VR helmets are not a new thing. As far as I am concerned, I have played with 20 AR/VR devices before it. Experience tells me that "VR is dead". The track is long and narrow . Even the most powerful Apple Vision Pro is It’s hard to find a space. Half a year ago, I thought that the key to Vision Pro’s success would be whether , after half a year of brainstorming, a developer would create an exclusive and phenomenal Killer App for it. This would create a gap between it and other VR headsets and make it available to everyone. A reason to "must buy it in the future". But after I tried it seriously for more than ten days, I found that I completely misunderstood Apple. In fact, I completely forgot to find the Killer App on Vision Pro. Then I realized that I finally understood. After understanding Apple’s true expectations and vision for Vision Pro, I know why it refuses to admit that it is VR. Why does it sell so expensively ? Why does it abandon the large-scale VR games that compete with other VR headsets ? Why does it refuse to remove the hilarious Eyesight? Why don’t you need Killer App just yet? More importantly, why VR is dead but Vision Pro has a future. Apple didn’t come into contact with the concept of head-mounted displays only in recent years. As early as 1987, Apple released a concept short film that imagined a pair of glasses called Vista Mac II. The Mac computer in the form of glasses can insert such a small floppy disk. However, the future imagined at that time was in 1997. Apple was still too optimistic. It would be 27 years later that Apple actually made a product with a similar concept, Vision Pro, whose scientific name is Space Computer. I think it should be It's called "space screen". To understand it better, you can imagine all the screens in your life now. What Vision Pro does is to delete all these physical screens with one click and replace them with countless large and small ones floating in the space. In other words, the screen is different from other headsets that focus on VR games and 3D demos. Vision Pro actually focuses on 2D. The most common and useful things you do on Vision Pro are actually the 2D applications that can be run on ordinary screens before. Email, Occasionally there are 3D videos and 3D games on web pages, notes, etc. Vision Pro can also be called "Space iPad" because VisionOS is based on iPadOS and is compatible with most iPad apps. The APP window is also very similar to an iPad. It also weighs like an iPad Pro strapped to your face. You might say that in theory Quest 3 can do similar things, and the price is only 1/7! It is true that Vision Pro is not the first mixed reality headset , but it is the first headset that really makes people want to place a screen in the air and is worth using. The "space screen" is its "screen" when taken apart . The "space" is very large and well penetrated. It is very stable and can accommodate multiple screens . The "interaction" with the screen is simple and easy to use. The single-eye resolution of Vision Pro is 3660 The highest viewing angle (FOV) is about 100 degrees, which is almost close to being able to display 4K images. We can roughly calculate that Vision Pro’s horizontal PPD is 36.6, which is much higher than Quest 3’s 20. Although it is not as good as your daily 4K TV and The phone is so sharp , but it’s much better than the VR headsets currently on the market. It’s a big step forward and has a very next-generation feel. The Vision Pro is definitely reflected in the use. It’s the first headset I’ve ever used that can be used to read and write most web pages. The text in the document is clear and readable. Surrounded by multiple windows, you can check information, write a paper or fish, and the screen clarity will not affect your efficiency. You can also imitate a stock trader and look at the stock price in 360 degrees. Your eyes may turn green , but you won’t be able to read. Unclear. The high definition also makes Vision Pro the first (VR) headset suitable for watching movies and videos. At least when the picture fills the field of view, it can get a resolution close to 4K. Moreover, Vision Pro’s default headband has a soft So it’s perfect for lying down and watching a movie. If you cry while watching it, your tears will be completely trapped in the headset and absolutely no one will notice that you’re crying . And one thing I didn’t expect is that I love Vision Pro again. For 3D movies , 3D in movie theaters relies on polarizers to achieve too much light reduction. Vision Pro does not have this problem. The colors are bright and the brightness is super high. It can be said that this is the original experience of 3D movies . Even the speaker effect is very good in such a small size. It can produce such a clear sound for daily use. It is definitely not necessary to use headphones. The positioning of spatial audio is also very good. Apart from the lack of any privacy, I can’t find anything wrong with this speaker. The entire audition performance of Vision Pro is the best among all consumer-grade VR headsets. The best thing is that it finally makes me not miss the real screen so much. Of course, Vision Pro can never replace your 4K TV and 4K monitor. I calculated that under the same equivalent size, the Vision Pro display is actually the same resolution. The screen resolution is close to 1080P , not to mention that the TV also supports HDMI input. In an ideal state, we hope that the Vision Pro screen is superimposed on reality, that is, AR. Unfortunately, it is not 2077. Currently, AR can only display very translucent elements, which is not suitable. Ordinary people use Vision Pro instead of screens on a daily basis. The method they choose is not true AR. The reality it displays is the video taken by the camera, that is, the pictures taken by MR. They need to be processed and spliced before being displayed to the human eye. In a general helmet, it may cause the picture to shake. Delay is the shooting effect of Quest 3. When objects are close, the jitter is very severe , and delay may cause many people to feel "motion sickness". So you can imagine that when I first saw the picture shot by Vision Pro, there was no jitter. I was so shocked when there was no obvious sense of delay. The reason why Apple dared to use this technology is because they have solved this problem and are very confident in the results. The solution is Apple's best chip , in addition to the main processor M2, in Vision Pro. There is another R1 chip that is solely responsible for processing image signals , and its speed is quite fast. The camera receives photons, which are processed by R1 and displayed to the screen in the helmet. The whole process only takes 12ms. It is so fast that there is almost no delay. The same process is done on Quest. It should be close to 40 ms . However, of course, the image quality is limited by the size of the camera. The color, noise, and dynamic range are not as good as those of the main camera of a mobile phone . There will also be relatively large motion blur in dark light. On the surface, the appearance is only close to the human eye , but it needs to be done. Behind this level is a series of difficult problems that are difficult to overcome. It is amazing. This allows Vision Pro's penetration to cross the line of "can be used normally", giving the brain enough time to adapt. It often deceives me. Think this is reality and then how should the "interactive" headset interact? Among the answers given by all manufacturers to this question, I think Vision Pro gives the closest answer to the correct answer. This is also the most important anchor point for Vision Pro to ensure that it can have a place in the future. The way to control Vision Pro is very similar to using telekinesis with sight. Light up an icon and pinch your finger to confirm. Of course, you can also touch and slide in the air like the past touch. The recognition is surprisingly accurate . Especially this floating virtual keyboard is the best I have ever used . Entering Wi-Fi passwords, It’s perfectly adequate for searching keywords. I think it’s 70% as good as an iPad keyboard. Oh, and there’s a problem with the gesture operation . I found that I can’t gesture and speak at the same time, and there will be “accidental touches”. If an Italian uses it, he will definitely die. ” Somebody touched my spaghetti “ The smoothness of interaction and the various details of the user interface are what Apple has been best at since ancient times, and will be what all head display manufacturers will spend the most time catching up with in the future . You really need to experience the poor gesture operation of many headsets. Only by trying it can you truly appreciate the brilliance of the Vision Pro system. On Quest, you either need to hold the controller with both hands, which is inconvenient , or your hands are awkwardly raised in the air. Quest will show you an arrow, shoot out a cursor , and then pinch Use your fingers to confirm , and you have to pinch your fingers to simulate some buttons on the original handle. It is very inaccurate , very tired , very strong, and does not feel carefully designed. The eyes + hands of Vision Pro are so much better. I simply feel that this is already the case. It is infinitely close to the correct answer for next-generation interaction. Of course, this system is not perfect. The recognition distance drops a lot at night. The biggest limitation is that you have to stare at the thing you want to control until Vision Pro confirms that it is locked, and then you can pinch your finger to confirm that it is What you need to get used to is that some functions can only be triggered by using Siri. Hey Siri Close all apps. Another thing that is very Apple is that its UX (user experience) design is very detailed and very beautiful, except that all windows will remain in reality. When the icon of the Shadow APP is selected by your sight, a 3D layer will float up. The thing that shocked me the most is this. Look at my hands in a very bright room, photographed by the headset. It 's also bright, which is normal , but when I want to enter immersion mode , what about my hands inside the headset ? Darkened! The hands in the headset will also match the virtual light, solving the three problems of "display", "penetration" and "interaction". Vision Pro at least has the foundation of a good "spatial screen". So what's next? If you are considering buying a Vision Pro now , the most likely use that will make you feel that it is worth the money right now is to use Vision Pro and Mac for office work . You will get immediate results without expecting to put on Vision Pro in the future and then open the lid of MacBook . Vision Pro will It recognizes and displays a connect button at the top of its screen. Click your MacBook and it will turn into a giant screen of dozens of inches in front of you . You can place it at will . Note that it is not a mirror of the MacBook's original display , but a re-rendering. The new screen and there is no delay in input at all. PlayStation Portal should really learn this technology. Unfortunately, the highest resolution of this virtual screen is 2560x1440 and the maximum number is 1. If you want to work with multiple windows, you need to open the native APP of Vision Pro and put it next to it . Here comes the magic. You can move the Mac mouse to the left... and move it to the Vision Pro web page. At this time, the keyboard can also be used to input in this app. The whole process is very smooth and you don’t have to think about it . It just all works except for frequent disconnections. it just works the way it ought to Vision Pro. It can be connected not only to MacBook but also to Mac Studio and Mac Mini . Once connected to a desktop computer, you can take the keyboard and run to the side and lie down to work . Although the headset is very heavy, it can be used while lying down. The weight doesn't matter anymore, it's easy to fall asleep and it's very comfortable. In this usage scenario, Vision Pro is not a substitute for other screens, and no other device can replace it. After all, it is a linkage home run within Apple's own ecosystem. The experience is very good on Vision Pro. Among all the uses, the one I am most looking forward to is spatial video , because it is also unique to Vision Pro. It has no other function that other headsets can do , and it is also the function closest to productivity purposes. As expected, recording with Vision Pro did not disappoint me. The space video played on Vision Pro is just like reality. The three-dimensional effect is so good. The moment I saw the rolling thing in the video, I wanted to reach out and touch its head . I couldn’t help but watch the space video , especially if you recorded it yourself. There is a feeling of reliving memories, just like memory fragments reappearing before my eyes. I can imagine that when the subject of the space video leaves or even dies, the viewing experience will have unimaginable energy , just like "Cyberpunk 2077" Of course , if the subject is still alive and well , it is still recommended to interact more in reality. However, the shooting process may not be so elegant. When taking pictures of pets, if you want to compose the picture horizontally, you can only lie on the ground and keep the center of the picture. The cross between living in the present and preserving memories can only be chosen between iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max. Now you can also shoot spatial videos sideways, relying on the main camera and ultra-wide angle to simulate two human eyes . Although the picture quality captured by iPhone is better and The composition is also easier, but the two eyes are too close together, and the 3D effect is far inferior to what I shot with Vision Pro, so I still choose to lie down on the ground , but I feel that the space photos are a bit not special enough. They are much more boring than the videos, and they have the feeling of having time to freeze. It’s more like the three-dimensional cards I used when I was a kid. The hair of the cats photographed with it is all stiff and looks like specimens, which is a bit scary. Considering it’s Apple’s industrial design, I think appearance is also a very important addition. Apple has a unique industrial design philosophy. That is, not only should the product itself look good , but the people who use it should also look good. I've seen too many Vision Pro videos posed outside. Were you worried before ? Who would want to wear a big helmet in public and look at the weird houses ? I didn’t expect Apple to solve this problem in two steps, right! Eyesight and Persona really kill each other. Eyesight is the feature that appears in Apple’s most promotional images, giving people the feeling that you can see through the helmet and meet the wearer’s line of sight. To be honest, the image itself is already very funny . How about knowing that the actual effect in the end is worse? This is probably not the result Apple wants, right ? Do you feel like your eyes have met with mine? And there is Persona Perusona! Persona scans a crude 3D model of one's own face. I use VisionOS 1.1 beta during video calls. The effect of the model has been improved a bit , but I still really want to play NPC in PS3 era games. How can I make others think that this model is you? I'm not optimistic about it anyway. You still have to make a lot of progress. As for other compromises, big and small, the one that cannot be ignored is the weight. Neither of the two headbands that come with Vision Pro can help you move your center of gravity back . The weight of 600g is added to your face and you have a strong forward tilt. The trend puts too much pressure on the cervical spine. This flaw is the Achilles heel of Vision Pro. It is difficult for most people to use it for more than 2 hours without neck support. Fortunately, the battery life is not long. The next generation of Vision Pro should consider giving up. Glass and aluminum alloys can probably be reduced to 300g. Of course, I can understand Apple’s reason for doing this is to look cool enough , but is it really worth it? It's definitely worth it for Apple, but it's really embarrassing for people who really want to use it. There are other small compromises , such as the need for an external battery , and the way to view the outside world is through a camera , which is far from the level of the human eye, such as calculations. In fact, the M2 chip is not capable of calculating spatial positioning while running APPs . For example, the viewing angle of the optical Vision Pro is not as good as that of the Quest 3, which is 1/7 the price. Another example is the current Vision Pro. It can be said that there is almost no third-party software that supports YouTube. No , Spotify is not available, Netflix is not available, even these major companies have responded indifferently, and there is no multi-language. It can only display English and can only input English. There is no USB interface . If you forget your password, you can only ask the Apple store to help unlock it, etc., etc. ! And the biggest compromise in price is $3,500. The world may not be ready for it. Even though the Vision Pro is an engineering marvel in many aspects , it is actually difficult for ordinary people to cross the purchase chasm of the high price and bear more than 600 grams. So why does Apple now open such a developer kit that is not very consumer-oriented to the public for purchase? I can only think of a reason that is not to sell products or promote but to promote the "concept" Vision Pro. The goal should be to make you "want" to own it. As long as enough people have the idea of "wanting" it , it proves the feasibility of this concept. There are indeed many people who want to wear a computer on their head. Look at Vision like this The unusual and incomprehensible ways of Pro can be explained. For example, it completely avoids immersive large-scale VR games. It does not support any VR controllers at all. For example, even if it is laughed to death , it must add an external screen that can display the eyes and the screen. This is all to completely separate from previous VR gaming headsets and prevent you from associating Vision Pro with other products. The reason why we thought Vision Pro needed the Killer App before was because we thought of it as a professional tool or a content-driven game console. Of course , in order to sell itself, it will need to prove itself. In fact, it is just called Pro, the price is very Pro, and the functions are not at all. The future development path of the Pro Vision "series" is not like a game console waiting for the exclusive Killer APP to save everything . The hardware must be as usable as a mobile phone so that people can do common daily tasks on it, such as watching videos, checking social networks, shopping online, and ordering takeout. Before that, what Vision Pro has to do is to make everyone feel like wearing a headset. It should be a cool thing for everyone to get used to the existence of the head-mounted display and plant the seeds of the idea of "I want XXXX too". Of course, this does not mean that Apple has completely given up on VR and MR games. There are now many small games with good experiences. The game can be played once a wider range of consumers accept the concept of "head-mounted displays" as the future. Large-scale VR games will definitely come back. Now, some people are already thinking of ways to make Vision Pro support Steam VR streaming , and Apple is not Will you give up the 30% commission from future VR krypton gold games , right ? Now we can go back to the original question about "the future". I think this future is that most of us will wear different forms and different brands. AR/VR headsets are headsets that will move from toys for early adopters to the lives of the masses. This is also the strongest signal sent by Apple’s launch of Vision Pro. In order to further verify this, we need to look at all the current candidates for computing forms one by one. In addition to Meta and Apple Stud's headsets, there are also Elon Musk's brain-computer chips and the AI brooch projector recently released by Silicon Valley. Don't laugh, people have raised US$240 million in financing. There are also handheld AI assistants and the last possible mobile phone. Which kind of touch glass plate will be folded or rolled up or some other form that will stay with us for more than ten years ? Which do you think is most likely? Among all these possibilities, I think brain-computer chips are too scary and AI voice is not direct enough. Only head-mounted displays, which are a bit sci-fi, and mobile phones, which are the least sci-fi possibilities, are the least sci-fi possibilities. Before the release of Vision Pro, I will still be a little inclined towards this. On the other hand , after seeing the acceptance of Vision Pro after its release, I think the headset is indeed more likely to penetrate into more ordinary people's homes little by little. From this point of view, the entire headset category will actually benefit from Apple's entry. More suppliers will join . Now Apple is considering using microOLED raw materials from BOE or Shiya. The price of raw materials will start to drop. Even if the Vision Pro is very expensive, the Air that will be released in the future may also be very expensive , but cheaper headsets like Meta It can be closer to Apple in terms of experience and price to make up for Apple's gaps. Moreover, after Apple understands the interaction, Meta will definitely be unable to help but copy the work. If this continues, the old story of iOS and Android is likely to repeat itself again. If I were asked to predict the future of the Vision Pro series, I think that in the short term it can replace part of the iPad and part of the computer functions. In the further future, can the head display made by Apple successfully evolve into glasses and then replace them? Let’s wait and see for mobile phones . Just looking at it now, I think people have a natural yearning for a large number of virtual screens in the air. It’s cool, right? Even though there are many inconveniences in using Vision Pro , everyone who uses it feels excited. People can't help but think about this. If we take another look at Vision Pro and think about it, it will be the worst generation of Vision Pro. Then this future is still worth looking forward to.
