones then smartphones, even if the first computers, cellphones and smartphones didn’t feel at the time like they were gonna catch on. Try telling someone when the first iPhone came out that people were going to spend hours playing games on their phones, and that phone gaming was going to be literally 3x the size of the next biggest gaming market. The next biggest being computer games. Then consoles.
https://images.app.goo.gl/W2YBPTryTf675ZGD7
There isn’t a more up to date version of this info graphic, 4 years ago mobile was only double computer. And VR has significantly increased since then, the Quest 2 wasn’t even released yet for this infographic. Quest 2 sold 20 million units, that’s just one headset, the highest selling one, but there are other reasonably popular ones too since then. And Quest 3 has been out for a while now. And again, just one of the popular options.
I read your whole comment and didn’t find even a single sentence that made VR appealing to me. Much less the idea of spending over 8 hours a day with a VR headset on.
ADD: In other topics, are you perchance interested on buying a 3D TV? I have a sale for you…