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Comment by allenu | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the camp that sees the whole thing as a novelty. I didn't see any use cases that made me go "Ooh, I need this in my life." I already have multiple screens around me. If I'm watching TV and want to look something up, I can open up my laptop or look at my phone.

The nice thing about those are I can physically close the laptop or turn off the phone. With a virtual screen, I have to use some UI to do it. I know it doesn't seem like much of a difference, but to me, there's enough lag and lack of real feel of control that I'd prefer a real object than a virtual one.

Interacting with app windows in 3D space also doesn't feel any faster than just using a flat window on a flat screen. I'm already super productive using keyboard + mouse and a flat display, so I don't see how using my voice and turning my head to look at things in a virtual space is any better.

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I see a bunch of use-cases I might like, but they all have a big asterisk of "how well does it actually work".

And it would have to be pretty damn spectacular for me to drop ~AUD$5200 on it in a "I will be using this all the time, pro-actively sense". Which maybe it is!

But this press-release spends a lot of time talking around the hard numbers - i.e. 23 million pixels is a lot of things but its not a resolution. Nor is their any mention of the FOV angle (this data is obviously out there, but avoiding mentioning it in your own marketing copy means you know it's not what you want people up front comparing).

They said 'anywhere you look, so I'm guessing the FOV is nearly all the way around to your peripheral vision. If not, the first review to say 'pay $3500 to experience glaucoma' will torpedo the product entirely.

Giving the total number of pixels is actually more honest, compared to competitors who claim that 2Kx2K*2 is a 4K headset

23 million is comfortably more than 4K resolution per eye, putting this at one of if not the highest resolution of any headset. It seems like they are telling the whole truth when they say you can view a 4K virtual screen on this - there is enough resolution headroom

That said, the lack of FOV is suspicious. Between that, the lack of proper VR game demos and the focus on virtual monitors, I get the feeling this headset will have poor FOV traded for sharpness across the whole image and reduced nausea

> 23 million is comfortably more than 4K resolution per eye, putting this at one of if not the highest resolution of any headset

But still at a density (pixels/degree) lower than my $70 4K display at normal viewing distance.

VR companies are always so damn excited about their innovations that allow a headset to display text at a fraction of the fidelity of a display that costs almost two orders of magnitude less.

I get that the innovation is mostly in the rest of the headset, but companies really need to stop skimping on the display resolution.

> I get the feeling this headset will have [...] sharpness across the whole image

One can hope.

I mean it's not skimping, it's right at the limits of our technological capability. VR is weird in that once you cross a certain pixel density, no further improvements will matter because the eye won't be able to resolve the image better. But until you get there, it's much more limited.

The cross-over point AFAIK is about a 16K screen resolution (per eye) - i.e. at that point a screen in a VR helmet is "retina" and you won't see pixels no matter what.

It's just that's an enormous number of pixels, in a tiny surface area, and a colossal amount of data to move.

> VR is weird in that once you cross a certain pixel density, no further improvements will matter because the eye won't be able to resolve the image better.

Can people stop saying this? I can clearly see every individual pixel of my 4K display. This headset is not even close to the limit of visual resolution. It doesn't matter if 16k is the limit of the retina if the headset is only 4k per eye anyway, that's almost 2 orders of magnitude. Much like the difference in price between this headset and a much sharper 4K display.

I get that it's technologically impressive compared to nothing, and I get that the main selling point is motion, not resolution. But until I can comfortably read text on a simulated 4K display, it won't be impressive to me.

Okay did you literally only read the first sentence of my post? Because the one right after it says "But until you get there, it's much more limited."

My post is not in opposition to anything you've written here, and agrees with all of it.

Sorry, I did read your whole post, but seemingly didn't pick up on that.

Same boat. $5k is massive. I'm considering buying a new ~$2k screen that would then be bound to either home or office, so there's budget to solve the visual side of work and be portable, but I wouldn't bet it on this before a lot of hands-on reviews.

And the reviews would have to be outrageous for me to not wait for a future, cheaper version.

One thing I don't like is the idea of being bound to their idea of what a spatial interface is. I use three screens and like more density, so my current situation is more useful than their demo. Give me that and good control over the environmental backdrop, and I'd start to be convinced. I like my work, but if I could do it while feeling like I'm in the desert permanently at golden hour, that'd be an upgrade.

To be fair when the iPhone 1 came out nobody really said they need it in their lives vs a Nokia or BB

For me, it's hard to make direct comparisons with the world of then. Today, everybody has so many devices and are so used to tech all around them every waking moment. An AR headset doesn't feel like a huge leap in additional day-to-day functionality compared with what a smartphone gave us at the time.

As this comparison says[1], people got from Wright Brothers to 747 in a very short time and thought we'd be space travellers soon after that, but hey, a 747 was good enough.

[1] https://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm

> To be fair when the iPhone 1 came out nobody really said they need it in their lives vs a Nokia or BB

That's not how I remember it, that original keynote was magical. The benefits of the iPhone over current devices (both phones and MP3 players) were crystal-clear, the only damper being high price together with tying it to an AT&T contract.

While impressive technologically, this on the other hand gives rather creepy vibes - the whole presentation looks like a Black Mirror episode.

>The benefits of the iPhone over current devices (both phones and MP3 players) were crystal-clear,

I don't remember that at all. Windows phones could do essentially everything the first iPhone could do, and in 3G. What they couldn't do was do it seamlessly and quickly like an iPhone and that made all the difference.

If I remember correctly, weren't most of the original Windows Mobile devices similar to PDAs in that they required a stylus to use them? I joined Microsoft around that time before the iPhone, working in the codec team, so we had several test devices. I just remember how clunky they felt to use. Kind of laggy and the UI was a bit ugly. Windows Phone came out to try to fix that and we got the whole Metro UI thing.

You could tap directly but a stylus was better because the ui wasn’t really touch-optimized.

And you’re completely right - they were laggy and clunky and just lacked the polish. Same as the ipod va the nomad really.

Apple weren’t the first, they just did it better.

Even as a college student, watching them use that capacitive touch screen vs the clunky resistive screens was magical. I'd owned an iPod for a couple of years and had already seen the smoothness of the clicky wheel thing. Every single person I knew was looking forward to this phone

I asked people that are close to my age at the time about this headset and the reaction is pretty visceral. May be my crowd is more "tech focused" but strapping a headset just elicits a completely negative reaction, especially with those creepy eyes. "Black Mirror" and "RPO" were frequent references, explicitly as negatives

Agreed, I think they may struggle to overcome the whole “Black Mirror” effect. Feedback from my brother and parents (veritable Apple-philes) this morning amounted to “sounds kinda cool but I’d probably think someone was a grade-A weirdo if I showed up at home and saw they had a AR/VR headset / I’d take that $3500 and go on a nice weekend trip, play some golf, have a nice dinner, etc.”

While HN may be more “the target market”, I’m still fairly certain we’re a vanishingly small contingent of consumers, and apparently we’re not even completely onboard with AR/VR ourselves.

What benefits exactly? Touch screens were not well regarded pre-iPhone, I remember a lot of people not wanting to ditch their keypads. And there was no app store at first so it was just a phone with music which many could already do.

I don’t remember it that way at all. The screen resolution. Touchscreen keyboard. Pinch and zoom, safari web browsing etc was all so much better than Nokia and BB offerings and many people immediately wanted the first iPhone. The earliest adopters would be hounded to show off their phone to family and friends.

My reaction to the original iPhone was, “that’s it. That is every phone from here on out.” The UX was so clearly years ahead of every other phone UX and it combined the wildly popular iPod with a phone. If nothing else it took two products that a lot of people carried with them and made it one and did that well.

While the vision pro is impressive it doesn’t make my pockets or luggage lighter. And there isn’t a thing I am not buying because I am buying this.

I distinctly remember getting the first iPhone and, having come from some random Nokia, just staring at the vibrant iPhone screen. It seemed impossible. Similar reaction with the first iPads as well.

I'd been using a Windows CE device up till then, so the iPhone didn't really look revolutionary to me - the big deal was that the capacitive touchscreen made the interactivity model possible. You can't build the iPhone UI without that touchscreen - driving it with a stylus and a resistive touchscreen just wouldn't work.

Which is why I do get a little annoyed about the "Steve Jobs visionary" claims surrounding it - the market was circling the "single slate" concept for a good long while, the big innovation was finding a price-point and a way to manufacture the iPhone with that touchscreen technology and get it into consumers hands (and being willing to gamble on it).

Actually, I had a Dell handheld (Axim?) but never really found a use for it. I think it was the contrast and reactiveness of the iPhone that stunned me.

The original iPhone was also 599, much cheaper than the laptop it was "replacing". The Vision Pro is priced so high it's not in the same category of luxury items.

The success of this really depends on the developers’ and consumers’ patience, and since that will fade quickly, probably also depends on the amount of dough Apple is willing to sink into it until the tech allows for more practical non-intrusive products.

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