Apple undoubtedly faces a tough time trying to convince people to spend three and a half thousand dollars on a its upcoming headset. To ensure potential buyers...
Apple hopes to convince people to buy its $3,500 Vision Pro headset using free 25-minute in-store demos::undefined
As someone who wears a VR headset for about 8 hours a day on average and has for nearly ten years now, I can say our definition of gimmick varies somewhat.
Apples headset of course won’t do well, but it sounds like it will raise awareness that it isn’t a gimmick or a fad. And people that try it, will buy a practical modern headset instead.
The newest generation of headsets are as clear as a 4k monitor, despite not having enough actual pixels to literally display a 4k monitor at a comfortable viewing distance. There is a sort of free temporal anti-aliasing gained by the fact that your head will never be in the same exact place frame to frame, which effectively works out to percievably double the resolution clarity. A modern headset does have enough pixels to display more than raw 1080p at a comfortable viewing distance.
So even if you are not using them for actual VR, at the very worst, they replace a 4k screen at whatever size and distance you choose to have it at. I recommend about 20 feet away and scaled up to about 60 degrees accross your field of view. Unlike a monitor placed 3-4 feet from your face, or a TV 8-10 feet away(or a phone screen less than a foot away), 20 feet is very comfortable for your eyes. So you won’t get eye strain anymore.
And as for what environment that screen is in? Anywhere… including your real reality. The current generation of VR headsets has near-perfect clarity of a well-lit room that seamlessly blends with whatever virtual content you want to superimpose on it. The clarity goes down with worse lighting conditions, either with too much range of brightness, or not enough light in total.
Usually I will put my virtual screen beside or below the TV that the rest of my family is watching. Until it gets too dark out that the comparatively bright TV screen just gets washed out by camera optics(hopefully we get settings for this in the future, it could very much be fixed in software), then I move my screen to cover the TV, which is of course placed in the most comfortable viewing position from our recliners. I choose whether I want to hear audio from and see outside of the headset, or whether I want to ignore the outside world and focus entirely on my virtual screen.
And that is just the least interesting thing you can do with a VR headset, and enough to already justify the 500 dollar price tag of a practical VR headset. As an incredibly low latency remote 4k monitor you can place wherever you want, at whatever size and distance you want. Even if it would be through a wall. Still incredibly comfortable to view for way too many hours in a row.
You could also use a VR headset to do VR stuff. I occasionally do that too. It’s also good and more than worth the purchase price, as there is nothing else like it and no other way to experience that.
And then of course there is the porn. Even completely ignoring that exists, VR would already be awesome and very worth the price. But most people with VR headsets don’t ignore that it exists, even if they pretend they do. And let me tell you, there is also nothing else like that. But, you have to be careful/selective, as with all porn, most of it is terrible. You can find some good stuff for free, but as always the best stuff is not free.
Suffice it to say, the future really is VR, just like it really was computers, cell phones then smartphones, even if the first computers, cellphones and smartphones didn’t feel at the time like they were gonna catch on. Try telling someone when the first iPhone came out that people were going to spend hours playing games on their phones, and that phone gaming was going to be literally 3x the size of the next biggest gaming market. The next biggest being computer games. Then consoles.
There isn’t a more up to date version of this info graphic, 4 years ago mobile was only double computer. And VR has significantly increased since then, the Quest 2 wasn’t even released yet for this infographic. Quest 2 sold 20 million units, that’s just one headset, the highest selling one, but there are other reasonably popular ones too since then. And Quest 3 has been out for a while now. And again, just one of the popular options.
Can you expand on your use case and setup? I have an OG vive and really enjoyed it while I had space for it but haven’t kept up with the meta after moving to a smaller place. I’m very curious what headset you are using for this long and what you are doing with it and why you decided on this workflow.
It has been various headsets, most often Quest headsets for me personally. Currently a Quest 3. For most of them a halo style strap with battery on back was most comfortable for me. But everyone is different. Custom face pads don’t matter for me once I have a halo style headstrap, but for other headstrap styles the facepads would be very important for 8+ hour comfort.
Silicone facepads are good for short term exercise sessions as they clean quickly and easily, plu leather is a good choice for longer sessions with less profuse sweating. And cloth is good for very long sessions with no or mild sweating.
But yeah, in terms of what I actually do with it in this example, it’s very similar to a steamdeck, I just play my computer games on it, but while sitting on a nice comfy recliner.
I do also play VR games, mostly adventure RPGs. I have played the MMOs, specifically Orbus and Zenith. They are both pretty good. Lately I have been playing Dungeons of Eternity, Into the Radius, Ancient Dungeon, and the beta for Legendary Tales.
Previously I have played over 100 different games over the past 9 years in VR. All the “I expect you to die” games are great, everything from Owlchemy labs is awesome, while also being entirely kid friendly too. The official Iron Man VR game, surprisingly good. The moss games are good. Both “little cities” and “Cities VR” are great in completely different ways if you like city builders.
Walking dead:saints and sinners was good, once you get past some of the frankly too scary parts at the start of the game and to the part where it’s an action game instead of sneaking around in the dark being surprised by unsuspected zombies. Also never stay out past the bells. I’m glad I played the Quest version first before playing the PCVR version. Not sure I would have gotten past the start if the zombies were scary looking instead of cartoony, hehe. The Quest 3 graphics upgrade is also kinda getting there, lol.
The Red Matter games are an interesting experience, but I mostly played them to see the kickass graphics running on mobile hardware. The people that made those games have alot of talent for getting good looking graphics efficiently.
Speaking of graphics, for a Quest 3, I highly recommend the purchase of “Quest Games Optimizer”. It’s a program with the ability to override alot of the hardware settings on the headset with ADB commands. And a database of presets for each game. You’ll be able to pick between a few for most games, depending on if you prefer higher framerate or higher resolution, or if you want to not run the headset at max but still have better graphics than a game originally made for Quest 1 or 2 would otherwise have. Otherwise some older games can look unnecessarily not great on a Quest 3. When they are fully capable of looking great.
“The Under Presents:” was a truly unique concept. They hired actors to perform as all the NPCs in the game, between live showings of the plays they put on. The plays were classic plays enhanced by effects that could only be done live in a VR environment. And they also tended to have some audience participation. Unfortunately the live aspects of the game don’t exist anymore. They brought them back every now and then for a month or so, but it has been a while since the last time, so it likely won’t happen any more. Hopefully more stuff like that exists in the future.
For PCVR stuff, I played alot of Elite:Dangerous, I still play some American truck sim. And various racing and rally games. I also play alot of the same types of games as what I play on stand alone. I play wirelessly either through Virtual Desktop, Steam VR Link, or Oculus air link. Whatever the game I intend to play works best on.
I also do indeed watch 3D movies on it, this is the first reasonable household medium in human history with perfect 3D. Definitely gonna take advantage of that. And speaking of 3D, most computer games with a modern engine can be played in 3D. Like either making a virtual 3D monitor, or by actually putting your head inside the game world. Also most gamecube and wii games too. But yeah, just recently the entire Unreal engine got a VR mod, so any game made on unreal engine all of a sudden is capable of being a VR game out of the box. Most will still need some minor bespoke mods to clean things up here and there, or if they want to do motion controls, but the hardest part is done as a baseline now.
There is also the old program “VorpX” which is a dll injection based universal VR mod database. It doesn’t work with every game, but the list is pretty long. One caveat, playing a computer game in VR is harder to run than 4k 60fps. So depending on what game you want to play, like say Cyberpunk 2077 or something, you might need what is currently pretty expensive hardware to have a good time. But if you want to run something from 5-10 years ago, you’ll have no problem with a computer that wouldn’t be able to run modern games at 4k 60fps, as long as it can run those old games at that. Playing games on a perfect 3D monitor alone is pretty awesome, but “stepping into” a gamecube game potentially from your childhood, is a whole other thing.
Also on that topic, Quest 3 just got a native 3DS emulator that runs most games at full framerate in 3D. Many well enough to increase the render resolution too. And this is the initial release, so it should only get better from here. I loved my “new” 3DS back in it’s day, even though the resolution was so low, but I love it more now that I can fix that.
Also as a parting note, Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, and VR chat are all individual games/apps that can easily support thousands of hours of use each. VRchat seems crazy and darn near repulsive until you manage to find “your” crowd. And skyrim and fallout 4 have an insane selection of mods. You can turn them into whatever you want, as long as your computer can run what you want.
I personally have a pretty wide variety of activities I do in/with my VR headset, but in terms of time clocked, using it as a virtual computer monitor with 2ms network latency and a 40 foot tall screen where I control every aspect of the monitors properties, shape, size, brightness, curvature, whether or not the light it casts interacts with the rest of the room, what even the “rest of the room” completely means… probably my most time spent, just ahead of time spent playing VR games.
It also can run any android app you sideload, but unfortunately it has no GPS. But there are some pretty useful android apps, notably any emulators made for Android. Those versions will just be run on a virtual flat-screen, it won’t suddenly make android apps 3D. But it can still be nice to have a 6 foot wide phone game where you use laser pointers instead of fingers to tap the stuff. Save your finger joints, and your neck from looking down at your phone.
I read your whole comment and didn’t find even a single sentence that made VR appealing to me. Much less the idea of spending over 8 hours a day with a VR headset on.
ADD: In other topics, are you perchance interested on buying a 3D TV? I have a sale for you…
As someone who wears a VR headset for about 8 hours a day on average and has for nearly ten years now, I can say our definition of gimmick varies somewhat.
Apples headset of course won’t do well, but it sounds like it will raise awareness that it isn’t a gimmick or a fad. And people that try it, will buy a practical modern headset instead.
The newest generation of headsets are as clear as a 4k monitor, despite not having enough actual pixels to literally display a 4k monitor at a comfortable viewing distance. There is a sort of free temporal anti-aliasing gained by the fact that your head will never be in the same exact place frame to frame, which effectively works out to percievably double the resolution clarity. A modern headset does have enough pixels to display more than raw 1080p at a comfortable viewing distance.
So even if you are not using them for actual VR, at the very worst, they replace a 4k screen at whatever size and distance you choose to have it at. I recommend about 20 feet away and scaled up to about 60 degrees accross your field of view. Unlike a monitor placed 3-4 feet from your face, or a TV 8-10 feet away(or a phone screen less than a foot away), 20 feet is very comfortable for your eyes. So you won’t get eye strain anymore.
And as for what environment that screen is in? Anywhere… including your real reality. The current generation of VR headsets has near-perfect clarity of a well-lit room that seamlessly blends with whatever virtual content you want to superimpose on it. The clarity goes down with worse lighting conditions, either with too much range of brightness, or not enough light in total.
Usually I will put my virtual screen beside or below the TV that the rest of my family is watching. Until it gets too dark out that the comparatively bright TV screen just gets washed out by camera optics(hopefully we get settings for this in the future, it could very much be fixed in software), then I move my screen to cover the TV, which is of course placed in the most comfortable viewing position from our recliners. I choose whether I want to hear audio from and see outside of the headset, or whether I want to ignore the outside world and focus entirely on my virtual screen.
And that is just the least interesting thing you can do with a VR headset, and enough to already justify the 500 dollar price tag of a practical VR headset. As an incredibly low latency remote 4k monitor you can place wherever you want, at whatever size and distance you want. Even if it would be through a wall. Still incredibly comfortable to view for way too many hours in a row.
You could also use a VR headset to do VR stuff. I occasionally do that too. It’s also good and more than worth the purchase price, as there is nothing else like it and no other way to experience that.
And then of course there is the porn. Even completely ignoring that exists, VR would already be awesome and very worth the price. But most people with VR headsets don’t ignore that it exists, even if they pretend they do. And let me tell you, there is also nothing else like that. But, you have to be careful/selective, as with all porn, most of it is terrible. You can find some good stuff for free, but as always the best stuff is not free.
Suffice it to say, the future really is VR, just like it really was computers, cell phones then smartphones, even if the first computers, cellphones and smartphones didn’t feel at the time like they were gonna catch on. Try telling someone when the first iPhone came out that people were going to spend hours playing games on their phones, and that phone gaming was going to be literally 3x the size of the next biggest gaming market. The next biggest being computer games. Then consoles.
https://images.app.goo.gl/W2YBPTryTf675ZGD7
There isn’t a more up to date version of this info graphic, 4 years ago mobile was only double computer. And VR has significantly increased since then, the Quest 2 wasn’t even released yet for this infographic. Quest 2 sold 20 million units, that’s just one headset, the highest selling one, but there are other reasonably popular ones too since then. And Quest 3 has been out for a while now. And again, just one of the popular options.
Can you expand on your use case and setup? I have an OG vive and really enjoyed it while I had space for it but haven’t kept up with the meta after moving to a smaller place. I’m very curious what headset you are using for this long and what you are doing with it and why you decided on this workflow.
It has been various headsets, most often Quest headsets for me personally. Currently a Quest 3. For most of them a halo style strap with battery on back was most comfortable for me. But everyone is different. Custom face pads don’t matter for me once I have a halo style headstrap, but for other headstrap styles the facepads would be very important for 8+ hour comfort.
Silicone facepads are good for short term exercise sessions as they clean quickly and easily, plu leather is a good choice for longer sessions with less profuse sweating. And cloth is good for very long sessions with no or mild sweating.
But yeah, in terms of what I actually do with it in this example, it’s very similar to a steamdeck, I just play my computer games on it, but while sitting on a nice comfy recliner.
I do also play VR games, mostly adventure RPGs. I have played the MMOs, specifically Orbus and Zenith. They are both pretty good. Lately I have been playing Dungeons of Eternity, Into the Radius, Ancient Dungeon, and the beta for Legendary Tales.
Previously I have played over 100 different games over the past 9 years in VR. All the “I expect you to die” games are great, everything from Owlchemy labs is awesome, while also being entirely kid friendly too. The official Iron Man VR game, surprisingly good. The moss games are good. Both “little cities” and “Cities VR” are great in completely different ways if you like city builders.
Walking dead:saints and sinners was good, once you get past some of the frankly too scary parts at the start of the game and to the part where it’s an action game instead of sneaking around in the dark being surprised by unsuspected zombies. Also never stay out past the bells. I’m glad I played the Quest version first before playing the PCVR version. Not sure I would have gotten past the start if the zombies were scary looking instead of cartoony, hehe. The Quest 3 graphics upgrade is also kinda getting there, lol.
The Red Matter games are an interesting experience, but I mostly played them to see the kickass graphics running on mobile hardware. The people that made those games have alot of talent for getting good looking graphics efficiently.
Speaking of graphics, for a Quest 3, I highly recommend the purchase of “Quest Games Optimizer”. It’s a program with the ability to override alot of the hardware settings on the headset with ADB commands. And a database of presets for each game. You’ll be able to pick between a few for most games, depending on if you prefer higher framerate or higher resolution, or if you want to not run the headset at max but still have better graphics than a game originally made for Quest 1 or 2 would otherwise have. Otherwise some older games can look unnecessarily not great on a Quest 3. When they are fully capable of looking great.
“The Under Presents:” was a truly unique concept. They hired actors to perform as all the NPCs in the game, between live showings of the plays they put on. The plays were classic plays enhanced by effects that could only be done live in a VR environment. And they also tended to have some audience participation. Unfortunately the live aspects of the game don’t exist anymore. They brought them back every now and then for a month or so, but it has been a while since the last time, so it likely won’t happen any more. Hopefully more stuff like that exists in the future.
For PCVR stuff, I played alot of Elite:Dangerous, I still play some American truck sim. And various racing and rally games. I also play alot of the same types of games as what I play on stand alone. I play wirelessly either through Virtual Desktop, Steam VR Link, or Oculus air link. Whatever the game I intend to play works best on.
I also do indeed watch 3D movies on it, this is the first reasonable household medium in human history with perfect 3D. Definitely gonna take advantage of that. And speaking of 3D, most computer games with a modern engine can be played in 3D. Like either making a virtual 3D monitor, or by actually putting your head inside the game world. Also most gamecube and wii games too. But yeah, just recently the entire Unreal engine got a VR mod, so any game made on unreal engine all of a sudden is capable of being a VR game out of the box. Most will still need some minor bespoke mods to clean things up here and there, or if they want to do motion controls, but the hardest part is done as a baseline now.
There is also the old program “VorpX” which is a dll injection based universal VR mod database. It doesn’t work with every game, but the list is pretty long. One caveat, playing a computer game in VR is harder to run than 4k 60fps. So depending on what game you want to play, like say Cyberpunk 2077 or something, you might need what is currently pretty expensive hardware to have a good time. But if you want to run something from 5-10 years ago, you’ll have no problem with a computer that wouldn’t be able to run modern games at 4k 60fps, as long as it can run those old games at that. Playing games on a perfect 3D monitor alone is pretty awesome, but “stepping into” a gamecube game potentially from your childhood, is a whole other thing.
Also on that topic, Quest 3 just got a native 3DS emulator that runs most games at full framerate in 3D. Many well enough to increase the render resolution too. And this is the initial release, so it should only get better from here. I loved my “new” 3DS back in it’s day, even though the resolution was so low, but I love it more now that I can fix that.
Also as a parting note, Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, and VR chat are all individual games/apps that can easily support thousands of hours of use each. VRchat seems crazy and darn near repulsive until you manage to find “your” crowd. And skyrim and fallout 4 have an insane selection of mods. You can turn them into whatever you want, as long as your computer can run what you want.
I personally have a pretty wide variety of activities I do in/with my VR headset, but in terms of time clocked, using it as a virtual computer monitor with 2ms network latency and a 40 foot tall screen where I control every aspect of the monitors properties, shape, size, brightness, curvature, whether or not the light it casts interacts with the rest of the room, what even the “rest of the room” completely means… probably my most time spent, just ahead of time spent playing VR games.
It also can run any android app you sideload, but unfortunately it has no GPS. But there are some pretty useful android apps, notably any emulators made for Android. Those versions will just be run on a virtual flat-screen, it won’t suddenly make android apps 3D. But it can still be nice to have a 6 foot wide phone game where you use laser pointers instead of fingers to tap the stuff. Save your finger joints, and your neck from looking down at your phone.
I read your whole comment and didn’t find even a single sentence that made VR appealing to me. Much less the idea of spending over 8 hours a day with a VR headset on.
ADD: In other topics, are you perchance interested on buying a 3D TV? I have a sale for you…