How Does the Vision Pro Go? What Does It Mean to Live If You’re In The Real World? An Empirical Study of a Mixed Reality AR/VR Headset
But every successful Apple product of the past two decades has disappeared into our lives in some way—the iPhone into our pockets, the iPad into our purses, the Apple Watch living on our wrists and the AirPods resting in our ears. Wearing the Vision Pro for hours on end will call into question what it means to compute, but also, what it means to live in the real world. My forehead was not throbbing when I took the Vision Pro off after 30 minutes. But my face also breathed with relief, the way it has after using other heads up displays. The air feels more real out here.
Based on the little bit we’ve seen, it’s a dramatically better-looking device than any other AR or VR headset we’ve seen. The actual headset itself is quite thin, and most of the device’s heft and size is from the fabricky shield around it and the big, plushy band around the back. The goggles are slightly curved and should wrap around most faces fairly nicely. The cable runs from the left side down to the bottom and the battery pack at the bottom provides about two hours of battery life.
The built-in audio lives on the bumps on the sides of the band. (Spatial audio is one of the big selling points of the device.) Most of the other cameras and sensor are under the front-facing glass, and you can see some of them from the headset. The cheese grater-style vent runs underneath both eyes, presumably to push all the processor’s hot air down onto your cheeks.
The big question, of course, will be how it feels in use. With no overhead band, will it sit too heavily on your nose? Will the cable attached to your left temple, running down to the battery pack, be annoying? Will it get hot after a few minutes? What will it look like from the inside? While Apple discussed how you could use the Vision Pro to replace your television or computer monitor, doing that well requires a huge amount of processing power and display prowess. Even with the 4K displays announced, it might not be enough.
And, of course, there’s the “what is this for?” debate. Unlike when the company launched the Apple Watch or even AirPods, there’s not a huge existing market for mixed reality devices; there’s the Meta Quest, a bunch of barely successful prototypes like Microsoft’s HoloLens and the Magic Leap, and not much else. Most people have little or no idea how these headsets work, and little about how they should work seems to have been settled.
While using some apps, though, the room dimmed around me, which is one of the more compelling parts of Vision Pro. It can either be auto-magically dim if you use some apps, or it can also be manually dimmed with the little dial on your headset. The Scandinavian normcore living room disappeared around me, after I scanned into one of the virtual Environments Apple seeded on the demo unit. Open Apple TV+ and air-tap into a stereoscopic video reel, then select “Cinematic” mode, and you might as well be in the Alamo Drafthouse. The idea of making this a platform instead of a product is what Apple seems to think. Your app can be anything you want it to be.
FaceTime would be, in theory, an opportunity to create an extremely human experience in mixed reality headsets. In my demo, it wasn’t successful. One of the things that is possible with the internal cameras within the headset is to take a picture of your face in digital form, which will show up before the person you are chatting with. In my demo I talked to a digital twin of an Apple employee who helped me understand some of the features. She felt lost. She was real, but she was also not. I’m afraid I don’t even recall her name.
Touching the AR Home Screen of Vision Pro Hands on Demonstration: How I Interacted with the Apps and the App Store
The more interesting part was how I interacted with them. I opened Photos by pinching my forefinger and thumb together, scrolled through photos by “grabbing” each image and swiping to the left, expanded panoramic photos by staring and tapping at the “Expand” option. I scrolled the pages using my eyes and a couple fingers. I opened Messages, too, though audio interactions aren’t ready yet apparently, and I wasn’t able to record or send a Message. Most of the content I saw wasn’t fully volumetric, nor could I pinch the apps to scale up, or bring myself into them. An Apple representative has said, though, that app makers can build these experiences in the future.
In home mode, a virtual dock of Apple apps floated in front of me. I could still see the real-life living room surroundings. An AR home screen of Apple apps in AR is as vanilla as it sounds. The app containers themselves were not reinvented and their icons were not big grabbes or anything else that gave volume. They were just there.
I used a few gestures and taps on the digital crown to get the Vision Pro interface down. The device sees your hands, so it is no longer necessary for hand controllers. internal camera see where your eyes are and know which app to open or close.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-vision-pro-hands-on-demo/
Sensitive Calibration of an Ultralight Helmet Using a Soft Strap with a Heavier Backstrap
It still felt hefty even though I thought the headset would feel as light as a feather. Once I adjusted both a bigger backstrap and the top soft strap, I went through another calibration process, which concluded with an audible chime of approval. A light orb popped up in the middle of my demo.