The Apple Vision Pro goes on sale in the US on February 2 for $3,499

sphinx99 said:
Well, after a few hours with mine, I am… stunned. This is in some ways the single most impressive visualization device that I’ve ever used. Its ability to lock objects in place is simply amazing. I can use my phone, wash dishes or read books while wearing this - the resolution is that good. It is by no means perfect but it feels years ahead of any similar device I’ve used before.

Just stunned.
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I certainly won’t be an adopter as I can’t afford a $3500 toy but reading the specs of the display element alone was incredible. Enjoy!
 
DukenukemX said:
The problem with VR adoption is cost, and Apple decided that $500 was chump change and shot the price up to $3,500. Probably because they did pour a lot of resources into making it, and it's not even good enough to be used for VR games. How well it does in sales is yet to be seen, but right now the Meta Quest 3 does everything the Vision Pro does, plus play VR games. They also can't play YouTube and Netflix.
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The Quest 3 does most of what the Vision Pro does, but not everything and not usually as well. The Vision Pro has a higher resolution, better hand tracking, better lenses, better passthrough, lower latency... and an M2 should generally outperform a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2.

The Vision Pro is plenty powerful enough for VR games. The issue is that there are no VR-oriented physical controllers for it, so games either have to use hand tracking or a gamepad. And yes, you can watch YouTube or Netflix on a Vision Pro -— you just have to do it in a browser, which is clunkier.
 
Darunion said:
Because its existence hinders your life in some way?
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I think it is more than fair to worry about tech like that becoming popular for the effect of society at large and thus everyone eventually. Even if you never bought an smartphone their existence did affect your life (same for cars and many other techs)

Toboggan said:
I hope this product's failure cement's VR's total demise.
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Didn't sold out on pre-sales fast, sold for an over a billion dollar already and got quite good review ? In what way it is a failure (I think apple success made us numb about how big those sales numbers for something released before the app exist for it do and what it mean for them to eventually exist for when the good enough version in term of price-size, etc... launch).
 
LukeTbk said:
I think it is more than fair to worry about tech like that becoming popular for the effect of society at large and thus everyone eventually. Even if you never bought an smartphone their existence did affect your life (same for cars and many other techs)
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Social media has done far more damage to society than anything else ever could.
 
Toboggan said:
So much more energy could be focused on things that are accessible to everyone
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This (AR/VR) could easily be before 2040 accessible like mid-range smarthphone are currently, the quest 3 is already an high end phone price wise, not even a top of line phone.
 
LukeTbk said:
I think it is more than fair to worry about tech like that becoming popular for the effect of society at large and thus everyone eventually. Even if you never bought an smartphone their existence did affect your life (same for cars and many other techs)
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True but hoping for failure of any progress or development just seems like grump old man syndrome and really isn't useful. It is hard to even decide if something was bad for society. I hear often how bad cell phones were for us, but so much else changed too you cant pinpoint the cause of the effect. VR/AR has a ton of useful applications, one that always comes to mind is robot manipulation in bad environments or bomb defusals. One could argue that a simple game controller would be enough to control such devices, but then without video game development, we wouldn't have those either.
Toboggan said:
So much more energy could be focused on things that are accessible to everyone
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Every new tech is out of reach for poor people. It takes time for it to work its way down. I remember rap songs bragging about how their fancy ride has push to start beeeeotch!!! Now everything does.
 
LukeTbk said:
This (AR/VR) could easily be before 2040 accessible like mid-range smarthphone are currently, the quest 3 is already an high end phone price wise, not even a top of line phone.
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I dunno, VR and AR are just not my jam. I believe tech should be separate from reality, but anyway, go ahead and enjoy yer toys.
 
Aurelius said:
The Quest 3 does most of what the Vision Pro does, but not everything and not usually as well. The Vision Pro has a higher resolution, better hand tracking, better lenses, better passthrough, lower latency... and an M2 should generally outperform a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2.

The Vision Pro is plenty powerful enough for VR games. The issue is that there are no VR-oriented physical controllers for it, so games either have to use hand tracking or a gamepad. And yes, you can watch YouTube or Netflix on a Vision Pro -— you just have to do it in a browser, which is clunkier.
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The Vision Pro's hand tracking runs at 30 fps so it's too laggy to use for VR games. You basically just can't play VR game's in the VP which sucks.
Quest 3's hand tracking actually works pretty well for gaming. Maybe the VP traded off better occlusion for higher latency. I think Apple just doesn't care about gaming. Hopefully that changes in the future.
 
Aurelius said:
The Quest 3 does most of what the Vision Pro does, but not everything and not usually as well. The Vision Pro has a higher resolution, better hand tracking, better lenses, better passthrough, lower latency... and an M2 should generally outperform a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2.
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Is that worth $3000 more? According to the Zuck, he thinks their hand tracking is better. The Vision Pro does have almost 4k resolution for both lenses with eye tracking, which the Quest 3 doesn't have. Maybe the M2 outperforms the Snapdragon, but shouldn't it come with an M3? You're also limited to the Apple app store which doesn't offer all that much for VR.
The Vision Pro is plenty powerful enough for VR games. The issue is that there are no VR-oriented physical controllers for it, so games either have to use hand tracking or a gamepad. And yes, you can watch YouTube or Netflix on a Vision Pro -— you just have to do it in a browser, which is clunkier.
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But can you play VR games on the Vision Pro? Again, can it play VR Chat and Half Life Alyx? Interesting hardware, but Apple put no effort into software support.
 
DukenukemX said:
Is that worth $3000 more? According to the Zuck, he thinks their hand tracking is better. The Vision Pro does have almost 4k resolution for both lenses with eye tracking, which the Quest 3 doesn't have. Maybe the M2 outperforms the Snapdragon, but shouldn't it come with an M3? You're also limited to the Apple app store which doesn't offer all that much for VR.
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It depends, really. If you’re going to use your headset for productivity and spend hours inside? I’d say so. Do you just want something for watching videos, playing games, and the occasional social experience? Yeah, a Quest 3 makes more sense.

My guess is that Apple locked in the M2 choice and didn’t want to push it back to retool for the M3. That and the base M3 isn’t a gigantic upgrade apart from GPU improvements. Here’s hoping the second-gen Vision Pro gets an M4 as a result.


DukenukemX said:
But can you play VR games on the Vision Pro? Again, can it play VR Chat and Half Life Alyx? Interesting hardware, but Apple put no effort into software support.
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You can, if they support hand tracking or a gamepad. Apple did put effort into software support, but I did notice that it isn’t devoting as much attention to gaming as it is on the iPhone/iPad/Mac. My theory: Apple was both interested in shipping quickly and didn’t want to have people think it was yet another VR gaming machine. I suspect we’ll see that change as the hardware gets faster and lighter.
 
LukeTbk said:
For Apple maybe, for a prototype for a new form of computing it is giant.
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What do you mean a prototype for a new form of computing? The headset isn't doing anything that hasn't been done before.

LukeTbk said:
According to a quick google: Meta's new technology can track the entire upper body, but Meta hasn't been able to figure out a good way to use cameras to track legs just yet. Dec 19, 2023

I have not tried both, but apparently it is a different tier in ability to capture the world and render it versus the previous alternative.

If you guarantee after trying and developing on both that the Quest 3 could do everything the Apple vision can do for someone that want to have augmented reality for factory floor worker or training program, would have to take your word for it, but that not what I heard.
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The Apple Vision Pro can't do body tracking at all as far as I am aware.

The Quest 3 can do almost everything that the Vision Pro can do, the Quest 3 doesn't have eye or face tracking. The Apple Vision Pro can do some of it better, but it should do these things better as it's $3000 more expensive. However, reading through the reviews of people who have tried both, it's not $3000 better.
 
sphinx99 said:
Nobody is stopping you.
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Of putting Apple/meta level of energy on something else, when did it stop to be legitimate to voice opinion on that much of the best capital of the world is being spent on, on a techforum.

reaper12 said:
The Apple Vision Pro can't do body tracking at all as far as I am aware.
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Not at launch (and I am not sure how it would be possible only from a headset to do it), the website that pointed the difference between the 2 was probably just trash or took the fact that the arkit is really good at doing full body tracking of what it see well and did a little spin (when we hear full-body tracking for an VR kit, on think about the body of the person wearing the headset not the people being looked at)

reaper12 said:
, it's not $3000 better.
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I have no doubt it is not for game or face calling or others use case the Quest is made for, to add augmented reality for an augmented floor worker or surgeon training, if there is almost binary difference in hand tracking quality and keeping object perfectly in position in the 3d space that make something possible versus not really realistic to work, it can easily be worth a lot.
 
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reaper12 said:
What do you mean a prototype for a new form of computing? The headset isn't doing anything that hasn't been done before.
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It is, but more in terms of power rather than completely new ideas. For example: yes, you can do some multi-window productivity on a Quest 3, but you don't have nearly as much flexibility or clarity; the resolution isn't as high, you can't have more than a handful of windows, the apps aren't usually as robust, that sort of thing. For that matter, Apple's "spatial computing" term, while hokey, has a very literal meaning — you can actually put an app in a certain room, walk away, and come back to it.

I look at it this way. Meta sees its headsets mainly as experience machines: you dive in, play a game or chat in the metaverse, and dive out. Apple is treating the Vision Pro as a general platform that can theoretically handle all kinds of tasks. Not that a Quest 3 doesn't have some general-purpose functionality, but it wouldn't be my first pick if I wanted a headset for getting work done.

I suspect Apple would like to reduce costs, both for the Vision Pro itself and through a mainstream Vision headset. It's just that the company decided it was more worthwhile to dip into the category now than to wait until the price-to-performance ratio was perfect.
 
Aurelius said:
It depends, really. If you’re going to use your headset for productivity and spend hours inside? I’d say so. Do you just want something for watching videos, playing games, and the occasional social experience? Yeah, a Quest 3 makes more sense.

My guess is that Apple locked in the M2 choice and didn’t want to push it back to retool for the M3. That and the base M3 isn’t a gigantic upgrade apart from GPU improvements. Here’s hoping the second-gen Vision Pro gets an M4 as a result.



You can, if they support hand tracking or a gamepad. Apple did put effort into software support, but I did notice that it isn’t devoting as much attention to gaming as it is on the iPhone/iPad/Mac. My theory: Apple was both interested in shipping quickly and didn’t want to have people think it was yet another VR gaming machine. I suspect we’ll see that change as the hardware gets faster and lighter.
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I would think that a next-gen wouldn't come with an M series but a modified variant of the Ax series they use in the iPads, just beef the hell out of the GPU and give it ray tracing support.
 
reaper12 said:
Exactly. It isn't doing anything new. It's not a protype for a new form of computing as LukeTbk suggested.
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That's not entirely true. I'd liken it somewhat to the iPhone (not that it will necessarily have that kind of impact). Yeah, smartphones existed before then, including touchscreen phones... but the interface and experiences were significantly better. It overcomes long-existing problems, such as the screen door effect. I just don't expect it to succeed relatively quickly; it will be the province of enthusiasts until the technology improves and prices come down.
 
Lakados said:
I would think that a next-gen wouldn't come with an M series but a modified variant of the Ax series they use in the iPads, just beef the hell out of the GPU and give it ray tracing support.
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There is speculation that the mainstream Vision will use A-series chips, and that the Pro line will keep using M-series parts. I could see that working, especially if it keeps costs down.
 
DukenukemX said:
Pretty much what I thought.


View: https://youtu.be/FTVpISHL-y4?si=fYZDPFUms-r0ClMZ
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Had to click on the video, not because I wanted to, but I couldn't tell who made the video, and sure enough one of the techtubers that makes a living reviewing certain products or what not and very often seems like they a) don't know what they're talking about or b) always tends to lean heavily towards reviewing products of certain companies almost seeming like a shill.
 
The Apple Vision Pro was earlier estimated by analysts to ship around 500,000 units...however, after its inception, the TF International Securities analyst has revised his previous figure, now believing that the AR headset could ship between 700,000 and 800,000 units...
 
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