[parl_match]

"Ah yes, how hard could it be?", he confidently asks.

> What am I missing?

So much.

> This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets

The article is describing "room scale positioning". The first consumer available headset to offer this was released in 2016.

It may feel like it's been around forever if you're not familiar with the space except as a consoomer, but exploring a 3d space at room scale has only recently come into the realm of possibility for consumer grade headsets. For much of the 80s and 90s (and 00s), it was head tracking only. Real time positioning and moving around required positioning hardware that was a magnitude more expensive - and pretty much always had very specific space limitations. Sure, it existed to some degree, but it was such inexpensive addition that using an expensive and complicated treadmill was often considered the economical choice.

In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive. Previously, they all had specific limitations like a 4 x 4 foot area or were massive tech demos that existed in a quantity of one in a university basement somewhere, running a very tailored demo, and they certainly weren't feasible in the 90s.

> Make a 3D world, walk through it.

First of all, how do you map the room? Do you set up lighthouses? Low latency positioning? To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it. Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible. Previous generations didn't have it, and it's almost a guaranteed requirement for any large scale deployment of VR - for example, exploring multiple rooms.

Second, how do you create the "3d world"? It may seem simple, but VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation, and that means that any geometry and graphics you inert of the world needs to be within the compute budget of the headset solution. The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.

Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem. Again, it may feel like we've had the technology, but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages, and the compute power to process all of that in anything approaching a consumer solution. To do what AVP is doing with the USDZ files, composing them into the real world, and even applying lighting information, previously would have required a fleet of large and expensive machines. And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.

[bigyabai]

> Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible.

And the Vision Pro was far from the first to implement it. The most popular headsets in the world all use the tech, now. It's not 2016 anymore.

> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly [...] really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.

Is this a parody? The chip is a laptop-grade APU tethered to a power bank, and you're bragging about pixel-shading a <1000 tri mesh? Your mind will be blown when you discover what the Nintendo Switch can do with 10w.

[KaiserPro]

Sorry but we did all that for previs for $big_space_movie. On a shoestring budget in 2011.

> In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive.

Yeah there was, you mounted some markers on your headset and attached the mocap camera on marker set.

Obviously as a consumer you needed to either use vive or oculus. (and wait for them to come out, but there were other HMDs around. but they were shit and expensive)

> VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation,

I mean yes, but rasterising two cameras isn't usually double the processing. You deffo need to be running at higher framerate all the time though. Otherwise you feel sick (ask me how I know...)

but real talk here, that demo isn't a graphics stress test. its low poly simple lighting and a skybox with a 2048x2048 texture on it. You could probably do that with a mobile phone arkit/core and those shitty little len boxes that came out in 2015.

> but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages,

I mean thats not really true. LG made a phone with a 120fps camera in it in 2006. (my timing might be hazy, but its deffo been almost twenty years.) Also the other thing is the cameras don't run at that higher resolution, well not the RGB ones anyway. but thats irrelevant here, as they arent used in this sim.

Also, I don't think the slam on the AVP is running at 90hz, I think a lot of the work is done with sensor fusion, as its way cheaper, faster and accurate. (Again I never took apart the AVP, only oculus. but logically it makes sense as higher frame rates means less usable light, slam is also rather expensive to run.)

> And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.

eh? There isn't real world lighting in this. there aren't even any pbfs its just flat textures and ambient lighting. USDZ isn't some magic new world format. its a reasonably nice scene description format.

Transparency is a first class primitive in 3d since for ever. You can even do transparent coloured particles (guess what Gaussian splats are...)

Im not sure what the polygon budget of the AVP is. but the quest 2 topped out at about 1million in unity. I expect the AVP has more, and fancier shader support too.

[Rohansi]

> To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it.

No, while you could do this, the article specifically mentions controller support for moving around. But sure, inside out tracking is not available on all VR headsets.

> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.

No offense but did you look at what they exported from Fusion? Or the video demo of what they built? The only things that are not blocky are the models downloaded from IKEA. Nothing about this is impressive - AVP can render much better. Even the Meta Quest 3 can render much better.

> Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem.

Yes, but this article makes use of none of it because they are not doing AR.