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by avaloneon 1108 days ago
I feel like they're targeting VR.

Some background: Currently PCVR is basically 100% Windows. It's possible to stream VR games from a PC to a standalone headset (ie: with the Quest AirLink) but it depends on network conditions. For example, if both computer and headset are connected via WiFi, and neither has line of sight to the router, performance is likely to be questionable, at best. In theory a computer could use it's own WiFi chipset to make a direct connection, but there's also a WiFi 6 dongle that allows for a direct link between computer and headset.

With that said: Apple already has devices that talk to each other, laptops with high-speed WiFi chips, and now they're making a VR headset. So they have all the parts for a really slick PCVR (er, MacVR?) experience, except the games.

So I 100% don't think the timing is coincidental. They're almost certainly targeting PCVR, although I don't know what they will do with motion controllers. That said, there's still nearly a year until launch, so maybe they haven't shown us everything (or maybe it's not ready).

Edit: should also add that this might be really important for VR gaming because we don't know how much compute is available for apps. However, the dual-chip design implies that a single M2 was not enough for visionOS, which does not bode well.

1 comments

It is also their first Vision generation, and it is spec:ed more closely to a Mac Pro than anything else really. Which makes me think of this as a devkit to see what devs are going to do with it.

100% agree with you on targeting PCVR Gaming, which is why I am a bit pissed off that they just dragged in wine as an abstraction layer. It means they are not really committing to working with gaming companies, they just want the fruits of their labour and can at any time just yeet that layer out of the OS.

They could have come with Wine at the same time they did Rosetta 2 but they chose not to. Had they done that, then I would have been less suspicious of their motives.