Who has an Apple Vision Pro VR headset coming?

by philg

Today is the day, supposedly, for Apple to begin delivering its $3500-4150 version of the $500 Meta Quest 3. Have any of you ordered one? Tried one? Figured out what could be done with a device that becomes a 1 lb. stone around your head after two hours of battery are exhausted?

As with everything else from Silicon Valley, it is important to be young and Black to be an effective user:

But what if you’re not young and Black? What would you say that you do here?

Based on a quick search, it doesn’t seem as though the obvious “take a walk through every famous art museum” app is available, either for Meta’s or Apple’s headset. On the more mature Meta product, it seems as though shooter games are popular. But who is going to invest in developing great games when there are only 20 million Quest headsets out there and many have been collecting dust on shelves? A non-VR game can be sold to almost anyone on the planet (Xbox, PlayStation, PC). The problem is yet worse for the Apple VR world. Apple is planning/hoping to sell just 400,000 headsets in the first year. A $20 game that gets 10 percent market share will yield just $800,000 in revenue for a developer.

I was wrong about Tesla’s prospects for success and wrong about Bitcoin, so I’m probably wrong about the Vision Pro. But what will it actually be used for?

14 thoughts on “Who has an Apple Vision Pro VR headset coming?”

  1. Who has an Apple Vision Pro VR headset coming? I don’t know.
    Have any of you ordered one? No.
    Tried one? No.
    Figured out what could be done with a device that becomes a 1 lb. stone around your head after two hours of battery are exhausted? Recharge it.
    But who is going to invest in developing great games when there are only 20 million Quest headsets out there and many have been collecting dust on shelves? Activision.

    But what will it actually be used for? Increase revenue for apple.

  2. After becoming physically immobile from a life of blog commenting, the lion kingdom intends to live out its days playing games with full motion control & VR goggles. In the mean time, the hope is someday they’ll be comfortable enough to wear all day & replace everything more than 3ft away with a virtual projection of lake Como.

    • Lake Como is overrated. I stopped by on the way back from Milan in the summer. It’s meh… although I only checked out Como and not the other towns.

  3. Some possible use cases:

    1. Architecture firms allow clients to walk through the design of a building and ask for changes. Changes made at the drafting stage are cheaper than changes when construction has started.

    2. An airline wants to make sure technicians look at a dozen points on an aircraft as part of routine inspections. Today they give someone a manual and a checklist. With a headset, the airline can make a system that adds a floating arrow pointing to each place to check. The headset saves video of what the human sees, so there is a record of the inspection. The human completes the inspection faster, and you can prove no steps were missed.

    I think apple released this in the hope that someone writes a killer app. I think they don’t know what that app is, and making it available is a way to find out.

  4. I’m going to try one. My understanding is you can try walking into an Apple Store this weekend and see if you can get fitted into the demo slots.

    If that doesn’t work, you can schedule on-line from Feb 5.

    From the reviews I’m about 80% sure that the opportunity cost of the $4000 or more all-in isn’t worth it yet for me, but I could change my mind. I’m willing to spend that much on an Apple laptop or desktop, but I know I can get a good 5+ years out of those devices. I suspect we’re more at the Apple Watch first gen point here – in five years this first gen product will be left behind.

    The ‘what will it actually be used for’ question is the key here.

  5. To add in the spirit of Corindal Lex,

    1) FPV piloting of drones/robots. https://www.reddit.com/r/fpv/comments/197o0e0/the_xwing_is_back/
    2) Inspections of equipment (power lines, towers, airplanes) from a remote robots or in person mechanic. I can imagine it would be useful for engine overhauls as the last boomer GA mechanics retire.
    3) Heads up display for traffic/approaches in an airplane. Highlight traffic where it is.
    4) View for people in 300 sq ft low income housing before the Matrix becomes operational.

  6. Phil, I’m surprised a keen photographer like yourself hasn’t tried VR goggles with 360º panoramic photos like the ones I take on my Ricoh Theta Z1. The immersive experience is simply amazing, specially for sharing with people who cannot be there for whatever reason. The $250 Oculus Go were perfectly adequate for that purpose, and the Quest 3 is better, but not 2x better.

    I haven’t tried the Vision Pro yet, the early reviewers say it’s seamless without the screen door effect, but in any case I doubt I’d get one before the next version that will be 2x better and cost half as much.

  7. Have any of you ordered one? Tried one?
    No. I am not young or Black.

    But what will it actually be used for?
    porn, probably

    I am somewhat encouraged by the maintenance and repair ideas, but also concerned: currently, as an individual, I can buy repair manuals on eBay (at least for very old vehicles), but I cannot afford a headset and very high-priced monthly subscription for repair content.

  10. Very soon, everyone will buy one [1] but the app that will kickstart it isn’t porn or corporation meeting room or engineering or Meta’s FB, etc., it is going to be American football.

    Imagine the following. You put on your Apple Vision Pro VR headset to watch the NFL. You don’t see a flat screen like we do today (or like the one per [1]). Instead, you will be able to position yourself *anywhere* in the studio and view the game from that angle. By *anywhere* I do mean anywhere — next to the QB or running back or the head coach or referrer. Hack, you can even position yourself as a fly on the ball and literally fly with the ball as it moves around. How is this possible? There are at least 20 cameras at an NFL game, each are live. Send those images to a computer and have it re-render the game into 3D world and send the data to the VR to render into your headset. And voila, you are laterally in-the-game!

    How much would you pay to watch American football by being in-the-game? The headset from Apple we know how much it is, the “ticket” to watch and experience American football in-the-game will be priceless for many.

    [1] https://twitter.com/AlexFinnX/status/1753791237318926605

    • At the risk of getting both my Man Card and citizenship revoked, spectator sports are partially about community, so that sounds dystopian.

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