beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
You don’t need a clear screen for a HUD though
Apple is betting the farm on a VR headset
- Thread starter David Clapson
- Start date
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
newme
Giant in Pastyland now
Yeh that does seem cheaper than what I was thinking of. Tho the car was valued at £700, 5 years ago, when absolutely mint conditon (ex driving instructor car). So it could go either way lol.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
My half-assed idea would be some kind of treatment for the windscreen glass so that it could fluoresce appropriately when non-visible (likely IR or UV) light was projected onto it. Hopefully not adding too mucj expense.
The specifics of projection being handled by mapping within the projector and eye-scanning cameras to account for head movement and where the driver is looking.
Silas Loom
Hated by both sides
That happened at a slow rate because vehicle manufacturers were also investing in infotainment platforms that they thought would be a good differentiator and add revenue streams through underpant gnome charging models. But they couldn’t do much about phone apps outpacing them and being preferred by users.
Although as an example of where the OEMs triumph over apple/android ecosystems, I always used to use the native sat nav rather than the iphone one because it integrated properly with the HUD.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Most Sat Nav's I've used in cars as have been nowhere near as good as Google Maps. The Focus I used for a bit, the HUD was integrated with Google Maps, which makes total sense.
Silas Loom
Hated by both sides
Definitely makes more sense, this was on a 2020 I Pace, which had particularly clunky infotainment for its price.
AverageJoe
...
All good until it crashes and the (wind) screen goes a solid blue with a windows error code.
Kid_Eternity
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Tens of millions of VR headsets have sold over the last half decade so I suspect there's a market. Latest news is Apple sold nearly 200,000 units so clearly there's a high end market for the Vision Pro...Several people on here have small, light ones that they play games and stuff on.
I have one a few feet from where I’m sat. I’ll probably get a text in a bit telling me someone is invading my castle…
Edit here it is:
View attachment 409152
/poorly concealed excuse to show off my gold Converse
Edit2: mutual ignore pact totally slipped my mind, sorry
Kid_Eternity
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Yep and you'd need to carry a spare battery pack with you if you used it regularly...
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
VR still needs a "killer app" in order for folks like me to buy into it. I'm a gamer and that's probably the strongest area of mass-market appeal for VR right now, but so far there hasn't been enough programs produced that would justify me dropping about a grand on new equipment, never mind spending whatever additional funds would be required to upgrade my rig.
Doesn't help that Oculus got bought out by Facebook/Meta, I completely lost interest in that particular line of hardware once it became owned by Zuckerberg's genocide enabling and creepy tracking/data harvesting operation. Facebook account required? Fuck off Mark, and when you get there keep fucking off until you drown in the sea, you nasty grasping dystopian lump of human shit.
Now along comes Apple who completely fail to read the room and say they're gonna release a redonkulously expensive VR headset that costs almost twice as much as my entire desktop rig, never mind that using it (to its full potential? at all?) would require me to get mired in Apple's closed ecosystem, which isn't geared towards gamers in the first place. So I would have to put aside my burning hatred for Apple's blobby, sexless aesthetics and irritating California attitude, spend way too much money getting invested in their platforms, and then have no games to play at the end of all that anyway. No, just no.
Valve is a company for which I at least have some measure of respect, and their Index is priced somewhere in between the two aforementioned non-options, about a grand for the complete kit. OK great, that's a reasonable goal in terms of saving up the required money, and it would be compatible with the hardware and software I already have.
Unfortunately, unless I shell out even more money on third-party prescription lenses, I would then have to choose whether I want to be uncomfortable while wearing both the headset and my glasses that I need to see anything clearly, or whether I want to be comfortable without my glasses and with just the headset on, but be unable to see anything clearly in the virtual world. It's utterly astounding to me that seemingly every VR hardware manufacturer has apparently dropped the ball on this aspect and failed to provide their own off-the-shelf solutions, it's not like it's uncommon for people to need glasses.
So yeah, in my estimation VR has yet to move past the stage of being a clunky and gimmicky expense, is rather lacking in anything heavily desirable to run on it that would justify said shortcomings, and also has some significant physical accessibility problems to boot.
Doesn't help that Oculus got bought out by Facebook/Meta, I completely lost interest in that particular line of hardware once it became owned by Zuckerberg's genocide enabling and creepy tracking/data harvesting operation. Facebook account required? Fuck off Mark, and when you get there keep fucking off until you drown in the sea, you nasty grasping dystopian lump of human shit.
Now along comes Apple who completely fail to read the room and say they're gonna release a redonkulously expensive VR headset that costs almost twice as much as my entire desktop rig, never mind that using it (to its full potential? at all?) would require me to get mired in Apple's closed ecosystem, which isn't geared towards gamers in the first place. So I would have to put aside my burning hatred for Apple's blobby, sexless aesthetics and irritating California attitude, spend way too much money getting invested in their platforms, and then have no games to play at the end of all that anyway. No, just no.
Valve is a company for which I at least have some measure of respect, and their Index is priced somewhere in between the two aforementioned non-options, about a grand for the complete kit. OK great, that's a reasonable goal in terms of saving up the required money, and it would be compatible with the hardware and software I already have.
Unfortunately, unless I shell out even more money on third-party prescription lenses, I would then have to choose whether I want to be uncomfortable while wearing both the headset and my glasses that I need to see anything clearly, or whether I want to be comfortable without my glasses and with just the headset on, but be unable to see anything clearly in the virtual world. It's utterly astounding to me that seemingly every VR hardware manufacturer has apparently dropped the ball on this aspect and failed to provide their own off-the-shelf solutions, it's not like it's uncommon for people to need glasses.
So yeah, in my estimation VR has yet to move past the stage of being a clunky and gimmicky expense, is rather lacking in anything heavily desirable to run on it that would justify said shortcomings, and also has some significant physical accessibility problems to boot.
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Silas Loom
Hated by both sides
The Vision Pro can have prescription lenses fitted for £100 or so IIRC.
magneze
🎧
I saw a sci-fi film or series recently (which I can't remember the name of) which had an AR experience displayed off someones wrist. You then interacted with it using gestures.
IMHO, that's the sort of mass market thing that'll catch on. It looked great and I could easily see how it just works. No headset.
I wonder if someone's trying to make it happen. None of the current VR/AR is anything close.
IMHO, that's the sort of mass market thing that'll catch on. It looked great and I could easily see how it just works. No headset.
I wonder if someone's trying to make it happen. None of the current VR/AR is anything close.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
I'm sure that's great news for the handful of developers who might both find a use for it, and who can justify dropping that amount of money. Or more likely, who can somehow convince their company's procurement department into dropping that amount of money.
I think the closest thing so far has been the Cicret bracelet, but that was an investment scam.
I’m sure you’re not in the market for one anyway but you’re missing the Reverb G2 from that list. And the killer apps would be a few driving games, Elite Dangerous or any one of the decent flight simulators.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Elite Dangerous is a thing I play regularly and so would be a potential use case. How would you say the Reverb G2 compares to the Index?
I’ve never used one but flight simmers got better graphics and performance than the Quest 2. They’re probably due an upgrade although there is a G2 Pro.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
I'm minded to think that Gen 1 of any new Apple hardware has never appealed to me enough to buy into it. I held out for six years on the iPhone until the iPhone 5S was released because I wasn't convinced it had matured enough as a product - when I saw the first iPhone I was amazed people bought into it at the price it was with such obvious omissions as 3G, copy/paste, and a very restrictive maximum of 8GB internal storage.
This looks like it has a fair way to go before it gets to a critical mass where the price can be reduced and the adoption rate forces more developers to create great apps for it.
This looks like it has a fair way to go before it gets to a critical mass where the price can be reduced and the adoption rate forces more developers to create great apps for it.
Silas Loom
Hated by both sides
Your theory holds, I think, for the iPod, which transformed from paperweight to key ring in a couple of generations, but less so for the iPad which sprang fully formed from Jobs’ head. And the iPad mini (which is my day-to-day device, now and forever) has barely changed at all.
magneze
🎧
Just remembered, it was the "Safe & Sound" episode from Channel 4 / Amazon's Philip K Dick Electric Dreams:
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
The killer app thing is a massive thing. We're not going to get many triple A games until there's a user base and it puts people like me of. I think I'll hold my nose and buy a second hand Rift 2 for PC VR, but I've got to much going on in my life at the moment for such an immersive toy.
Ported games have mixed results. I wasn’t impressed with Skyrim or Borderlands. Serious Sam was somewhat better. If you like that kind of thing.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
For those that have/had a VR headset - what is/was the most engaging or entertaining app for you?
For me (a non gamer) - my brief foray into VR was a mixture of some simple games, a 'virtual cinema', and some virtual 'meta' worlds which were totally crap and full of kids. The social thing interested me the most. The idea of the virtual cinema and watching something on the big screen surrounded by virtual friends was kind of fun. But the fact is, it was just festooned with American kids calling each other faggots and other such tedious stuff. After 20-30 minutes of this my face generally got tired of wearing the headset and I felt no connection to these avatar kids, I was glad to get out.
However, I do think there's a world where this stuff is all seen as VR's infancy days. And perhaps there are more engaging things ahead. I'm thinking sports events (courtside, ringside, pitchside seats at major events), concerts (front of house, side of the stage views - weekend passes to festivals etc), and virtual travelling (deep sea, mountains, space etc). All the cartoonery and avatars of the 'metaverse' will seem like humble beginnings. Perhaps its on Apple to take things to that next level.
For me (a non gamer) - my brief foray into VR was a mixture of some simple games, a 'virtual cinema', and some virtual 'meta' worlds which were totally crap and full of kids. The social thing interested me the most. The idea of the virtual cinema and watching something on the big screen surrounded by virtual friends was kind of fun. But the fact is, it was just festooned with American kids calling each other faggots and other such tedious stuff. After 20-30 minutes of this my face generally got tired of wearing the headset and I felt no connection to these avatar kids, I was glad to get out.
However, I do think there's a world where this stuff is all seen as VR's infancy days. And perhaps there are more engaging things ahead. I'm thinking sports events (courtside, ringside, pitchside seats at major events), concerts (front of house, side of the stage views - weekend passes to festivals etc), and virtual travelling (deep sea, mountains, space etc). All the cartoonery and avatars of the 'metaverse' will seem like humble beginnings. Perhaps its on Apple to take things to that next level.
In terms of pvp interaction poker was quite good. You get the odd dickhead and it wasn’t for real money but it was better than looking at a top down view of a table.
Pinball is something else that is good with VR. Unfortunately the Stern app appears to have vanished though.
Obviously the very best is Microsoft Flight simulator. Literally next level stuff. Beefy GPU needed.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
That's the other thing, the CPU. I remember my headset getting mighty hot when it was tasked to do anything even remotely processor intensive. One would hope that $3.5k would go some way to addressing that
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
I have a first gen Vive headset but haven't used it in anger for a year or two (not neccesarily the device's fault - I just have less free time).
The best game for casual/group play was Beat Saber. I haven't heard of anything better since. It really does feel fantastic chopping those blocks to music, ducking and weaving past the walls and spikes. For "proper" games, Half Life Alyx is a full-blooded half life game and is genuinely great. I don't know of any others with that level of polish and proper integration with the controls and limitations of the medium.
Google Earth was the most immediately engaging thing I think. Standing/sitting while surrounded with a doll's house scale city model is quite frankly intoxicating. I could (and did when I had the house to myself) spend hours exploring the world's great cities as a giant tourist.
Watching movies/TV on a giant screen wasn't much fun but that's because the resolution isn't high enough.
The lack of good camera pass-through made PC use hard/impossible but I did try and here I could really glimpse the promise. I draw buildings in 3D for a living and via plugins it's possible to go back and forth between a large virtual monitor showing my PC screen with my CAD software, and a 1:1 3D view of the building I'm working on. But feedback wasn't immediate (you effectively had to run an export command each time you wanted to update the VR view) and the resolution for the PC screen was nowhere near enough. If it could be done properly, with seamless integration and live updates, it would be literally transformative.
It sounds like the AVP has got the pass-through and resolution sorted. It will never support my CAD software, and it would have to get a lot lighter and more comfortable, but the ideal version of it, that supports Windows and is supported by major software? I want that.
Google Earth is the next best thing to Flight Simulator. Probably better for folks who aren’t interesting in flying. Strangely my home town was in 3D but a lot/most of England wasn’t (circa 2020).
That’s not the case in Flight Simulator where at least the terrain everywhere is in 3D mesh.
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