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Comment by GeekyBear | Hacker News Reader

> viable consumer product status (read: enough adoption for the device to be profitable) seems very far away

He mentions a few short term use cases for the current hardware.

For example: Productivity on the go (A laptop with the headset for multiple virtual displays) and Live Sports.

> Apple Immersive on Vision Pro is a transformative experience in terms of video quality and its ability to deliver a real sense of presence. Watching a game in high-resolution VR has the potential to be legitimately better than a regular 4K TV broadcast by enabling hardcore fans to feel much closer to the action

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I've heard the sport idea thrown around a few times, but I'm not sure I buy it.

If you go to a sports event you are mostly buying the experience of being there, the energy of the crowd, the cheering all that stuff. The actual experience of seeing what's happening is not really better is it? That's why the stadiums have screens in them.

Replicating that experience at home is more like getting people around to watch a game together.

> I'm not sure I buy it.

"legitimately better than a regular 4K TV broadcast by enabling hardcore fans to feel much closer to the action" sounds like it offers something new.

People who are sports enthusiasts have a proven willingness to drop thousands of dollars on large screen televisions, streaming services like NFL Red Zone, or thousand dollar Superbowl tickets, so the potential for sales is there.

I think the question is, how many people watch sports to be close to the action, and how many watch sports to be close to their friends?

Yup, there are hardcore fans but sports are largely a social event.

Are you saying that there is no such thing as people who watch sports at home by themselves?

Because that's not remotely true.

In addition, Apple already has it's shareplay tech that allows networked users to watch shared video, listen to shared audio, or video game together.

My argument is that the experience of seeing sport from a specific seat is inferior to watching it multi camera with huge zoom lenses. The thing that draws you to the stadium is the sense of being in a crowds.

The technology to do this has been around for a while to has anyone tries. I'd certainly be curious to give it a go. I imagine there are some technical problems too, like if your team scores and you jump in the air and your view point stays still.

This did get me thinking if any sport might be better viewed in VR, and maybe games like pool, snooker, chess. Where you see the whole thing from one vantage point, and the scale is such that the 3d of it all would be meaningful.

The argument in favor of the tech Apple is using in this essay sounds pretty compelling.

> The NextVR acquisition is what led to the incredible Apple Immersive video format, which enables capture of 3D video in 180 degrees in 8K resolution at 90 frames per second, an absolute juggernaut format with 8 times the number of pixels of a regular 4K video. The best way to think of the new Apple Immersive video format is kind of like a new IMAX-3D, but the real magic is the fact that it’s projected inside an imaginary 180-degree sphere (horizontally and vertically) that takes over your entire field of view.

Vision Pro is the first VR headset that enables playback of 180-degree 3D video at what feels to the eyes like 4K quality.

"IMAX-3D" sounds much more compelling than watching a flat image on a television.

That's definitely impressive tech, and I'm sure the experience inside a headset is pretty incredible. What I'm saying is that it is not a good match for live sport.

When you watch sports they have multiple cameras all over the place. Fixed cameras with long lenses, cameras that zip over the pitch, cameras on blimps, slow mo cameras and so on.

These cameras are so much better for enjoying sport that they put giant screens in the stadium so you can see what happened after a goal is scored.

That experience is never going to work in a VR system (beyond VR as a way to have a big screen available) because if you kept shifting the position and focus you'll make everyone very motion sick.

> When you watch sports they have multiple cameras all over the place.

Why assume the viewer doesn't have a choice of viewpoint locations they can decide to switch between?

I can certainly see a usecase for that and it's not sports (though I guess you could call it that lol).

But prudish Apple will surely block that from happening. I don't really get why. It's a valid request and one where the technology really shines. I use similar content on the quest 3 and it's great but it would be so much better on something like the vision pro.

> For example: Productivity on the go (A laptop with the headset for multiple virtual displays) and Live Sports.

Except almost universally, people talk about the screen display being “not great” for extended use as a screen replacement with dramatically lower effective resolution and blurring…

> people talk about the screen display being “not great”

That's not what the reviews I have read had to say.

> The Vision Pro can produce a virtual external display for any modern Mac... The virtual display feels responsive and works with connected keyboard or mouse peripherals. The text is highly readable.

I don’t have any complaints about how the virtual display itself works—it’s great.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/i-worked-exclusively...

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