[ramesh31]

>But using without the Light Seal is a massive improvement. You’re closer to the screen, so it reduces the tunnel vision and expands the effective field-of-view. And rather than a black edge, you have a frame, with outside visibility.

Same thoughts for Quest 3. I use mine exclusively without the light seal now. It is a huge improvement in the ability to just casually use the thing among friends and not seem like a weirdo, and having your peripheral vision massively adds to the overall comfort of the experience. I've found paradoxically that it increases the feeling of presence for passthrough when it feels like you're just looking through a pair of glasses instead of something suction-cupped to your face. This whole idea of "locking in" to VR and closing out the outside world needs to go away. True AR that doesn't remove you from the world is the only future for these devices.

This goes ditto for controllers. The vast majority of people have never held a game controller in their lives. We (as gamers and nerds) take it as second nature, but I've seen it as the single biggest barrier to entry with demoing VR to random folks. Sticking with hand/finger based gesture tracking and rejecting controllers was the absolute best decision Apple made for Vision Pro.

[wilsonnb3]

> Sticking with hand/finger based gesture tracking and rejecting controllers was the absolute best decision Apple made for Vision Pro.

Designing the UI around hand/eye tracking was smart but not supporting VR controllers at all is stupid.

Reminds me of how stubborn they were about bringing mouse support to iPads.

[ramesh31]

>Designing the UI around hand/eye tracking was smart but not supporting VR controllers at all is stupid.

It was a strategic decision. It says "This is not a game console, it's a general purpose computer", and paves the way for opening more people up to the idea. Controllers are a crutch that no one actually wants. We want to be able to just naturally do things in VR/AR the same as we would in reality. And vision based hand/finger tracking has gotten to a point where controllers really are nothing more than an input device now. There's no need for them at all to have 6DOF control, the way there was in the Lighthouse/Constellation days.

[Rinzler89]

>This whole idea of "locking in" to VR and closing out the outside world needs to go away.

Why?

>True AR that doesn't remove you from the world is the only future for these devices.

Again, why? What if I want to be removed? I bought my VR headset during the pandemic precisely for indoor escapism.

I want to be transported and immersed into another universe, not see AR stuff floating around between the same four walls of my tiny apartment that I see all day everyday. It would drive me nuts and I can do that stuff on the cheap with my phone/Ipad.

[kaliqt]

I think you're both misunderstanding how this works.

AR should be without the light seal, VR should be with the light seal, simple as that.

[mlajtos]

Exactly!

(Until the lens cups your whole eye socket and delivers your natural FOV.)

[ramesh31]

>I want to be transported and immersed into another universe, not see AR stuff floating around between the same four walls of my tiny apartment that I see all day everyday. It would drive me nuts and I can do that stuff on the cheap with my phone/Ipad.

Yes, because you are the target demographic for the current crop of headsets that are essentially just expensive niche gaming peripherals. There will always be a market of a couple hundred million people for that. But the other 7 billion people on earth do not want that. They want spatial computing. They want something that fits as seamlessly into their lives as a smartphone, and can be used in public without looking like a weirdo. They'll never even consider VR/AR until that is achieved.

[Rinzler89]

>expensive niche gaming peripherals

GPUs were also called exactly that in the early to mid 90s and now they're a trillion dollar industry so maybe keep an open mind and not be so set in your ways on something so new.

[ramesh31]

>GPUs were also called exactly that in the early to mid 90s and now they're a trillion dollar industry

Yes, and they remained exactly that until a new use case opened up in the last 5 years that average people found highly valuable. Nvidia did not become a trillion dollar company on the back of PC gamer sales. It was a fundamental shift in technology where their hardware/software was well positioned to take advantage of, i.e. what Apple and Meta are banking on for AR vs. VR.

[Rinzler89]

>Yes, and they remained exactly that until a new use case opened up in the last 5 years that average people found highly valuable.

Yes, they were a multi dozen billion dollar gaming company before, not a multi trillion dollar AI one today. They were hardly swimming in poverty on the backs of gamers were they.

>Nvidia did not become a trillion dollar company on the back of PC gamer sales.

The video gaming industry is one of the most lucrative ones to date, bringing more money yearly than movies and music combined according to PWC.

Apple not taking active part in that would be stupid.

> what Apple and Meta are banking on for AR vs. VR.

For what? That killer AR/VR app we've been waiting for for the past 5-7 years to show up any day now?

The lackluster sales of headsets of any kind, especially Apple's overpriced ones, proves the average joe doesn't want headsets strapped to their faces all day. They'd much rather spend the day staring at their phones but that market is already saturated and stagnant when the current iPhone looks and does the same things as the iPhone from 4 years ago and the EU is gonna crack you walled garden.

AR could have a future once it takes the shape of a sleek pair of raybans like in Iron Man, not a 1kg headset strapped to your face with a clunky corded power brick in your pocket. But considering recent semiconductor and battery tech progress, we're very very far away from that future becoming a reality.

[PaulHoule]

Immersive experiences work. I am playing Demeter on the MQ3 which is an AR game where you control a platforming character in a floating island that materializes in your room. It is fun but not anything you couldn’t experience in full VR in a game like Angry Birds VR which you can’t play on AVP because… The whole look and pinch thing goes only so far. It is great for a demo but it means the apps won’t be there other than tablet apps that hang in the air.

I am still puzzled as to how to implement navigation in WebXR for the AVP.

If you had a true optical passthrough AR headset that is one thing but it is absurd for a $3500 device which is hardware capable of immersive apps to be kneecapped by software and the control scheme.

[comfysocks]

In my opinion, the reason why companies like apple and meta prioritize ar over vr is because they see ar as the next disruptive technology, while vr is niche limited to games and entertainment. They want AR to be integrated into daily life with widespread adoption. Similar to how people who never owned a desktop computer would own an iPhone.

[Rinzler89]

Huh? Meta has never really prioritized AR in any of their devices. It was always in afterthought.

[theshackleford]

It’s been clearly prioritised with the Q3. Perhaps as a last second pivot, but the intention is clear, especially given the demo app shipped with it. I expect to see an even bigger turn towards it with the next release.

[PaulHoule]

Nah, it is going to make them always a bridesmaid instead of a bride.

Meta is able to offer immersive experiences where a much larger world is mapped into your virtual space and you can move around and grab things and use tools through controllers. Apple is offering hardly anything in comparison except for a $3500 replacement for a $350 TV. Or, “boy I just flew in from an AR experience for 15 minutes and boy are my arms tired” or “I am in terror at looking at anything because it might trigger an irreversible action”.

[threeseed]

Apple supports third party controllers they just don’t provide any.

Which is the ideal balance since they are an inconvenience if you have a keyboard/mouse in front of you and are using the Vision Pro as a replacement for multiple monitors. After all not everyone is using it for gaming or entertainment.

[PaulHoule]

With the MQ3 I sometimes use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and put down the controllers. Works fine.

That said, every "floating windows" application for the MQ3 I've seen has a terrible awkward interface for placing windows, everybody from Karl Guttag on down have noticed this and suggested many mechanisms that might be better (say point a beam somewhere to put the center of the screen somewhere, use the thumbstick to rotate and scale) but we are still stuck with bad UIs. This is one area where AVP has really done better.

[93po]

I can't use my apple brand magic mouse to navigate instead of waving my arms around, so I'm not sure how much controller support one can honestly say there is

[wilsonnb3]

They support Xbox and PlayStation controllers, which are fine for 2d gaming in a floating window, but they don’t support VR controllers like the Quest or PSVR

[threeseed]

Apple doesn’t support those specific controllers.

But i’ve not seen anything preventing third parties from supporting their own controllers in games over Bluetooth.

[archagon]

A gamepad is not sufficient for immersive VR gaming.