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Apple secretly demoed it's VR headset to the top 100 Executives. $3000 reconfirmed, expecting 1 million sold first year. Little to no profit initially

lukilladog

Member
I dont know whats worse, the $3k price tag, or the fact it has a $3k price tag and they are making NO PROFIT.

Still Apple diehards will buy this, and they probably will hit that 1mil sales in the first year target, as crazy as that sounds.

I do find it interesting how some tech companies seem all in on VR, and some dont seem to care about it. Some companies do def seem to be taking a 'wait and see what happens' stance with VR.

For me, VR will never be mainstream until a VR headset looks like this -
MicAndKeithsMidnightRamble_3Q_1000x_6eb8f81b-ae21-4d09-a256-0942cb81e5e1.jpg


I wonder how long we are away from that.

Do you mean like Nvidia´s 3d vision?.

People used to swear by that thing.

%D8%B6%D8%AD%D9%83-ryan-gosling.gif
 

Haint

Member
I dont know whats worse, the $3k price tag, or the fact it has a $3k price tag and they are making NO PROFIT.

Still Apple diehards will buy this, and they probably will hit that 1mil sales in the first year target, as crazy as that sounds.

I do find it interesting how some tech companies seem all in on VR, and some dont seem to care about it. Some companies do def seem to be taking a 'wait and see what happens' stance with VR.

For me, VR will never be mainstream until a VR headset looks like this -
MicAndKeithsMidnightRamble_3Q_1000x_6eb8f81b-ae21-4d09-a256-0942cb81e5e1.jpg


I wonder how long we are away from that.

The Oculus DK1 Carmack demoed at E3 2012 is 11 years old. After all that time, and like 70+ billion dollars later, Facebook just released a $1500 Pro device a few months ago that is barely different from that duct tape prototype a kid literally built in his garage. So yeah, we're like 15-20 years away from a genuine "sunglasses" form factor, which will have a 30 minute battery life and stream the experience entirely off of separate computer/console/server farm. Building actual meaningful compute into this form factor likely won't exist in your lifetime, or if it does, you'll be too old to move around and makes use of it.
 
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poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
The Oculus DK1 Carmack demoed at E3 2012 is 11 years old. After all that time, and like 70+ billion dollars later, Facebook just released a $1500 Pro device a few months ago that is barely different from that duct tape prototype a kid literally built in his garage. So yeah, we're like 15-20 years away from a genuine "sunglasses" form factor, which will have a 30 minute battery life and stream the experience entirely off of separate computer/console/server farm. Building actual meaningful compute into this form factor likely won't exist in your lifetime, or if it does, you'll be too old to move around and makes use of it.
Have some imagination. We can get close in the near future even a start up like bigscreen are getting close.
s-l1600.jpg
 
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Haint

Member
Have some imagination. We can get close in the near future even a start up like bigscreen are getting close.
s-l1600.jpg

Physics is the limiter, not imagination. Bigscreen is just MicroOLED's and Pancake lenses (both of which are multiple-decade-old technologies) that achieves its comparatively smaller size by trading field of view and molding to a single user. They haven't invented anything, they're just repackaging the same stuff the $5000 - $10000 headsets you've never heard of have been using for years at a quasi-consumer friendly price . Actual glasses/sunglasses form factor will require a combination of entirely new lens AND displays technologies that literally do not yet exist, as well as multiple breakthroughs to existing technologies. The only thing that could possibly move the time table appreciably forward is if AI's advance to a point they can start out-engineering human's, creating novel compounds, and simulating R&D processes.
 
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th4tguy

Member
That is why it needs to be light weight. Trust me, Apple knows all about thin devices.
It doesn’t matter if it’s light. My eye glasses hurt by the end of a long work day. It’s just not comfortable staring at a screw that close to your eyes for that long. You need to look away and let them rest. The idea of spending a workday in be is mental.
 
It doesn’t matter if it’s light. My eye glasses hurt by the end of a long work day. It’s just not comfortable staring at a screw that close to your eyes for that long. You need to look away and let them rest. The idea of spending a workday in be is mental.
Your eye glasses must be huge if it hurts you. Bottom line is there is a lot of business applications that can be applied to VR.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Physics is the limiter, not imagination. Bigscreen is just MicroOLED's and Pancake lenses (both of which are multiple-decade-old technologies) that achieves its comparatively smaller size by trading field of view and molding to a single user. They haven't invented anything, they're just repackaging the same stuff the $5000 - $10000 headsets you've never heard of have been using for years at a quasi-consumer friendly price . Actual glasses/sunglasses form factor will require a combination of entirely new lens AND displays technologies that literally do not yet exist, as well as multiple breakthroughs to existing technologies. The only thing that could possibly move the time table appreciably forward is if AI's advance to a point they can start out-engineering human's, creating novel compounds, and simulating R&D processes.
Well sunglasses like and actual pair of sunglasses is for sure a massive difference. I think the current tech will get us pretty close, close enough for a lot of applications. At some point we will have to go with writing images directly to the retina or something, lenses will only get us so far.
 

itshutton

Member
try owning a mac mini , macbook, iphone, apple watch, airpods, homepod , apple tv and smart home compatible stuff like an ebike or car.. it just works.. can't state enough how great it is when you are into it
That’s what they said about Fallout 76….”It just works!”
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Facebook just released a $1500 Pro device a few months ago that is barely different from that duct tape prototype a kid literally built in his garage.
That's quite the crazy simplification of the technological advances we've gotten in the field. There's a night and day difference between the pre-DK1/DK1 and VR headsets today. The prototype, even the DK1, missed 6DoF, was capped at 60Hz, low res and the lens configuration was horrendus. No hand tracking either. It was rather a torture device which gave people (including me) days long horrendous motion sickness, and the screen door effect had a tendency to imprint on the brain. The Reverb G2 I use today is a completely different V3.0 beast that is crystal clear and can be worn for hours daily without much discomfort. Even the Vive was a giant leap in technology on the relatively short VR timeline since Luckey's duct taped prototype.
 

Haint

Member
That's quite the crazy simplification of the technological advances we've gotten in the field. There's a night and day difference between the pre-DK1/DK1 and VR headsets today. The prototype, even the DK1, missed 6DoF, was capped at 60Hz, low res and the lens configuration was horrendus. No hand tracking either. It was rather a torture device which gave people (including me) days long horrendous motion sickness, and the screen door effect had a tendency to imprint on the brain. The Reverb G2 I use today is a completely different V3.0 beast that is crystal clear and can be worn for hours daily without much discomfort. Even the Vive was a giant leap in technology on the relatively short VR timeline since Luckey's duct taped prototype.

Not in the context of form factor and the core components that comprise it, Quest Pro represents a gradual iterative refinement. Certainly there is nothing to suggest we're anywhere close to walking around in Oculus Raybans with 140 degree 2000 nit Lightfield displays within the next 5 or 10 years. Advancements are demonstrably happening MUCH slower than everyone imagined. If you asked anyone who used that in 2012 what a decade and nearly $100 billion dollars would produce, literally no one would have said something that's basically the same, only ~50% smaller with 1800x1900 LCD's. No one.
 
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Seems like based on the explanation given elsewhere, he didn't send the mods anything, the ban message is just mocking him. Must have passed the limits of their patience.

But this news doesn't make much sense anyway. Apple on their hometurf is extremely protective of information. I can believe they had a demo but cannot believe this headset is going to have the weaknesses listed.

It's also clearly not going to be $3000. If they were really thinking of that price they would have saw the months of negative opinion on it and would have changed it by now.

Someone brought up how Apple faked the iPads price back in the day causing their competitors to launch at a higher retail price than their real pricing for the iPad.

Nothing different here. It will probably cost less than the Quest Pro price before the desperate discount.

I also think 1M in a year is conservative. I'm guessing 3M. Probably the same for Samsung. Brand names will sell half those numbers alone.

The only thing those companies would have to do is prove they will support their VR products long.

Every VR headset for the last 9 years has only been supported for one year to the max of 3 years before reducing support or ending support, except Gear but that's only because new phones came out every year and needed new headsets and software updates to support them.

People didn't forget Sony and HTC rolled back support after 2.5 years for their headsets. That confidence is gone, which is why sales for both have been dismal for years.

Facebook isn't any better. Rift S after 1 year, Quest after 1 year, Quest 2 probably dead after this year and was pure luck.

Why are people surprised customers have no confidence in Virtual Reality companies?
 
Not in the context of form factor and the core components that comprise it, Quest Pro represents a gradual iterative refinement. Certainly there is nothing to suggest we're anywhere close to walking around in Oculus Raybans with 140 degree 2000 nit Lightfield displays within the next 5 or 10 years. Advancements are demonstrably happening MUCH slower than everyone imagined. If you asked anyone who used that in 2012 what a decade and nearly $100 billion dollars would produce, literally no one would have said something that's basically the same, only ~50% smaller with 1800x1900 LCD's. No one.

By 2017 no one who was sucked into the hype was expecting VR to improve drastically. At that point there was three years of continuous headset releases by several companies burning dollars and nothing promised was coming to fruition.

I'd say where we are now was predictable back then. You also have admit that Virtual Reality would have died in 2019, for the third time, if FB didn't target the lowest common denominator at an affordable price with the Quest machines. Now it's on the verge of death again.

Ban reason : « Please send us several page long angry emails »

WTF was he writing them 😂

Trailer Park Boys Reaction GIF by reactionseditor

He didn't, a mod posted elsewhere and it seems the message was just to jerk him around on the way out. Apparently those last few threads must have worn out their patience.

Do you mean like Nvidia´s 3d vision?.

I would argue the current AR glasses are just evolutions of those old 3D glasses. While failing just as hard.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/news...res-top-100-meeting-watch-like-start-lfpgdgdb




So this dropped, and we don't know if what was demoed to the top 100 Executives is what's going to be shown at WWDC in June, however, if it is than some of this news is rather peculiar.

Basically, the article implies that the Executives were impressed with what Apple showed, but were not sure people would know how to apply this into their daily tech lives, and not just that, but not sure Apple could message what benefit the VR headset will/would provide to consumers.

The article also implies that based on the demos the Executives saw, (we don't know if that demo was the final or near the final version or not) that the headset may actually be rushing out without having a solid foundation in place, which would be ironic if what was demoed will end up being shown in June, because many companies have recently reacted already to "beat" Apple to in the VR space by rushing their OWN headsets, or plans forward.

Also based on the demo shown, there's an assumption the headset will be launching without a killer app, though I'm sure there's one or two pieces of software they are going to push hard when the June WWDC presentation happens, but the Executives either didn't see them at the demonstration, or did see their software and concluded none of them had the potential for being a killer app.

Then there's this new info about an external battery that doesn't need to be charged every two hours, but the wording here is it may need to be "replaced" every two hours which is worse. But this seems strange to me unless they are using actual Duracell-style batteries for the headset, which would just be completely out of touch. I'm assuming that there's an error here and that they meant that in standalone mode you only have about 2-3 hours of battery life before needing to charge. Which would be much less completely insane, and make a lot more sense.

Despite this the estimated $3000 price has been reconfirmed, and Apple still expects to sell at least 1 million mixed-reality headsets in its first year. There's also still the expectation that Apple will become the market leader in the VR space given the current poor perception of the VR market.

I guess how this will ultimately end up working out will depend on if what the Executives saw at the secret meeting, was the final version that's going to be shown to us consumers in June or not. They were impressed with what they saw, but the flaws being reported here, and executives being skeptical if Apple has messaging to get people to buy it, makes me wonder if they were shown something that was the final, or close to the final version. I doubt Tim Cook, who reportedly ignored his design team to join the operations lead in pushing out the headset this year for his legacy, wants to retire from Apple with a rushed product with poor messaging as that would but a stain on his legacy. Although, Timmy boy has made some odd decisions here and there.

One other thing I noticed is they say Apple will likely not make much if any profits on the headset because of the components costs, but there's no way the components are that far ahead and that expensive. I speculate the most likely reason for Apple not making profits, is that the $3000 is likely going to be subsidized by carriers and retailers for monthly payments, which may also have upgrade plans, and people paying monthly may not be paying the full $3000 in the end, so Apple is taking those losses into account. If the components really are that expensive, than I expect that we will be amazed at the final specs on this thing.

1 million units in one year would NOT make them the market leaders in this space. I also hate that Eddie has been banned. We'll see you again.
 
Hold on.............Eddie was Voost this whole time!?!?!
I'm curious about this because I recall him going after Afro for not linking evidence for his sales numbers so he posted his own with links.

Might be people saw some similarities in their posting and assumed that to be the case, or the mods found out on the back-end with ip address. If it was confirmed I have no idea what thread that was in.

for 3k this thing better not have a "sweet spot" and the entire thing better be clear as fuck

Unless we get glasses sized virtual reality with a massive fov, this is going to be impossible for years.
 

dorkimoe

Member
I'm curious about this because I recall him going after Afro for not linking evidence for his sales numbers so he posted his own with links.

Might be people saw some similarities in their posting and assumed that to be the case, or the mods found out on the back-end with ip address. If it was confirmed I have no idea what thread that was in.



Unless we get glasses sized virtual reality with a massive fov, this is going to be impossible for years.
Ill admit i dont understand or follow the tech behind it but thats my ONLY complaint with psvr2. Damn
 
Ill admit i dont understand or follow the tech behind it but thats my ONLY complaint with psvr2. Damn

It might be possible to remove sweet spots if companies make a sacrifice somewhere else.

The problem is since headsets are aiming to be slim and comfortable that limits what they can cut down. Battery can't be worse than it already is, so that leaves fov, graphics, lens quality, or making the headset tethered only.

No sweet spots without compromise is probably 20 or 30 years away.
 
3k....

Whew, really testing out that "Apple fans will pay anything" theory.
Considering they paid $1000 for a monitor stand. They probably think this is a deal, as the bend over for more. Apple fans are delusional elitist people that worship a company.

They were annoying but I could understand when Jobs was alive, but since his death the innovation went way down and costs way up. Don't know why anyone supports them.
 
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