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Comment by robg | Hacker News Reader

I think Apple made the right trade-off here, but the external battery seems like the feature of the Vision Pro that will make us look back from the future and shake our heads.

Maybe I’m dense but I don’t really understand this jump to [shakes hands like Doc Brown] “the future”. We’re in Magic Leap’s future right now, how did the physics and battery constraints turn out for them?

How do you let people wearing VR goggles on their faces participate in videoconferences?

Me being dense again: Why is this a necessary use case? It seems pointlessly complicated when taking the thing off is easy or just make calls audio only. What will the Persona ever add?

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> Me being dense again: Why is this a necessary use case? It seems pointlessly complicated when taking the thing off is easy or just make calls audio only. What will the Persona ever add?

How old are you?

I distinctly remember the first time my brother and I had a video chat with our parents on the other side of the world who we hadn't seen for a few years, and our sister on yet another continent. We were all sitting on couches, and we kept remarking it felt like we were in the same room, and it was amazing. Truly "the future". Like back to the future 2 (I saw that video-call scene at the movies, it was right after intermission).

Our family video call was ~2005, Skype. I'd had video calls before, but they were always glitchy and slow and made the call worse.

I've never used a VR/AR headset, but I suspect in just a few years this feature alone will be extremely compelling. Maybe those with immediate family scattered around the globe feel it the most.

I agree it was cool at first but the baseline there was voice-only. You could see them!

Now though the standard is pretty darn good on FaceTime and usually good, but tiresome, in group video calls.

AVP has to go that much further to be better than the status quo. And now with not just a feed but a reconstruction.

Regarding personas: one of the things that excites me about AVP is the potential for true remote collaboration and brainstorming, where everyone involved can interact with virtual whiteboards and co-explore designs.

I don’t think that just joining a Zoom as a normal participant makes much sense, but I would love the ability to hop into a virtual space with someone to sketch out ideas and designs while still having some kind of personal connection/interaction.

The difficulty accomplishing this with existing tools is what justified the hefty travel budget I had to go work in-person with teams during certain stages of product design as a product manager.

I think the feature has a long way to go to meet this need based on the early demos.

Doesn’t gaming enable group collaboration with just voices? What makes the floating headface compelling to the experience?

Brainstorming and product planning/design sits in an entirely different category than gaming. The needs of gaming don’t really compare.

I don’t think floating head faces are compelling nor do I think it represents Apple’s ultimate goal. This is why I concluded with:

> I think the feature has a long way to go to meet this need based on the early demos.

If they can make the headfaces convincing enough to enable reasonably good eye contact and to portray an accurate representation of facial expressions/emotions, it will make certain kinds of on-site collaboration where such things matter less necessary. If they can extend this to convincing whole-body avatars, the utility skyrockets.

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