I was in the US a couple of weeks ago so I visited an Apple Store for a Vision Pro demo out of curiosity. I thought people might be interested in my impressions?
The hardware looks great and feels beautifully built, but there's no getting away from the fact that it is big, and it is heavy. You are not going to forget you've got this thing strapped to your face in a hurry, that's for sure.
In terms of the much vaunted visual fidelity, I found it a mixed bag. When you first begin using it, you're in a completely immersive calibration environment - i.e. just some onscreen graphics and darkness around. Once you complete it, there is an animation of the darkness lifting like a veil to see the feed from the cameras of what's around you. I've got to say, this moment was a little disappointing.
The quality of the feed really isn't that great. It's dramatically better than what I've experienced in the PSVR2, to be clear - and for the insane cost, it should be - but it is a long, long, LONG way from looking through a pair of normal spectacles. It's very apparent that you're watching an okay-quality video feed of your surroundings. It's also dramatically worse than is represented in Apple's marketing materials, which typically show no difference between normal vision of a room and Vision Pro vision of a room.
Things improve when it comes to how the graphics that the Vision Pro renders look - they are excellent and much more in line with what I'd anticipated. Windows, graphics and video playback are pretty terrific.
But again, there's a drawback. The FOV just isn't all that good, and I did feel like I was kind of looking through a pair of binoculars. This will be old news to experienced VR users who were able to make a quick evaluation once the FOV degree of the Vision Pro was released, but I was surprised at just how much my peripheral was cut off.
The biggest positive was the controls. I felt that the selection of areas by eye and finger tracking was easy, intuitive and reliable. There was only command I had trouble getting to stick - the zoom in/out one, which requires you to pull an imaginary piece of string back and forth between your fingers - but I was honestly surprised by how well it worked otherwise, and I was easily zipping around the interface. It's still more cumbersome than just tapping around on a phone or tablet, but this is an excellent foundation and I think as it improves it could become very good indeed. There's no doubt in my mind that this is a big leap forward over the wand-based systems I've used previously (I'm not a VR expert so I'm unsure of how it compares to other eye/finger tracking interfaces as I haven't used any).
A few other quick impressions - the 3D animated 'memories' (short, looping videos you can record with the Vision Pro itself or the latest iPhone) are eerie. There is an inescapable sense that everyone in the photo is dead. They are layered with loss and tragedy. I have no idea why. I'm 100% serious. I think it might be partly because I find them reminiscent of that scene in Minority Report where he's watching videos of his family. However, they are very visually impressive, although I question the utility when looking at pictures tends to be a group family/friends activity.
The immersive video is impressive also. I was shown a short demo reel which began with a clip of Alicia Keys leaning on a piano, singing at me, looking me dead in the eye. It was very convincing, to the point where I actually felt quite self-conscious with this woman singing at me, which was a strange experience.
Overall, it's a curate's egg. There are interesting aspects to it, but $4000 is an insane price, and it doesn't currently offer much that couldn't be achieved more easily, cheaply and efficiently on an iPad. It has a long way to go to become something viable. I do think the controls are quite exciting though and I was pleasantly surprised by how well they worked.
The hardware looks great and feels beautifully built, but there's no getting away from the fact that it is big, and it is heavy. You are not going to forget you've got this thing strapped to your face in a hurry, that's for sure.
In terms of the much vaunted visual fidelity, I found it a mixed bag. When you first begin using it, you're in a completely immersive calibration environment - i.e. just some onscreen graphics and darkness around. Once you complete it, there is an animation of the darkness lifting like a veil to see the feed from the cameras of what's around you. I've got to say, this moment was a little disappointing.
The quality of the feed really isn't that great. It's dramatically better than what I've experienced in the PSVR2, to be clear - and for the insane cost, it should be - but it is a long, long, LONG way from looking through a pair of normal spectacles. It's very apparent that you're watching an okay-quality video feed of your surroundings. It's also dramatically worse than is represented in Apple's marketing materials, which typically show no difference between normal vision of a room and Vision Pro vision of a room.
Things improve when it comes to how the graphics that the Vision Pro renders look - they are excellent and much more in line with what I'd anticipated. Windows, graphics and video playback are pretty terrific.
But again, there's a drawback. The FOV just isn't all that good, and I did feel like I was kind of looking through a pair of binoculars. This will be old news to experienced VR users who were able to make a quick evaluation once the FOV degree of the Vision Pro was released, but I was surprised at just how much my peripheral was cut off.
The biggest positive was the controls. I felt that the selection of areas by eye and finger tracking was easy, intuitive and reliable. There was only command I had trouble getting to stick - the zoom in/out one, which requires you to pull an imaginary piece of string back and forth between your fingers - but I was honestly surprised by how well it worked otherwise, and I was easily zipping around the interface. It's still more cumbersome than just tapping around on a phone or tablet, but this is an excellent foundation and I think as it improves it could become very good indeed. There's no doubt in my mind that this is a big leap forward over the wand-based systems I've used previously (I'm not a VR expert so I'm unsure of how it compares to other eye/finger tracking interfaces as I haven't used any).
A few other quick impressions - the 3D animated 'memories' (short, looping videos you can record with the Vision Pro itself or the latest iPhone) are eerie. There is an inescapable sense that everyone in the photo is dead. They are layered with loss and tragedy. I have no idea why. I'm 100% serious. I think it might be partly because I find them reminiscent of that scene in Minority Report where he's watching videos of his family. However, they are very visually impressive, although I question the utility when looking at pictures tends to be a group family/friends activity.
The immersive video is impressive also. I was shown a short demo reel which began with a clip of Alicia Keys leaning on a piano, singing at me, looking me dead in the eye. It was very convincing, to the point where I actually felt quite self-conscious with this woman singing at me, which was a strange experience.
Overall, it's a curate's egg. There are interesting aspects to it, but $4000 is an insane price, and it doesn't currently offer much that couldn't be achieved more easily, cheaply and efficiently on an iPad. It has a long way to go to become something viable. I do think the controls are quite exciting though and I was pleasantly surprised by how well they worked.
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