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by vonwoodson 871 days ago
Here's my complaints, while we're complaining:

+ Apple appears to have worked *VERY* hard to make sure that there is no VR capability in it's VR headset. Most obvious is that it cannot play SBS video, as far as I can tell, at all. Though I'm sure that content providers will make an AVP app that will play them, in short order, what a weird thing to have left out. WebXR VR video does not play either. You may be in the know, but for the sake of stating it clearly: I will not play adult content from any of the websites you'd expect it to. Beyond that there are absolutely zero immersive experiences to be had with those fantastic 4k-per-eye OLED displays... so high-rez windows on a blurry re-displayed image of my crappy office.

+ The controls suck. "suck" meaning "fails to meet expectations". Seriously, eye/tap-controls (combined with the buttons on the headset itself) are identical to the amount of control the Oculus Go controller had, with less precision. The eye-tracking rarely looks exactly where you want it to, and the taps often don't register or release correctly. This is absolutely infuriating when you're trying to do anything. Furthermore, it's a 3DOF control scheme on a machine that is supposed to be "spatial". Watching my wife try to operate the thing, she is waiving her hands and trying to grab things... NOPE! only look-and-tap controls for everything. Want to position that window on the wall? You've got to physically stand up in front of where you want it and 3DOF control it into place, then go sit back down at your desk. In fact...

+ The whole thing really feels like you're supposed to be sitting at a desk the whole time you're using it. Everything is a floating window, and is expected to stay that way. When you walk around, all your windows stay where you placed them in space, but in front of the "pass through" at all times. And, if you try to layer your windows on top or "too close" to each other, then you get a "gradient of passthrough" in all of your surrounding windows that are not in focus. So, you can't read the news on the built-in Safari and work on your 80-inch virtual laptop screen next to each other without one-or-the-other half-disappearing (unless you put them far enough apart that you'd have to swivel in your office chair to look from one to the other. Walk a few feet and all your windows are back where you left them. Still, you'd think that the multiple windows would be great for multitasking but...

+ Not a multi-tasking device. It's very difficult to switch between active windows. If you grab the bar to move the window (easiest way to focus a window, and most obvious) it'll move that window away from where you put it. Also, because your eyes move faster than your hand, you'll often look somewhere before you tap... often the little "close window" circle. Anyway, then you're back up and moving your windows back where you want them. So, I want my 300-inch TV on that wall over there... and my laptop screen on my desk... and my chess board floating off to the right... and my YouTube music playing... but, The virtual desktop hijacks almost all of my input and all of my Siri commands, the Apple TV stops playing if my music website is playing music and vice versa, but the chessboard's background music plays just fine without interruption somehow.

+ AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 2 or GFYS. The Max's don't fit right and don't seal well enough for noise canceling, and the AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 1 don't have the low latency Bluetooth. Great, that's $700 of equipment that "Just [kinda] works."

+ Ok, there's the weight, but what *REALLY* sucks, is that there's no overhead strap. The included over-the-head strap still attaches at the back of the device. Fully resting the entire weight of the AVP on your cheekbones and nose. I eagerly await a 3rd party solution to this problem, but, where are they going to attach it? I suppose a halo-strap is ideal, but it'll need to put something onto that sleek design. I'm about ready to glue a strap over the worthless and invisible EyeSight display so I can get this thing off my nose already.

+ Oh, yeah, and this morning I tried to snooze my alarm clock by looking at it and tapping my fingers together... so it's also breaking my mind.

I'm not going to be returning my headset. I bought a first-gen product and I knew that things wouldn't be great. But, I remember getting that Virtual Boy/Google Cardboard/Oculus Go/Quest1&2 and being blown away by them each a bit more than the one before it. The AVP did not even remotely impress me.