A counter point on premium VR headsets. They are teleportation devices.
I've used every popular VR device, but one Vision Pro experience stood out - 'The Haleakala environment'[1]
It was literally like being transported there. I know because I had been in that exact spot a few years before. I have a rich visual memory which served as reference, and no exaggeration, it felt like was there. I was immediately in tears. It was profound.
The Vision pro's lack of a killer app because development is unintuitive, userbase is small, the UX is alien and the hardware costs of constructing these experience is still rather high. Give it a few years. The hardware is already there. This isn't a solution in search of a problem. This is PalmOS, a solution that is too early to the market.
I have family with disabilities. Being able to teleport my loved ones to places they could never go themselves is worth the $3000. If I could record my most profound memories with 'VR recorder', I would. My parent missed my graduation because of being continents away. You think they wouldn't want to be teleported to it ? Wedding photographers cost $4000+, so we can relive those memories through shoddy snapshots. Why not be teleported back to the most beautiful day ?
Don't knock it till you try it.
I want to believe you but until the price range becomes below $1000 or so there’s virtually no market. It’s a toy. People don’t need a teleportation device. It’s fun to play with, like a toy. It doesn’t really solve enough of a “real” problem to justify the current cost. It’s also too expensive to be given as a holiday or birthday gift by most family members.
I believe the “just give it a few years thing” but only if it has a footnote saying that “few” could mean 10 or 15. I don’t think anyone really knows.
Exactly this, for now the minimal use cases for these kinds of high-end VR headsets leave them firmly in the "gimmick" category. I'm pretty sure some mass-market use case will be found for them, maybe even outside of gaming, but the fact that some pretty smart people haven't found this one already is a teensey-tiny bit worrying too.
By what the OP describes, these devices could become a limited but perhaps “profound” replacement for flying thousands of kms to have a holiday.
Or to have “power holidays” similar to a Power Nap, where you use an VR/AR device to relive a holiday for 5/10 mins.
Or to have “preview holidays” to experience a destination before booking a flight there.
If travel agents still existed, then they would be a perfect market for these VR devices but travel agents have long gone the way of the dinosaurs.
That all sounds very depressing to me if I’m being honest.
So are the regular news concerning the destruction of the environment and our human caused climate change.
If a VR set can reduce travel, then that might be something positive for the environment.
I think there’s lower hanging fruit for reducing carbon emissions than swapping the annual family vacation for a bunch of VR headsets.
By all means if you’re willing to make that sacrifice be my guest, but I can’t imagine experiencing Venice through a headset.
I believe the OP was more thinking of all those corporate flights for a one hour talk. But you don't need VR for that. They could hold them over sms if they could read and write.
Real deals aren't made over a zoom call. They just aren't. That's why they still fly there even though they are well aware of how to use zoom.
they fly there and do the deal over email from the hotel.
Taking a bike (when possible) instead of a car, for example. I think many things that we can do fail because of our collective convenience: why take public transport when I can have my private space in a car?
There might be low hanging fruits, but there is human convenience to take into account. Making potential low hanging fruit become had to implement.
Most certainly it wouldn't be the same however experiencing a Venice during the Renaissance period using a VR device? That would be better than nothing and would also equate to a "type of" holiday (if done well). Its certainly not something that I can do physically.
I’m 100% down the idea that we have individual responsibility to the environment and must make some personal sacrifice. Paper grocery bags are much less convenient than plastic but I’m in support of legislation to ban plastic bags even if all the cost and inconvenience is passed on to the customer. Biking to work is a great choice if you live in range.
Neither of these deprive you of truly transformative experiences like travel. Air travel will never be a green endeavor. It will always be something that we’ll have to compensate for elsewhere in pursuit of being carbon neutral.
I’m not willing to tell someone that they should not fly across the country to see their friend in order to be an environmentally responsible citizen. Not while we still burn coal and gas to keep the lights on.
That's not a holiday. That's a game.
Unless perhaps you're severely disabled, holidays are so much more than just your eyes and ears.
Not just all of your five senses, and your ability to interact, but the social and human side as well, and your ability to interact physically with it all.
People said the same kind of things about TV - and while, on the one hand, they perhaps underestimated the profound effects of TV on society, nobody would confuse it with telepresence.
I'm not sure what VR offers here that web panoramas, detailed photos and customer reviews don't.. there's a marginal advantage there perhaps but it feels like a $250-300 peripheral rather than a $kk investment.
I guess the affect of the Internet would have been discounted at the times of books and libraries.
You might also be underestimating the brains ability to conjure a completely new reality. Our imagination can transport us anywhere - hence adventure, travel and crime books. VR/AR experience augmented by our own imagination, hence to discount the affect of VR is also discounting the ability of our imagination.
Of course holidays are much more but why do so many people prefer chatting online than chatting personally with other people? Why are online dating apps and food delivery so popular? I don't know but it definitely does not have something to do with people wanting to go out and interact with random people.
Not an argument. Besides, like 10-15 years in to WWW companies like amazon, google, facebook, youtube were there. 12 years after oculus rift VR is still a small niche.
No, it is not discounting the ability of our imagination. It is more correct to say that you are discounting the ability of our imagination by suggesting that adventure, travel and crime books aren't all we need to immerse ourselves. By going this path of argumentation (if we can call it an argument) you are basically saying that VR is for those, well, lacking in imagination
Do they? I don't think they do. Chatting with someone they don't know? Maybe. Doing a video call with a friend/partner? No.
You are conflating meeting (just meeting, once people meet they don't maintain their relationship on the app) someone new and not a social activity with, well, socializing with people that you want to socialize with.
You do understand that outsides is not filled only with random people?
What argument are you trying to make for VR? What use case, that would make VR "huge", are you suggesting?
Does anyone know the current state of smell-o-vision technologies?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29225777
DonHopkins on Nov 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]
The iSmell developers were hoping to make money the same way, by selling big smell combination pack cartridges that you have to entirely replace after any one of the smells ran out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell
This Wired Magazine article is a classic Marc Canter interview. I'm surprised they could smell the output of the iSmell USB device over the pungent bouquet from all the joints he was smoking:
You've Got Smell!
https://www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/
The failed quest to bring smells to the internet (thehustle.co)
https://thehustle.co/digiscents-ismell-fail
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476460
DigiScent had a booth at the 1999 Game Developers Conference, with scantily dressed young women in skunk costumes.
I told them about a game called "The Sims" I had been working on for a long time, and was hoping to finish and release some time soon.
They unsuccessfully tried to convince me to make The Sims support the iSmell, and even gave me a copy of the SDK documentation, because they thought it would enrich the player's experience of all those sweaty unwashed sims, blue puddles of piss on the floor, stopped up toilets in the bathroom, and plates of rotting food with flies buzzing around on the dining room table.
Exactly. The sun on your skin, the breeze in your hair, sand in your toes, clean saltwater air ... good luck.
sounds like we might enjoy a wind machine and a heat lamp
how didnt porn run this over? honestly porn did advances the internet because it, and gaming, was THE usecase for most people. youtube etc wasnt there at the time it was porn and games. And porn and games should be the reason why VR shall sell
when porn advanced the internet did it cost 2000 dollars to get entry to the porn? I don't remember that. I think when this advancing happened it was pretty cheap, in some ways cheaper than buying a bunch of magazines.
Porn advanced the internet because it was a cheaper delivery mechanism for a cheap commodity, games expanded the internet because it was a technologically innovative platform for high end products.
PCs costs much around year 2000. and porn and email and messenger where the bonus to games. its was like “hey look counter strikes etc .. nice games” “hmm not sure” “ there is also porn” “bought”
I bought PCs around year 1998, and I don't remember porn being in the selling point, furthermore everyone I knew in 2000 had PCs because they had to use office. PCs had already infiltrated the market at the point the internet became a going concern.
In other words the internet was relatively cheap for people.
Inflation calculator says Vision Pro price today is $1730 in 1995 dollars.
That is in the range of what a pc cost back then, I think? Like middle to high end but not out of the ballpark.
Evercrack, I knew a number of people who bought 3000 dollar computers in the mid nineties to play Everquest.
I think porn prefers open tooling so that it is less likely to be banned. Going inside Apple's walled garden is probably more risky in that regard and also there's only a small consumer base.
There are plenty of VR apps in this category available for PC-connected headsets. You can find tons of them on Steam or Patreon.
Small consumer base for porn or for the current $3000 apple headset?
The immersion is really good.
Apple would never allow it in their ecosystem, but OnlyFans + immersive VR could sell very well.
yeah i think apples no porn policy is ruining their vr headset and the future of vr ;). not that i am into vr porn. i only think the market for that should be huge
TBH I feel like if I am into VR porn then I am definitely addicted and I'd need help from professional. Usually porn is like a quick dopamine hit, or a quick release for a biological need. For VR, you'd beed to be really really into porn, to spend all the setup time AND then still be in the mood ...
yes true. but isnt using addicted people for the own benefit the whole premise of most social media and alike. apple is maybe not into social media but I cant imagine zuckerberg not wetting his pants from joy if he thinks about million more people crippled to his attention gathering devices.
Apple Pro has an advantage of having no controllers to get in the way of holding your joystick.
I am waiting for the 2P version which replace your partner’s image with somebody else’s.
Meta quest does the same thing…
Porn can't make the big ticket sales needed to prop up VR. It's hard enough to get a payment processor because of how often charges get disputed and fears about touching the money for illegal and abusive material.
You can't be discreet about VR porning because it leaves you oblivious to your surroundings. You gotta plan ahead and really commit to the time and place.
Aren't all of them propped up by being tethered to some FAANG? I highly doubt they are interested in hiring the best and brightest to build VR porn devices.
I also suspect that the "kick" from porn is a voyeuristic one; i.e. most consumers would rather watch it than be in it.
Where can you vacation for $1000?
The fidelity of a real local $1000 experience vs a fake one is a lot different even if you can’t travel as far.
That doesn’t really answer the question. What real local experience can you have for $1000 that isn’t in your back yard?
OK, if you live in (Western) Europe, you can go, say, from Netherlands or Sweden to fabulous places like Barcelona or Rome or Istanbul, all very different, picturesque, and not hugely expensive. A flight, if you time it well, could cost less than €100, or even €60..
we in europe are lucky. i got a flight for 20€ to portugal and was staying there for a week for around 50€ a day. thats not even 500 bucks. this vr headset would be 5-8 weeks of holiday worth
I got curious and looked. I'm from Sweden and for $1000 I could get to Cabo Verde, Madeira and or course most parts of Europe (like Italy, Greece, France). That is for flight and hotel. You need to eat as well of course, but that you need to do at home as well.
I wouldn't call Africa my back yard.
I took a 4 day holiday to Athens from the UK for <$200 all-in (including flights and accomodation)
I went a week a Norway from Germany, everything included for 4 people was less than 1k
A lot of "meanwhile in Europe" replies here, but even within the United States there are great places you can fly to pretty cheap. Or make a road trip out of it.
Yeah, you've gotta budget it, but it's not impossible to get somewhere, have a great time, and get back for under $1000.
So many options in Europe if you don't mind discomfort. From the UK, I'd maybe take a cheap flight to Poland or even the long distance bus. Once there, YHA hostels, camping etc.
Another option is fly to Greece and island hop on the ferries. Or Portugal and northern Spain. Buses are the cheapest way to get around there and fairly flexible although not quick. Sometimes you can hire a car for a week for $250, or some places hire mopeds for way less.
Especially when that hallmark moment is left behind by Tim Cook deciding the format or platform legacy and no longer supported.
From Europe, a 1 week package holiday in Thailand with flight+resort hotel included is $1000.
Link?
I really doubt this is true, I'm European and check this kind of stuff often.
https://www.pepper.pl/share-deal-from-app/881457
$700 - flight + hotel for a week
Many many places of the world, if you are ok with not having all the comforts and more.
Usually the most expensive thing is the flight, so you've got to time that well. Go to places for more than 2 weeks and in the lowest season and you can make that $1000 last a while.
The limitations are generally on the traveller's side.
Of course, if you're looking for a full paid cruise, with kids and must have perfect everything in the "best" season then you pay like the rest.
Spend a week camping at a state park nearby with the family. About $40 in transportation costs round trip for the whole family. Maybe $200 in food/snacks/other consumables. $70 for the yearly parks pass+ $15/night for campsite = $175. If I don't already have camping supplies, I can get decently kitted out for the family for this kind of camping for like $400. It'll last me a bunch of trips but let's assume you've got nothing. So that's like $815 for the first time, $415 every other time.
There are dozens of options for me and I don’t even have to leave the state.
I mean, once for one place, if you are able bodied and have a week of vacation.
I feel like there's a difference...
At this point is basically quantity vs quality.
And plus, visiting again some places could lead to ruin the previous good memory.
That's the reason to take photos, is not like someone would argue that for them..
It would be a smart, albeit self serving political move for VR headset makers to be advocating for carbon pricing to make their offerings more competitive with that of the travel industry.
I think it will have a market at $2000.
MacBook Pros are 50% of Mac sales and they start at $2000.
What % of those sales are companies buying them for their employees? It's almost a B2B market. Whereas the Vision Pro is overwhelmingly B2C, at least it will be with the current state of the technology. Hence very different pricing dynamics.
I didn’t say it will sell as much as MacBook Pros as soon as it hits $2000.
I’m saying there will be a market.
They need to get the weight and price down substantially.
Perhaps, but how is the price or popularity of MacBook pros particularly related to that?
That a fairly large market exists for $2000+ Apple device.
You can use them (MBPs) to actually make money. AVPs mostly make money to 2-bit YouTube influencers making videos about it…
Well, a $5000 80” TV doesn’t make you money either.
I think the Vision Pro needs to be as comfortable and convenient to use as a TV, or it needs to be cheaper. And/or it needs a new killer app.
It's sitting in a weird place right now where it's too expensive for what you get, but it's fairly easy to imagine how it could improve to become something much more attractive/popular.
MBP returns you the investment pretty soon
MBPs are overwhelmingly bought by businesses for their employees.
A 386 PC cost $3000+ after the 486 was released. Sometimes I think our expectations for dirt cheap supercomputers are out of whack.
The context matters a lot. Early PCs were released at a time when there wasn’t really anything else like these products. That early pricing reflected the creation of a brand new category.
The Vision Pro is a remarkable piece of tech, but isn’t required to achieve many of the use cases it supports, and people are primarily paying for the immersive experience.
Given that, spending $3K on immersion in a market where a few hundred dollars will buy you most of the non-immersion capabilities is quite different than spending $3K on an early PC.
Around the time of the 386, weren’t there a bunch of lesser options that did a bunch of similar use cases well? I’m thinking Commodores, Amigas, even a NES.
There was a huge delta between what these systems could do.
e.g. the Commodore 64 was an 8-bit 1 MHz processor vs. the 386's 32-bit 12-40MHz, could not run a full operating system, had 64 KB RAM vs. 1MB or more on the 386, etc.
In terms of raw computing capability, the 386 was a significant advance over those cheaper systems and represented capabilities that just weren't yet on the market, and those capabilities unlocked entire worlds of possible use cases and unlocked general purpose computing.
The Amiga 1000 is closer to the 386 in terms of capability, but was ~$1,600 (with a monitor) and was still significantly slower, i.e. if your use case benefited from raw processing power, there was a clear value proposition for the 386.
I'd still put this in a very different category than what is effectively an iPad with + VR/AR interface.
This isn't a "supercomputer". It's not even a computer. It's a locked-down device, with very few tailored apps and content (for now anyway).
Yeah, but that's because it's Apple. If the same hardware was made by pretty much anyone else, I'd probably be interested. It's like the iPad Pro. It could probably replace my laptop if it could run real Linux.
If the community had free reign to do whatever with the hardware, it would be much more than a toy. Someone would port SimulaVR (or a different window manager) and it would feel like a real computing device.
I can imagine a world where I travel with one of those headsets and a wireless keyboard. Then I can setup shop anywhere and do development work in a cloud environment. The headset just being a dumb terminal to render the terminal or whatever.
It really feels like we are only a few years away from that being reality. I really want the apple headset to succeed, so that other companies invest in open/hackable hardware.
This argument seems valid to anyone that hasn't browsed "The Sharper Image" catalog in the back of an airline seat, or even the "high end" showroom at a Best Buy.
There's been a huge market for >70" TVs since mid 2010s, costing $3,500 - $10,000 US for much of that timeframe. Today you'd have to compare to 100" class: https://www.amazon.com/100-inch-tv/s?k=100+inch+tv&s=price-d...
All your objections would certainly apply. It's a toy. People don't need it. It's fun, but doesn't solve a "real" problem. It's too expensive to be given as a gift.
AVP offers a >240" screen, and fully immersive 3D. It needs very little to make movie watching a shared experience in the same room, or with friends far away.
Priced solely against a TV, people have proven happy to pay for entertainment toys. If the initial OOTB release had supported "seeing" someone watching the same content "with" you in Disney's theater or the VR spaces, this buying segment would have taken more interest.
Well you need something entertaining to do with it. Right now the use cases seem to be just looking at pictures and watching videos alone. Or extending your computer monitor. There isn't even that much 3D content. Nobody really seems to care about movies and shows being in 3D. It's basically a $3000 portable monitor. Not entertaining.
It actively gets in the way of cuddling in person, and doesn't help when away. Meanwhile I've had great experiences watching things together on a phone screen. If away, bluntly, with good friends a laptop screen and a shared stream via Jellyfin works _amazing_.
Like c'mon. The size of the screen is a fetish for people who think it's the screens fault that their hangout isn't emotionally impactful.
If Apple could make the UX of the physical device a bit better and had a larger library of places to explore I would absolutely give it to my grandma. She’s mostly stuck in a her flat alone all day. Walking is hard. She FaceTimes and calls people, but going to see beauty is mostly something she doesn’t get to experience anymore. If she could watch a sunrise in Hawaii instead of worrying about political news I think her day to day would be much better and I would be happy to spend the money to give her that QoL improvement.
GoPro Fusion devices to record walking videos and serve in Vision Pro would be amazing for location bound people
I pretty much feel like the vision pro is overkill for the tasks it wants to do.
For a newbie a meta quest 3 is more than enough.
Index or meta quest pro? That's the shit.
But i liked the battery begin a separate thing from the headset himself, i think that's good user design.
The thing is that I don’t really see the Vision Pro as Palm OS. Palm OS was out for years and years and was really successful, all things considered.
Sure, it wasn’t as ubiquitous as iOS or Android now, but it obviously filled a niche for a large enough number of people that it stuck around and pioneered that market. I had a Kyocera 6035 Palm “smartphone” over half a decade before the iPhone came out, and the Handspring Treos were also awfully popular among early adopters.
That credit here goes squarely to Oculus/Meta, and the Quest in specific.
Vision Pro, at best, is a Newton, stuffed with tech cool enough to be Really Neat, but with either too much tradeoff or that doesn’t go far enough to be a sea change in usability. There’s a little bit of Pippin in there too, with Apple not quite understanding how much games and game like activities drive VR adoption and how best to leverage that. Ultimately, the Vision Pro is a tech demo for a much better device and ecosystem in the future.
I think the one thing the VP has going for it over a Newton is timing. For once, later is better. Newton did all their stuff way early—then Palm came out with a fraction of it and turned out to be Good Enough so everyone forgot the Newton.
In this case, we already have Quest out as the Good Enough device, which makes it the right time to start discussing what the evolution would be. In that sense, I think the Vision Pro is very interesting.
My hope is that the Vision Pro is like the Apple Watch. It launched without a clear idea of why people would buy it--originally Apple tried to sell their bland aluminum box as a fashion accessory--and it was only after multiple iterations that they found out health and fitness was the main appeal and focused on it. If they pay attention to how people do use VR headsets, maybe they can do that again.
Yeah, that’s another good comparison.
The Palm equivalent in that comparison would be Fitbit and possibly Pebble. Apple waited until there was a proven market in wearables, then figured out how to combine that market with the strengths of their existing ecosystem to improve upon value. Then they propped up the model line with $$$ until they actually became good enough for people to buy.
I’m relatively optimistic they can do that here too, but that device needs to have a model that does everything it does today (well, maybe not the creepy visor eyes) and more for less than $1000 and at about 2/3 the weight max, before I think AW-like adoption will possibly happen.
They have a long history of ridding the cost curve down, but it’s not that fast. The 2010 iPad was 720$ adjusted for inflation, the current iPad better in basically every way starts at 350$. Original 2007 iPhone would be 908$ inflation adjusted while the iPhone SE is 429$.
My guess is it’s either discontinued or the 2040 Vision (non pro) is going to be strictly better in basically every way but still more than 1000$ inflation adjusted. But honestly if it’s 1/3 the weight and essentially strictly better in every way that could be quite compelling. There’s definitely a point where headsets are going to be comfortable enough you can forget they’re there, and ~2k for something you’re using regularly for 4+ years isn’t crazy money.
Pricing the se and base model ipad is a bit disingenuous. You look at the flagships and they kept up with inflation adjusted pricing. Iphone and ipad 1 were flagships. Not old hardware released for a song.
I wouldn’t call either of them a flagship product, just the product. They added new titles for those premium products. At release it was called an “iPad” and in 2024 they still call the base model an “iPad” while also having an “iPad Air” and “iPad Pro.”
It makes sense as a strategy, a mid 90’s 2,000$ desktop is ~5,000$ today inflation adjusted. Few people spend that on a desktop today the market just shifts and you need to keep up. Meanwhile there’s a tiny percentage of people who just don’t care that much about money so you want something to milk such people for all they are willing to spend.
I think the ergonomics is an underappreciated aspect of adoption and regular usage.
I would really like to think so, but I am not at all confident that this is will happen.
The cost of the device is way off. Apple watch is still vaguely in line with the prices of other nice ish watches. $400 or so. Expensive but not otherworldly so. Vision pro is so expensive you rule out the middle class. Its price point was conceived by people who haven’t left northern california for some time.
The original Apple Watch was a luxury item too—remember the high-end fashion branding?
But it was a luxury item you would a) use all the time b) show off in your daily life.
That's why Rolex watches or Prada bags sell.
The vision pro is more like buying a painting, it's way more niche.
For that matter, I don't think any other Apple products are so out of line with competitor's prices. Airpods, iPhones, and iPad are also about the same as Samsung/Google stuff. MacBooks are marked up, but still in range of Wintel machines. Same for their workstations. Then the Vision Pro rolls out at 600% more than the competition, and doesn't sell. Pitching it as a work machine was shooting themselves in the foot, too: a $3000 MacBook is so much more capable than a Vision Pro it's absurd. The VP is using the base processor from MacBook Airs two generations ago. I mean, come on.
As a sibling notes, we already had had fitbit for 6 years by the time Apple came out with the Watch. They tried to make it about more than fitness and eventually conceded that that wasn't happening and focused on the market that existed before their release.
So if this plays out this same way then in a few years Apple will finally concede that VR is for video games and finally start focusing on the gamer market.
Wristwatch fitness trackers had already established this as baseline market fit long before Apple. The benefit of the Apple Watch for me is to not have to carry a phone in my pocket and still be able to do smartphone things like message, pay for things, or even make calls if I need to. Then the pandemic needed you to scan QR codes to do contract calls, and then normalized QR codes for restaurant orders, so I'm back to the phone and my watch gathers dust.
Exploration seems like an interesting use case. Probably more than gaming or wearable monitors in spite of the bubble here.
I'm still a bit meh on the Apple Watch in spite of buying an early one and then an Ultra that I got a good deal on. I don't care much about the quantified health thing and the battery life is still an issue even with the Ultra. Like for hiking though.
The stumbling block here seems likely to be Apple's fundamental dislike of, and disconnect with, all things gaming.
It's an aesthetic and cultural divide. Like premium German car brands vs ricers, and I don't need to tell you which is which.
Is just too pricey and a bit cumbersome for masses, the tech is good and we could all use it even just for some experiences that can only be done in VR
Too pricey in a time where many fear a recession. So it's an even worse launch to market than usual.
People have been fearing a recession for the last 16 years.
Sure, but it didn't stop them during the "great resignation" from moving around. Actions speak louder than words.
Statistically speaking, people are a lot more hesitant to switch jobs right now. That definitely points to legitimate fears (regardless of the objective economic outlook).
Forget recession fears. Most people don’t have $3500 lying around flat out.
Their decision to use glass for the housing is stupifying. It's on your head and swinging around, it should be absolutely as light as possible.
Agreed. I liked the demo at Apple Store except that it was freaking heavy. That was by far, the biggest deal breaker for me.
If they make it weigh half as much, I would buy one.
Yes, it’s the games stupid.
There is one group of people who are willing to spend ludicrous amounts of money for this product, and that’s gamers.
Unfortunately Apple does not and has never understood games as art. They only care about casual games that bring in the $$.
Apple also has beefs with Khronos, NVIDIA, and Epic.
I had thought that when VP came out, Apple would make amends with the gaming industry particularly Epic because they really need Epic’s on their side for VP to succeed. Who is going to build games for this thing in the best engine if Apple can ban Epic’s developer account at any time?
Nope. App Store revenue comes first. It’s just the same as the iPad Pro. Great hardware squandered because of App Store rent seeking.
Nvidia demanded Apple to allow its video driver to be able to phone home just like it does in the windows toy OS(running in ring 0 no less). Epic/Tencent fortnight abuses the DNS protocol probably to bypass wirewalls. Both can be observed via wireshark, which I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Personally I’m glad Apple told both of them to go pound sand.
Hopefully Asahi Linux can be run on the thing, so it can be useful outside of Apple's walled garden too. :)
I think the teleportation angle is even more compelling from the point of view of enabling virtual co-presence. With photo-realistic avatars as Apple and Meta have both demonstrated are fully possible, we'll soon be in a situation where you can click a button and be fully present with anybody anywhere, any time. This is as close to true physical teleportation that humanity will ever get, and I expect that once it's mature and reliable and available at accessible price points, the tangible benefits will make this tech take off in a huge way.
We can’t even get people to routinely turn a webcam on at most companies existing meetings. Even internally at Meta and Apple, staff aren’t exactly falling over themselves to take meetings in headsets right now.
The idea people will be strapping computers to their faces for meetings will “take off in a huge way” any time soon is extremely far fetched for me.
It depends on what you mean by "soon". For sure, it's not happening next year. But within 5 years I think the hardware will get to a point where it's possible, and then within 10 it will be compelling.
The "strapping computers to their faces" meme is just stupid hyperbole. It's no more insightful than declaring that nobody wants to stuff a computer into their pocket - when 99% of people now carry smart phones (and mostly, large ones - as large as they can possibly fit).
Depends on how you define 'computer': content creation or content consumption?
Because everyone with a 'computer' in their pocket has nothing more than 'interactive television' in their pocket.
They literally do not do computing on it in any meaningful way.[1]
[1] Maybe they use the calculator. But that's about it.
You are missing the forest for the trees here; what we call the device we strap to our face is neither here nor there and of no relevance to my earlier argument.
The issue is a great many people just won’t want to sit wearing anything at all on their face in a meeting - especially those who may have put effort into appearance of their hair and makeup etc etc as just one of many examples.
It’s also not a “meme”, or “hyperbole”. That is literally what you have to do today and in near term with an AVP or meta Quest etc- strap a heat generating, heavy, sometimes fan cooled (AVP) computer across your face.
The thing is the smartphone took off as soon as it hit the market because its use cases were just that compelling. Vr is nothing new. What are we 10 years into this market with barely any adoption or useful applications beyond a gaming stint until you hit your nausea limit? Says it all I think. Its biggest use case so far is using it to blow wind into the sails of your stock ticker for a few quarters.
That depends on how exactly you define "smartphone". I might still have an old Nokia brick with a little screen and a web browser lying around somewhere.
I have no desire to strap a computer on my face, no matter how lightweight an unobtrusive it gets.
There is a fundamental disconnect in motivation here.
Maybe the equivalence was lost: in 1990s, a computer in your pocket would bring about visions of a tower PC and maybe a backpack strap, and then you could only walk as far as the power cord.
When VR/AR makes it, it won't be strapping what I imagine you are thinking to your face. I imagine glasses or maybe people will even entertain a visor or shield
Compelling to who? Might be to the managers who get some twisted satisfaction from spying on their employees, but most people aren't gonna want to wear a brick on their face so their manager can make sure you're paying attention or whatever.
I don't turn my camera on in meetings and it's often "broken", some idiotic headset that my manager forces on me is going to be similarly buggy and "broken"...
Yeah, it's more like "strapping space heaters to their faces".
AVP doesn't need the webcam on.
"Inside" it, your avatar could be anywhere wearing whatever, no bed pillows, PJs, or family creeping not-so-stealthily behind you.
Yes - it’s even more intrusive - you have to strap a computer to your face instead of merely sitting in front of it. That was the entire point I’m making.
The barrier to using a webcam is already lower, and people routinely refuse to do it.
I almost never put my camera on. I think people mostly like turning their camera on to show off their home office, living room or book case. Beyond that, there is just no point. It is a distraction overall.
Business meetings in headsets is just completely delusional. It is one of the dumbest tech ideas of all time.
This use-case is decades away from being compelling and to a rounding error, nobody wants it.
This has an interesting history. I’m struggling to find it and hope I have it right. John Gruber or maybe Accidental Tech Podcast did a segment on an podcast ages ago in relation to accessibility settings on the iPhone.
Whoever it was credited a particular Apple engineer who pushed hard with accessibility features arguing that at some point, everyone has some sort of issue (sight, hearing, movement etc).
I’ve tried, but can’t find the episode, which is a shame as this sort of thing is Apple at its best, which does get lost in the swamp of depressing decisions they have made in recent years.
It's nice that they try, but I wish the accessibility features weren't so terrible.
Case in point: I put off getting a new prescription, and ended up setting the font size up + enabling bold text on my iPhone. The first party apps often don't work well.
Of everything on my phone, GasBuddy handled it best. It's basically unusable with large fonts, but it suggested I go into per-app settings and disable display accessibility settings just for it. Now that I know that's a thing, I can blacklist the 90% of apps on the phone that don't display right, I guess.
Since the new glasses arrived, I'll probably just disable accessibility. However, my experience doesn't bode well for people that actually need reading glasses and want to use their phones when they're out and about.
iOS app guy here.
One of the main reasons most apps do poorly here is our designers and PMs NEVER think about anything other than the standard size iPhone at normal font size in light mode. This is true at every company i worked at.
In Apple 1p apps the reason is also that the codebase is 15 years old now and very hard to make adaptive.
Frankly web devs seem to have no idea you can enlarge fonts either.
I keep most of my browsing slightly zoomed in, especially on the laptop, and I get all sorts of glitches now and then.
Incidentally HN is Just Fine(tm).
Accessibility as it is in modern parlance isn't only for people with disabilities.
Disabling the annoying needless animations on iOS is in Accessibility for some reason.
Because we are all disabled in that our lives are too short to sit through all that pointless theatrical animation.
I think it's been said better elsewhere but it might be: https://atp.fm/483
John for a bit @ 1:11:44
Casey and John @ 1:15:30 "The more time you spend on this planet the more likely one of these features will be useful for you"
This is awesome, and this type of accessibility (noting that it can be temporary, permanent or situational) and consideration is known as inclusive design in modern parlance.
I felt this keenly when my children were very young. At times I only had one arm/hand free because I was holding a child in the other. Or I could only read poorly in the dark because I didn’t want to turn on the lights and disturb the kids.
Since then I always see accessibility thinking as a universal benefit, not just for the “abled”.
Reminds me of the Cindy Li quote “we are all just temporarily abled”
I had such an emotional experience using the visionOS 2 beta to spatialize old photos. It was already amazing seeing it take a photo from 15 years ago and turn it 3D; but then when I "pinched" into it to make it become immersive and was suddenly in a place I hadn't been in years, with my (then young) kids looking just as they did back then, seeming to be standing there in the room with me… it was profound. I can't think of any other experience with technology I've had that even comes close.
Is there a future proof way to capture photos today to view in 3D/VR devices of the future?
(Not my area of expertise, but I believe this is about accurate with regard to the Apple ecosystem)
These were old photos, many taken with older digital cameras and early smartphones, and they worked very well. I believe as long as they're of a reasonably high resolution (so, any camera from the last 20 years or even more), it'll work. Of course, it's ML-based attempting to simulate 3D from a single image, so it's not always perfect, but I didn't run into any significant failures.
Btw, to capture spatial videos, the easiest way is to use an iPhone 15 Pro (with its camera in "spatial video" mode) or the Apple Vision Pro itself. I'd guess there are ways to convert videos from other formats into this, or to use other apps to view photos/videos in non-native formats, but I'm not personally familiar.
Panoramic photos also convert nicely into spatial experiences.
For video, MV-HEVC (the Apple-pushed format) is probably the best bet, since it's both well-documented as a HEVC/H.265 extension and (because it stores diffs instead of full duplicate frames) it's way more practical for high-res and HDR video than previous de facto formats like side-by-side video. It's likely to be widely adopted by data hoarders, if only because it will save a huge amount of file space on 3D blu-ray rips.
Photos are more up in the air in part because the use and support of the Apple-pushed HEIC is much more limited than HEVC. But internally it's basically the same thing as MV-HEVC except with just the two still frames encoded instead of full videos, so any codebase that supports MV-HEVC should be able to support the 3D variant of HEIC as well without a lot of extra work over the long term.
Wait what, it has an app that will convert a picture into a 3d environment? That's amazing.
Yes, it’s the iOS photos app (in visionOS 2.0) and it’s 100% the Killer App of the product.
This make somehow… uncomfortable. Perhaps humans are not meant to have perfect recall of, and dwell on, the past.
I had the opposite experience. Have had nearly every device. Rift, Rift S, Quest 2, Quest 3, PSVR, PSVR2, Index. Was not impressed at all the the AVP when I tried it. Worse experience almost entirely. Hand gestures suck. Stare to select sucks. Experiences weren't as good as even Rift for me.
Seriously? Come on. I was one of the first hundred people to kickstart the Rift and have owned every major consumer headset (except the Index) since. The AVP absolutely destroys the Rift in every way.
The only strong argument for Rift/etc. would be for gaming, but the AVP isn’t being sold as a gaming device. The new beta Vision OS2 also signicantly improves hand gestures.
I too was unimpressed with the Apple Store AVP demo, but after owning it for a while I absolutely see where it fits in (especially once a non-Pro version comes along).
Right, because the AVP is ignoring the only useful application for VR today by eschewing precision controllers to try to get OFFICE WORKERS to strap on this monstrosity of a strap-on facial PC to do PRODUCTIVITY tasks. What a joke.
I'm sure not going to drop $3k on one, but I've had bosses that would want to drop $300k to outfit the whole department with tech that we don't have a use for.
I mean I’d be all for that if there was value to the 3D user interface. A CAD program where you actually interact with the part, or a biomolecular research tool where you can actually handle scales-up proteins in your hand.
But strapping a heavy display to your head so that you can interact with the same flat 2d windows? I don’t get it.
Yeah, it was quite telling that most of the new features and demos, were for the most part already available on Holo Lens.
Seeing Vision Pro at WWDC was like a deja-vu from BUILD a couple of years earlier.
You can use a mouse keyboard and game controller for a cursor if you want. You can also turn on a mode to do normal neck controlled cursor (I mapped it to triple click of the button)
You're right and I think it would make sense to have a feature that allows you to do a 3d recording.
If I could watch my daughter's first step in full 3d, I would be happy to pay the $3k and more.
I know you can do it right now with insta360 or whatever but I think there is a bit of a learning curve and it just isn't it that seamless.
Being able to record directly from the headset and play it back exactly how you saw it would make things much simpler and WYSIWYG and may be the reason for mass adoption
You can already record in 3D both from the headset, from iPhone 15 Pro and higher and with Canon’s new upcoming lense:
https://www.usa.canon.com/newsroom/2024/20240610-lens
It’s uncanny to record something with the Vision Pro and then play it back while you’re sitting in the same location…feels like a glitch in the matrix.
It’s not upcoming. I just bought it last night.
If I could watch my daughter's first step in full 3d, I would be happy to pay the $3k and more.
Don't you want to experience the authentic event rather than peering through a camera so that you can relive it later in 3D?
I'm always flabbergasted that people watch concerts through a camera, rather than just enjoying the experience. The facsimile is often poor compared to the experience itself. Also, reliving the same experience over and over can devalue it. Our memory is very good at making rose-tinted representations of past experiences.
I do understand the grandparent's travel example much better, especially for people who can't easily travel due to disabilities, etc.
And can easily substitute concerts for all types of things here. Travel experiences, museums, art, the mona lisa room where I am pretty sure I was the only one looking-at/facing the actual painting...etc. For many, getting IG likes or emoji comments is more gratifying than the actual experience. I don't get it either.
You can do that. There are only two buttons on the device and one of them is “record this experience as a memory in the iCloud photos app exactly as how I experienced it”.
Since the cameras are small the ISO is at cell phone level, not great indoors.
So I just spent $5800 on the Canon R5 C + Stereo VR Lens kit, to record my baby boy’s moments in 8K for future VisonPro (2,3,4…) devices.
The thing is that you can have similar experience with 10 times cheaper Quest 3. The diminishing returns here is just staggering.
In fact people were teleporting themselves visually in 2016 with HTC Vive for 800$. I had it, it was awesome.
Honestly I'm happy to see AVP fail here to set precedence where entry point to a medium is the price of an average 3month salary (considering current global avg is around 1,500/mo) which is wildly unethical imo.
Are you saying that it's unethical to buy something that most people in the world can't afford?
I'm saying it's unethical to start a new medium/platform where majority of the world would be simply be left out.
Is it unethical to sell a luxury watch or car? Is it unethical to start a pizza shop that only delivers locally?
Not even the same thing. Watch or a car is not a platform. Clearly you're allergic to understanding my point so how about we end this here. Have a good day.
Makes sense:
But do you need to BUY one? This is the thing I realized with VR sets, personally.
They are a great day at the fair, but who goes to the fair EVERYDAY?
An addict, that's who. And this is exactly what this technology will eventually enable - seeing the world through an influencer's eyes while sitting on a ratty couch in a dilapidated apartment. William Gibson painted this picture beautifully in Count Zero.
I suppose (and Gibson is great), but I've always felt that this sort of addiction doesn't require VR? Like, to whatever extent people are going to do this, it's ALREADY HERE.
CTRL-F Gibson, the tech and root parent comment eerily reminded me of Fragments of A Hologram Rose. We're closing the gap between fiction and reality. The short story was written in 1977! Gibson was prescient about so many things.
"He bought an ASP cassette that began with the subject asleep on a quiet beach. It had been recorded by a young blonde yogi with 20-20 vision and an abnormally acute color sense. The boy had been flown to Barbados for the sold purpose of taking a nap and his morning's exercise on a brilliant stretch of private beach. The microfiche laminate in the cassette's transparent case explained that the yogi could will himself through alpha to delta without an inducer. Parker, who hadn't been able to sleep without an inducer for two years, wondered if this was possible."
Exactly. All the use cases for new tech like vr headphones or watches or whatever is just the exact same functionality I already have in another form factor. Why bother. I don’t need to pay $400 to look at incoming texts on my wrist instead of the slab in my pocket I already own. I don’t need to spend $3500 to look at 40 foot wide emails.
The missing point here is always: do I want to haul all the shit up the mountain to record that or not?
At least we will be able to see what celebrities are doing.
They can bugger off. I had my dinner ruined by some Instagram celebrities earlier this year who were flying around with a DSLR filming some food and screaming a lot. The staff were visibly pissed off but too afraid to tell them to go away and stop annoying the customers in case it reflected badly on their restaurant. Everyone was held ransom.
The second part of your comment reminded me about that South Park episode where Cartman was "reviewing" restaurants on Yelp ...
Honest question, but how much was your own brain filling up the experience and bringing back all those memories. Did you have the same feelings with other VR experiences?
Not sure. The other environments felt just as real.
But lake, snow and fake moon felt sterile in comparison. There is something about being at the top of mountain with clouds and the sun rising on the horizon that hits different.
Doubt it, but even if it was, I don't see this as a bad thing.
Why did you cry?
Do you cry when you were on the mountain the first time in real life?
If you went again in real life would you immediately cry?
Why would you cry just for seeing it again?
Was it crying because of awe of the technology?
Well, sort of. The quality of display and control hardware is there; the comfort of the device as a whole absolutely is not. And I'm saying that as one of those weirdos who will get into VR for 4-hour sessions.
It's also absolutely worse off than it could have otherwise been, to an extent way more severe than any other Apple device, by the Apple obsession with aesthetics over functionality. Even aside from the weight issues with all the glass and metal, they created the worst possible design for comfort when it comes to how it actually sits on your head.
The field of view is definitely not there with Vision Pro.
Sometimes one needs to have the vision (no-pun intended) realized as hardware-in-hand for the problems to actually sink-in. I would bet that the next version of vision pro will be a significant jump in usability and addressing of the issues (which is also made more probable by the fact that this is a segment still in its infancy, by measure of the possibilities it offers, so changes will be big compared to, say, changes in a mature ecosystem like Android).
Sure if you only care about 2 of the 5 senses and don't mind VR sickness. Then sure it's a teleportation device. For everyone else it's basically an expensive and awkward portable display.
I have worn my AVP for about 6 hours a week since it came out. Not once, for one second, did I have any motion sickness.
It’s a completely solved issue. The head tracking runs on a completely different chip and hyper visor layer from the OS so even with a kernel panic the tracking doesn’t fail.
6 hours a *week* doesn't sound like that much of a test for VR sickness. Try 6 hours a session and then tell me it's a solved issue.
I grew up in the redwood forest and I do not always have enough time in my life to go back to them. I would love a vision pro experience where I can be in the redwoods! I think for me the teleportation experience is more important than gaming, tho gaming is rad too (I loved Half Life Alyx on my Index).
Do you know if there are environments available that are in the redwood forest?
Also does anyone know what kind of money someone could make publishing these environments? I have some videography experience - I would be inclined to rent a high end VR camera and create some captures for Vision Pro, but it would be nice if I could sell them on the app store and earn enough to buy a Vision Pro.
Right now the environments are like Apple Watch faces. First party only, and we’re getting about 1 new one per year.
Gotcha thanks for the info. It's funny, Apple's new OS is called Sequoia, yet there is no environment in the sequoias (aka redwoods)!
I did find some discussion about how they are made, but there does not yet seem to be a documented process. https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1am8e00/how_to_c...
Not all tech is a destined to be all encompassing.
VR has been “the next big thing” for more than 50 years. VR was invented in 1968
Video phone was invented way back. (1936). It took a very long time to be common and in frequent use. And it’s still not a killer feature.
If not for video phone we would not have the penetration of work from home we now have. It was science fiction when featured in Back to the Future
I’ve “teleported” to several places including Mars. Imo it was just about the same experience as looking at some big pictures at a museum.
In this case the emotional experience is likely because the person was physically there before and his brain was filling in the gaps.
Not saying it’s not a a great experience..
When I look at the commonality between all the successful consumer electronics, it's really about how easily they fit into people's lives. The AirPods and Apple Watch were two of the most recent smash hits because they are an improvement on what existed before
For me to watch a video on a phone, tablet, laptop, or TV is easy. Turn on screen. Play video. With wedding photos, you can make them your phone screen background, you can printout photos and put them on your wall, they fit into your life.
With VR, I have to blind myself to my surroundings, I have to either not move around sitting perfectly still or clear out a bunch of space. What has become more popular in recent years is Podcasting and a huge reason why is because how nonintrusive it is, you can listen to a podcast doing the dishes or on your way to work. VR is the opposite of nonintrusive.
I feel the immersion of VR is what's holding it back, not why it will be successful. It's only when mixed reality takes off that I think we're going to see a big change.
Have you tried the quest 3? A lot of your concerns, I feel, go away with pass thru. Like you say, mixed or augmented reality is going to be society altering.
I was walking through my house, navigating doorways, stairs, and changes in lighting, with my son's headset while I had the equivalent of a 30in monitor playing Netflix following me around. I sat on the couch and pinned the "tv" to the wall, enlarged it to be a 80in tv.
What truly is missing is a shared environment between multiple headsets in the same location. Movie night where the whole wall is a shared experience, and it can be synced with grandma who is three states over; even better, we can look over and see grandma in AR and she sees us. Distributed family night! Some ergonomics to work out. That, and seeing faces.
In practice, how often would you “teleport”? Once a month maybe? The experience you mentioned sounds profound, but also fairly niche
If VR is to compete with smartphones, it needs at least more screen pixels, and AVP delivers. The multi-user UX is still undecided (hence the device leans so much on “teleporting” capability). But for sales calls, group work, education etc, high fidelity is a requirement.
Unknowingly you made the perfect argument against the Vision Pro. What you described is a VR experience which is precisely what apple set out not to do. They wanted an MR device and MR experiences. So if an immersive experience is what you want a cheap device will deliver it over time as the hardware catches up
Try The Quest: Everest next.
https://www.thequesteverest.com/
I don't doubt that it is awesome as an experience. However unless it gets cheaper it is not going to get enough users, and without enough users it is not going to get enough apps. Software devs are expensive and businesses want to address the largest possible market.
Really? Despite the total lack of smell, taste, random atmospheric sensations against the body and also the lack of haptic feedback?
The immersive videos are amazing. Stick a VR camera on the best seat at a concert, sports event, wedding, etc. People will pay for Taylor Swift or the Super Bowl. The tech is very close, the Quest is a good price, VR cameras are ~$5k. The only thing left is the content creators.
I can 'teleport' elderly friends to wherever in the world with the Wander app on Oculus Quest
It's still photogrammetry + skybox, not that much different from what Valve were showing off in The Lab back in 2016. PPD is higher on account of the more advanced headset and that does make a difference, but it didn't blow me away or anything. You can still see the seams when you look close, the cutoff point between geometry and façade, you notice that there's never much foliage nearby, that anything animated tends to look like a mesh from a video game, because it is.
They really need to figure out true, perspective correct volumetric video already.
you can give it 50 years. with the trash treatment apple gives developers, they won’t ever again release a new successful platform like iphone. They burnt the bridge to get there
360 cameras are cheaper than you think. I like the GoPro 360 Max. You'll have to post process video to get it onto YouTube but you can then watch it.
Apple was late to the party, jumping onto AR/VR, when the companies that were there 10 years earlier started to move into AI as the next big thing.
Additionally, the current issues with the Apple developer community, on a device that targets a very niche market, even more niche as Apple doesn't want to associate it with games, makes the appeal of the Vision Pro quite lacklustre for most app developers.
The 1991 sci fi movie is called until the end of the world by wim wenders with William hurt who travels the world recording visions for his dying mom
Not to deny the experience or the emotional value, its niche use. This would e.g. justify a co-pay from a health fund or an NHS program to make them available for people with profound issues, to have richer experience. Or, maybe old age care or people with dementia.
But thats not how either Apple or FB are approaching this. They aren't addressing what your niche is: something to give value to people in very specific need.
" This is PalmOS, a solution that is too early to the market."
But Apple has the resources to keep supporting and evolving it in response to user feedback until it can be cheap enough for mass use, at which point, if they don't blow it, their lead will be hard for competitors to overcome. They know exactly what they're doing.
Yeah, I get where you are coming from. There’s a VR experience made by Google that takes all the images from the Curiosity Rover’s stereo mast cam and turns them into a VR recreation of the surface of Mars.[1] I definitely felt some kind of way standing there on Mars, even though it was an imperfect rendering on a Quest 2. I was where no one has ever stood before and without a suit which no one will ever be able to do. VR is truly magical.
[1] https://accessmars.withgoogle.com/
Imagine an experience like that but on mars or the moon. With real footage. Now that would be something!
I have been thinking about my first experiences in World of Warcraft in the early years. It changed me. The forests, mountains and trails were real to me and I enjoyed meeting friends and people from work in that world.
I realized the value of something like that but tweaked with different stories and contexts. I imagine elderly people being able to live a whole other life inside something like WOW instead of withering away alone as most people tend to do. You don't even need fancy AR hardware, though that wouldn't hurt and probably has better UX than banging on a keyboard.
You still need a professional to make the video otherwise it could be unpleasant for other viewers.
There is a lot to consider in making VR videos.
Angles, view points, speed of movement etc.
I tell everyone to schedule a Vision Pro demo. It’s 20 minutes, completely free, and will blow your mind. I would never actually buy one, but that was the best tech demo I’ve ever seen by a mile.
Were you wearing some field-of-view limiting device at the time?
As much as I don't like Apple or Steve Jobs, it's clear that they're missing a visionary who owns this sort of project and has a specific vision in mind. I doubt the Vision Pro would be flailing like this and Apple wouldn't be second-guessing itself and canceling related projects or reorganising. Maybe it's the lack of a reality distortion field or just a lack of somebody to present or develop a holistic vision for this project both internally and externally, somebody who has long-term dreams that would be fulfilled by this project, eventually.
If even Apple doesn't know what to do with it and is doubting itself, why would anybody outside Apple have faith in it not being quietly discontinued in the coming years? So why invest in the platform? Why do research and develop use cases for it?
Jobs knew how to sell something, but more importantly, he knew how to sell the future of something, the potential.
The potential is amazing, and it's what has gotten so many people to sink so much time, effort, and money into developing these things ever since the Oculus devkits.
But the hardware isn't there yet either. If it keeps enough momentum to develop, we're going to look back at these headsets like 90s smartphones. The AVP and the Quest are heavy. They're thick. Their battery life is terrible, and despite how good Apple's screens and camera software are, they still have a long way to go in lots of areas before they really deliver on a virtual reality.
The software is probably the bigger problem, but the hardware needs a lot of help before normal people are going to use these on a regular basis.
Would you be willing to describe in a bit more detail what your rich visual memory is like?
That is not unique to the mixed reality though. Which is what this is about.