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The roundup of rumors before the unveiling of Apple's VR headset

ADiTAR

ידע זה כוח
Exciting to see for sure.

But content is king, and they need to show off something that's more than just current VR games/apps.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Exciting to see for sure.

But content is king, and they need to show off something that's more than just current VR games/apps.

This is where Apple I think can change things. There’s nobody else out there that will have invested as much money in VR as Apple probably. Facebook maybe but they wasted so much ressources in metaverse and they are nowhere near Apple in the stack of apps, TV, fitness, etc.

It’ll be very hard for competitors to follow.
 

ADiTAR

ידע זה כוח
This is where Apple I think can change things. There’s nobody else out there that will have invested as much money in VR as Apple probably. Facebook maybe but they wasted so much ressources in metaverse and they are nowhere near Apple in the stack of apps, TV, fitness, etc.

It’ll be very hard for competitors to follow.
We know they invested money in tech, like they did with iPhone. But the iPhone was essentially everything they've done in Macs before. I'm not sure that will translate in VR. They would need to rethink their software. I can see them pushing toward the designer crowd, people who create, like they used to do with Macs back in the day before it became popular. Maybe sculpting tools, Zbrush, etc. Maybe it connect to a 3D Apple printer.
 
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sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
And you have to render for 4K only you think?

Ron Swanson Smile GIF


If Sony marketing and all media put the PSVR 2 as 4K combined with 2000 x 2040 pixels per eyes,

We can say the headset is « 8k » with the 4000 x 4000 pixels per eyes.

33M pixels for an 8k TV and 32M pixels in your face for VR. You can argue semantics all you want, VR headsets have used total pixels for years to call 2k or 4K or 8k.

It’s not semantics. If our eyes look at a 4K screen. It’s 4K. Two separate 4K Vr screens are 4K. There is no more detail than a single 4K screen.

How hard it is to drive two displays has never been a metric. It’s all marketing. Sony is in the wrong too.
 

supernova8

Banned
I work remotely and if they can offer a seamless/native (ie zero jank) experience in terms of virtual floating monitors (it has to be good enough that I wouldn't get sick of it, good enough pass through that I won't knock shit off my desk and light enough that I wouldn't need to take it off every few minutes), I'll buy it (after buying a refurbished M1 Macbook Pro).

One thing I hate is having my two big monitors blocking half the light from the windows in my study. Plus, I could sit outside on the balcony with my laptop (on my relatively small table) and (in theory) have just as good an experience.

If anyone can do it, it's Apple because they'll have an integrated ecosystem. Plus, you'll probably be able to go into an Apple store to try it out, so you won't have to just "hope" it's good before purchasing.

Anything beyond the floating monitors thing would be a bonus. I'd pay big bucks for that alone.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
It’s not semantics. If our eyes look at a 4K screen. It’s 4K. Two separate 4K Vr screens are 4K. There is no more detail than a single 4K screen.

How hard it is to drive two displays has never been a metric. It’s all marketing. Sony is in the wrong too.

Let’s just say that I’ll take the VR industry wide acceptance of how to call these resolutions from very smart engineers than forum goer sankt-Antonio sankt-Antonio

The standard is this, I don’t give a fuck what you think it should be called, start your own VR headset and be truthful to customers if that’s your dopamine hit.

It’s a shitload more difficult to render (2) 4000x4000 (or different ratio of this) displays than any console « 4K ». Thus you’re rendering 8k equivalent pixels, with some render tricks to improve performance but not by much.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
Reminder :



Kojima allegedly stopped his VR game development in early 2023 (after many years of dev) when he kept getting sick. Likely with PSVR 2 prototype I imagine? That display has the highest persistence on the market (not a good thing) and some peoples will inherently feel sick from that.

Seems like Apple snatched him up
 

E-Cat

Member
I think the tech they'll present will be ahead of everything we've seen so far. That's exciting. I don't need to OWN the tech to appreciate tech, otherwise i would piss on any high end cars.
This headset will likely define what the competition will try to copy and to offer for cheaper prices in the next years to come.
This is the correct attitude. I despise Apple products (despite owning an iPhone and an iMac, long story), yet this is perhaps my most anticipated tech unveil in years besides anything Tesla does. It will define the AR/VR space for years to come. Just knowing it exists is good for humanity. I don't understand why more people don't adopt this way of thinking.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
is 12 code like M2 or does it actually mean 12 cameras? Why would a passthrough need more than 1 or 2 cameras?

12 cameras rumoured, including internal ones for face/eye tracking

Pass through for sure it needs more than 1 camera btw even for just 3D depth. 2 cameras and you have to start using some funky software tricks to make it believable you are looking as if it were your eyes, Quest 3 is apparently going to be better than Quest pro but even that was not quite there yet.

12 cameras might also include the LiDAR and not just pass through, as they’ll map the room to scale. Would be easy for peoples in leaks to confuse camera to a LiDAR sensor.

There’s also rumours that it tracks even down to your feet if you move and of course hands. So it’s far from just pass through.

We’ll see in a few hours 🤔
 
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E-Cat

Member
How would 2 M2 chips power 8k? I imagine this thing would be mostly for mixed reality rather than any serious gaming, so I don't think I'd be interested even if it was much cheaper than 3k.
Foveated rendering, AI...
 
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E-Cat

Member
4K per eye is not 8K. its still 4K.

Curious what a lightweight top of the line device could do for human machine interface of cars.
4K per eye is neither 4K nor 8K. It maintains the vertical resolution of 4K, but doubles the horizontal (because, two eyes, duh). So it sits right in the middle at around 16 million pixels.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
One last speculation on my part, this will be functional even outside, not just like you have a guardian, but the pass through will allow you to safely function, like taking a bus, sit, switch to AR/VR, etc. Thus the finger ring controls make even more sense, you don’t want controllers in every day life. Maybe even running outside for fitness with AR content?

Apple will take VR out of the niche of just having a « setup », 100% sure of that.

Also, first time I see this tweet:

 
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Trunx81

Member
I have never been so sceptical about an Apple product like for this one. The "iEye" seems to be a DOA for me, just because of how it is supposed to look ("ski googles"). Not even the price!
Who would want to run around wearing a battery muncher on his face that makes him look like Captain Power or some of his Soldiers of the Future?

Playing Horizon: Zero Dawn right now and the Focus would, in my opinion, be the ONLY way people would accept this kind of tech. Although the game has a really unrealistic approach to it, especially due to the lack of Ads implemented into the device ;)
 

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
Personally really looking forward to seeing this, I'm a big fan of new tech regardless of who it comes from but those specs are off the charts and makes it sound like a generational leap over everything else, would be cool if it is but I'm tempering expectations
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Personally really looking forward to seeing this, I'm a big fan of new tech regardless of who it comes from but those specs are off the charts and makes it sound like a generational leap over everything else, would be cool if it is but I'm tempering expectations

It's probably going to wow everybody... but be completely impractical. Like others have said, it feels more like a statement of intent for the future, than something anyone's going to actually want to buy now. One thing is for sure though, if Apple step heavily into the VR market, the VR market will grow.
 

gothmog

Gold Member
It's probably going to wow everybody... but be completely impractical. Like others have said, it feels more like a statement of intent for the future, than something anyone's going to actually want to buy now. One thing is for sure though, if Apple step heavily into the VR market, the VR market will grow.
Fingers crossed we finally see the growth that VR deserves out of this. We all want to see some kind of ready player one type breakthrough with mainstream use of VR. I'm hoping this will feel practical but be expensive. If it's an impractical half step the word will probably mock it at best and ignore it at worst which would suck.
 

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
One last speculation on my part, this will be functional even outside, not just like you have a guardian, but the pass through will allow you to safely function, like taking a bus, sit, switch to AR/VR, etc. Thus the finger ring controls make even more sense, you don’t want controllers in every day life. Maybe even running outside for fitness with AR content?

Apple will take VR out of the niche of just having a « setup », 100% sure of that.

Also, first time I see this tweet:


I guess he would know.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Fingers crossed we finally see the growth that VR deserves out of this. We all want to see some kind of ready player one type breakthrough with mainstream use of VR. I'm hoping this will feel practical but be expensive. If it's an impractical half step the word will probably mock it at best and ignore it at worst which would suck.

I'm interested to see if the separate battery pack concept works. One of the biggest barriers to VR's mainstream breakthrough is how clunky and unwieldy the headsets are. I don't think the general audience (the people that all bought the Wii back in the day) will gravitate to VR until it is small and light enough. I personally think it's going to take 5g/wifi cloud streaming to actually make that breakthrough, but Apple's solution could be interesting.
 
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sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
Let’s just say that I’ll take the VR industry wide acceptance of how to call these resolutions from very smart engineers than forum goer sankt-Antonio sankt-Antonio

The standard is this, I don’t give a fuck what you think it should be called, start your own VR headset and be truthful to customers if that’s your dopamine hit.

It’s a shitload more difficult to render (2) 4000x4000 (or different ratio of this) displays than any console « 4K ». Thus you’re rendering 8k equivalent pixels, with some render tricks to improve performance but not by much.
Calm down. It’s a product we are discussing here.

I never said it’s not harder to drive two 4k screens. I said it’s never been a benchmark that determines resolution rating. GPUs that can output two 4K signals are not called or sold as 8k capable. Neither are Notebooks etc.

Some companies sneakily try to make it so in VR, to have better marketing slogans. You are falling for it. It’s wrong. It’s 4K per eye (which is impressive but isn’t the same regarding detail density in comparison to 8K resolution, it’s 4K detail density from two different focal points.).
 
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Boglin

Member
Calm down. It’s a product we are discussing here.

I never said it’s not harder to drive two 4k screens. I said it’s never been a benchmark that determines resolution rating. GPUs that can output two 4K signals are not called or sold as 8k capable. Neither are Notebooks etc.

Some companies sneakily try to make it so in VR, to have better marketing slogans. You are falling for it. It’s wrong. It’s 4K per eye (which is impressive but isn’t the same regarding detail density in comparison to 8K resolution, it’s 4K detail density from two different focal points.).
Isn't 4k 3840x2160?
I'm not a math wizard but 4000x4000 per eye seems roughly double the density of that.
 

Fess

Member
Could this be compatible with SteamVR? Would be interesting if we could use Quest/Rift/Index controllers and play regular PCVR games on this thing.
 

Boglin

Member
Who is getting 4000x4000 per eye?
The people you were talking with mentioned 4000x4000 multiple times.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding things. Do you mean by 4k per eye that Apple is going to be doing 3840x2160 per eye? I assumed that since the per eye vertical and horizontal ratios for resolution on other VR headsets are usually squarish that this would be like that too.

The PSVR 2 is 2000 x 2040 per eye, and the PSVR 1 had 960 x 1080 pixels per eye(1920 x 1080 panel split in two).

Because the PSVR 1 was classified as 1080p(960x1080) and the PSVR 2 is classified as 4k(2000x2040), when people said the rumored Apple VR is 8k, I apparently erroneously assumed it meant something around 3840x3840 per eye.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
Who is getting 4000x4000 per eye?


It’s based on leaked PPI

«
Most existing headset panels have an aspect ratio of roughly 9:10. A 1.41" diagonal display with a pixel density of 4000 PPI and an aspect ratio of 9:10 would have a resolution of 4156×3740.

However, if the aspect ratio is square instead it would equate to almost exactly 4000×4000. »
 

GHG

Gold Member
If you can use it for PC VR games and it's a huge step up above what we have so far (and they have some kind of up scaling algorithm that's clean) then I'll consider getting it.
 
I think people might be missing the bigger picture here. I don't think this headset is meant to compete with the Quest, because there is almost no market for a $3000 gaming headset, no matter how good it is. I think this headset is meant to replace your laptop.

It is MUCH easier to justify this price if we're talking about a dual-M2 workstation inside a pair of glasses, and if anyone can finally create an intuitive and effective productivity UI in the VR space it's Apple.
 

Romulus

Member
I'm getting 50-70fps playing cyberpunk VR on a Quest 2. But 4k resolution? Lol. Probably take a 5000 series gpu.

Btw, the game was meh without VR, but my God does it look incredible inside that world. Still average gameplay but at least i sort of get it now. I just find myself looking at all the details I didn't care about before.
 

Silver Wattle

Gold Member
What are the chances the 3k version is aimed at professional/enthusiast's to start the ecosystem and then later they will launch a cheaper variant with reduced specs?
 

FrankWza

Member
I think people might be missing the bigger picture here. I don't think this headset is meant to compete with the Quest, because there is almost no market for a $3000 gaming headset, no matter how good it is. I think this headset is meant to replace your laptop.
Yup. This is a step or 2 before everything starts getting beamed into peoples heads.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
Maybe people can reverse engineer the headset and create cheaper versions when they learn the technology. Nah that’s going to happen.

Oh for sure it'll happen.

It'll take a while for them to catch up though. And Apple ecosystem is almost an impossible competitor from the smaller companies. Imagine the Chinese Pico company (tiktok owners) trying to copy this. I'm sure hardware wise they can achieve something similar, but the software and integration on all the product stack will just never compete.

Now that Apple is in, it means they sniffed long term money. Google / Samsung / Microsoft / Meta will probably head in the same direction but late to the party.

Apple didn't go for the gaming market like at all for this. But it'll likely come later. Replacing a $2k laptop + $2k OLED TV is a bigger incentive than replacing a $499 VR headset used exclusively for gaming. They know there's no convincing VR gamers waiting for Half Life Alyx begging ports for a $3.5k product. That will come in time when tech improves and price drops.

Now i need Valve to drop a hint that Deckard is close in the timeline of release..

Yup. This is a step or 2 before everything starts getting beamed into peoples heads.

Inevitable..

 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
YO Buggy Loop Buggy Loop just so you know they're making a budget alternative to this, supposedly. This is old news from January, but it still counts.


it will be priced equivalently to an Iphone which gives this a much better fighting chance. The theory's substantiated by the fact they called this VISION PRO and not just VISION, there's more than just one model

that being said i'm waiting for Samsung/Xiaomi's take on this. I will literally have this replace my phone if it is good enough, i am not joking. People joke about the form factor and all that but it's small enough for me, better than the size of a quest 2 or an index, and having it be wearable and still letting me view my surroundings means there's no hassle of having to put it in my pocket, or carry it with me or whatever
 
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