Beamer wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 15:39:
Man, you couldn't pay me to do Lasik. I'm blind without my glasses, meaning my eyes are imperfect, but they're the only ones I've got. I'm not risking side effects.

Yeah. One of my sister's had it and it worked out great for her. Years later when having an eye exam with a new eye doctor, he asked if she had gotten Lasik, she said yes. He said, "I thought so, but whoever did the surgery did such a good job I can barely tell."

As I said, I've had astigmatism since I was in the third grade. By the time contacts came around for astigmatisms, I was used to wearing glasses. And as a lazy bum, I rarely cleaned them. I knew if I went for contacts, cleaning would be a daily thing. Screw that. When Lasik came around it was tempting, but I never even made an appointment to check how well suited I would be for a treatment. I figured with my luck I'd be the 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000, whatever, to have major problems. Wearing glasses at that point was second nature, 95% of the time I wasn't consciously aware I was wearing them.

This comment was edited on Jun 6, 2023, 22:23.

I had Lasik over a decade ago.
My eyes have degenerated some since, but that's expected with aging and career and hobbies that have me staring at a screen all day.
Still better than having to wear glasses. Don't regret it.

Underwent LASIK in the early 2000s, achieving 20/25 vision. Haven't needed glasses for over 30 years. It was the best investment I made, costing $2,600 ($4,600 today).

jdreyer wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 11:33:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 10:28:
I note that not a single person shown using this device wears glasses.

Anyone who can afford this can also afford Lasik.

Yeah, no. My dad had Lasik done and the complications are absolutely not worth it.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 11:33:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 10:28:
I note that not a single person shown using this device wears glasses.

Anyone who can afford this can also afford Lasik.

Man, you couldn't pay me to do Lasik. I'm blind without my glasses, meaning my eyes are imperfect, but they're the only ones I've got. I'm not risking side effects.

The Flying Penguin wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 10:47:
If you can see objects clearly 5 feet away without glasses,

Not since the third grade. Astigmatism.

Pr()ZaC wrote on Jun 5, 2023, 17:57:

RogueSix wrote on Jun 5, 2023, 17:30:

Kxmode wrote on Jun 5, 2023, 16:49:
Missed opportunity to call it Apple Eye.

Akshually I think they should go all-in and just call it iEye.

iEye Captain.

Oooohhhhhhh... who lives in a circle on the fair bay?!

Vision Pro does not support eye glasses, because the frames can block the sensors and the reflection of the glasses will disrupt the eye tracking.

Eye tracking is needed for dynamic foveated rendering: the display is only high-resolution where your eyes are directly looking. Everything in your periphery is rendered at a lower resolution. It changes the resolution so quickly that you will never notice, even if you try and dart your eyes around the screen. It will seem like everything is always crystal clear.

Without foveated rendering, all 23 million pixels would need to be updated to whatever the refresh rate is for the screens. I doubt even an RTX 4090 could do that.

The Flying Penguin wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 09:39:
What I find hilarious is the proposed external display on the outside of the headset that will show an image of your face. Leave it to Apple to introduce a useless feature like that. Because we all want the rest of the world to see our face, when we're immersed in a VR sim, alone by ourselves in our house...

I actually think that's a pretty clever idea.

What I find super creepy is this part: each user has their entire face scanned and "advanced machine learning represents you realistically" as a digital avatar. And that replaces you when Facetiming. As gamers, we are use to the idea of engaging social experiences in a digital space with make-believe characters. But in the future Apple is presenting, the fundamental human experience of face-to-face communication is being repackaged and sold at a high price for downgraded experience. Or in Apple speak: it will capture your "true expression". Suuuure...

I have miopia and astigmatism, not that much, I dont use glasses to play.
BUT, when I use VR my vision is perfect, better than IRL.
I was amazed by that discovery, though I know this only works for miopic vision.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 10:28:
I note that not a single person shown using this device wears glasses.

Anyone who can afford this can also afford Lasik.

Beamer wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 10:37:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 10:28:
I note that not a single person shown using this device wears glasses.

You need special lenses if you're a glasses wearer. At added cost.
But I believe most glasses wearers can use this without the glasses. I may be wrong.

If one can, then I wonder how Apple will handle that much vaunted "directed audio" since the arms of a pair of glasses will change the position of the speaker and thus the headset's expected positional data.

One of my primary issue with all VR headsets right now is that they are exceptionally uncomfortable if you wear glasses. They either jam the frame around the lenses in to your face or press the arms into the side of your head. Both cause me headaches and often the image is just slightly out of focus enough to be jarring to me.

If my optometrist has a lens machine than can automagically scan my eyes and then adjust itself to give me the focal adjustment necessary to see clearly, I wonder when, if ever, that tech will ever make it in to VR headsets.

Apple VR does not support wearing glasses. You need to buy prescription lenses that attach magnetically.

If you can see objects clearly 5 feet away without glasses, then you don't need to wear glasses in VR. So in general, if you're far sighted like me, you're good. It's people who are near sighted that have issues.

I personally think this is the biggest barrier to any kind of mass adoption of VR. Even headsets that support glasses are a pain to use with them.

This comment was edited on Jun 6, 2023, 11:24.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 10:28:
I note that not a single person shown using this device wears glasses.

You need special lenses if you're a glasses wearer. At added cost.
But I believe most glasses wearers can use this without the glasses. I may be wrong.

I note that not a single person shown using this device wears glasses.

For 3500 dollars I will personally come to your house and move your couch closer to the tv.
https://twitter.com/gabrielmalor/status/1665803547756175361 Brian Merchant

Apple is always looking for suckers...;) Reminds me of their $1k monitor stand, and much else Apple pawns off to the ill-advised.

What I find hilarious is the proposed external display on the outside of the headset that will show an image of your face. Leave it to Apple to introduce a useless feature like that. Because we all want the rest of the world to see our face, when we're immersed in a VR sim, alone by ourselves in our house...

jdreyer wrote on Jun 6, 2023, 00:04:
The biggest thing that is going to turn off Apple-heads is the fact that it isn't wireless.

At least they showed it attached to the battery pack in all of the promo shots. So I'd be upset if Apple charges another $250 for the premium battery, which seems mandatory from said promo.

I wonder how well it compresses video over Wifi for connection to Mac. I suppose it's possible to have a Mac that can render high-res PC gaming and have that transmitted to the headset, but I think the experience will suffer.

Might as well call it Apple Going to Need to Sell my Kidney to Afford it VR Headset.

Goddamn, Apple is really good at selling the future, I was getting early Oculus tingles watching this. Couple thoughts:

1) They mentioned the incredible, amazing, immersive audio like 3 times. And then audio ray-tracing. I double face-palmed everytime. The drivers are a good 4 inches from your ear. I tried the XR Elite with half that distance, and it was still utter garbage. I'm trigged by "Ray-traced audio" when it'll sound like it's coming from a tin can across the room... but the concept of Ray Traced audio as a whole is so triggering to me. How do we have visual fucking pathtracing working at 4k in CP2077, but all audio in games is still mono recordings with a spatial translation layer, and some filters and faders to fake occlusion like an 8-year-old could do in Audacity??? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?!? I could go on for days...

2) The battery being separate from the headset is a really smart move, I've been thinking of this for a long time, it's the best natural design we can hope for until batteries are 5x lighter, and processors 10x more efficient. It just makes sense, good job Apple. BUT They fucked it up with:

3) The front of the headset is made of glass? WHY!? Dear god... Without a battery to act as a counterbalance, it's front-heavy as is. And now the area that's levering the furthest away from the neck is fucking glass? Holy shit this is form over function, I'm staggered. You need to shave every fucking gram off a headset to get to the Ready Player One future. This is a step backwards. Although...

4) That strap looks DELICIOUS! I don't know what to say, how did it take this long? I can remove it and wash it, and it actually conforms to my fucking head. It's almost like we've figured this shit out before, but every other headset looks like a wielder's mask. Take a second look at the PSVR2 after seeing this. I puked in my mouth a bit.

5) No controllers is a risky gamble, would be nice if they had integrations with existing VR controllers (did notice the PS5 one...) and/or PC VR. But It's Apple, sooo, I don't see hell frozen over yet...

6) Without knowing the FOV it's hard to get TOO enthusiastic for that resolution, (don't know the refresh rate either), but it's certainly exciting. Micro OLEDs seem to be the near future for VR, and they're expensive as fuck. That headset that BigScreen is putting out uses a smaller version of them, like 180 grams, but 90-degree FOV. That's awful. the standard 110 is already pretty garbage IMO. We need 130 MINIMUM.

7) Seriously, I bet the audio out of that thing is so fucking bad. I know nobody really cares about audio, but in VR it's very very important. What's funny is in a just world you'd be able to pair your iPods.. Apple pods? Whatever... with it, but Apple stubbornly refuses to let go of its archaic AAC codec, which has 130-150ms of latency. If they supported Bluetooth LE with the new low-latency codec they'd be laughing, but that would require them to open up their buds to play nice with open standards. Gross.