Tag: Reviews

The Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s Gamble on High-End Virtual Reality (and Why I Want One)

Brian Tong wearing the Apple Vision Pro (a still capture from his Apple Vision Pro unboxing video)

As I mentioned in passing in my last blogpost, I am eager to get my hot little hands on the latest Holy Grail in the world of virtual reality/augmented reality/mixed reality/extended reality (VR/AR/MR/XR): the Apple Vision Pro wireless headset, which began shipping to American consumers on February 2nd, 2024.

Alas, there is no word yet on when we non-Americans will be able to order this device, although at least one VR YouTuber, Brian Tong, has heard (via his unofficial, internal sources) that Apple is planning to expand access to the U.K. and Canada next, perhaps shortly before or during the 2024 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which is usually held the first or second week of June.

Brian’s YouTube channel has been full of many helpful videos about the Apple Vision Pro, including this unboxing video of a pre-release version, where he unpacked the various components in the Apple Vision Pro package like a giddy schoolkid on Christmas morning:

In an interesting move, Apple refers to this device as spatial computing, avoiding any mention of virtual reality, mixed reality, or any of the other terms which have usually been tossed around while talking about other headsets. Also, I find it quite telling that nowhere will you find mention of the now-often-maligned concept of the metaverse, especially after being embraced by numerous crypto/NFT projects which went nowhere, plus Facebook’s much-ballyhooed rebrand into Meta landing with a bit of a dull thud and a shrug among consumers. As fellow metaverse blogger Wagner James Au wrote on his blog last week:

With Meta’s latest earnings report published this week, we find out the company has now burned invested $42 billion on building the Metaverse, with little to show for that: Its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds has less than an estimated 500,000 monthly active users, while sales of its Quest VR headset line (a metaverse peripheral) remain steadfastly small.

While Wagner is certainly more pessimistic about virtual reality than I am, it’s clear that VR headsets are not exactly flying off shelves, especially when compared to the blockbuster sales of cellphones, tablets, and gaming consoles. Andrew Williams of Forbes reported last October:

Meta has sold more than 20 million headsets to date, 18 million of which were the Meta Quest 2.

The Quest 3’s predecessor was highly successful, considering VR isn’t really a mainstream proposition in the way standard game consoles are. But the market has not expanded in the way Meta clearly hoped.

Back in May, the Washington Post reported a significant proportion of Quest users were letting the headset gather dust after just a few weeks.

The somewhat tepid success of most VR/AR/MR/XR/metaverse ventures to date are clearly reasons why Apple has focused, in its usual savvy marketing campaign, on the fact that the Apple Vision Pro is intended to be a wearable personal computer (essentially, an iPad for your face). Apple has announced in a Feb. 1st news release that over 600 new apps built specifically for the Vision Pro were available to American consumers at launch, plus “more than 1 million compatible apps available on the App Store to deliver a wide array of breakthrough experiences.”

The Vision Pro the first completely new category of device launched by Apple since the Apple Watch in 2015, and many people (myself included) have been keen to see what Apple, with its history of launching well-designed products, would come up with. As I often say on my blog, A rising tide lifts all boats, and Apple’s entry into this market has the potential to shake things up quite a bit, especially since they have taken pretty much the opposite tack from Meta, by focusing on an expensive, ultra-high-end device as their first product.

And yes, I do mean expensive. On the U.S. Apple Vision Pro website, the three main models of the Vision Pro are for sale:

  • 256 GB of storage (starting at US$3,499);
  • 512 GB (starting at US$3,699); and
  • 1 TB (terabyte, or 1,024 GB; starting at US$3,899).

So the one-terabyte Apple Vision Pro of my fondest dreams and darkest desires comes out to $5,259.17 in Canadian dollars—and that’s before sales taxes!

Many mainstream media and tech news reviewers prepared print and video reviews of the Apple Vision Pro, using pre-release review units provided by the company. These reviews were embargoed until the official release of the headset in early February, when they landed in a big media splash (Apple has deep pockets to spend on advertising, and has always done excellent marketing for their products).

Brian Tong, the YouTuber whom I mentioned earlier, has put out a very user-friendly, comprehensive one-hour review video:

Nilay Patel of The Verge put out the following half-hour video as part of its extensive print review of the Apple Vision Pro, which did not shy away from talking about what he saw as some problems with the device, describing it succinctly as “magic…until it’s not.”

Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal (archived version) took a slightly more unusual, whimsical approach to her review of the Apple Vision Pro. Joanna wore the review unit for a full day, even taking it to out to a ski chalet and wearing it out on skis, on a closed-off bunny hill! (Something definitely not recommended, by the way; DO NOT DO THIS.) Here’s her ten-minute video, which also shows her wearing the Vision Pro while preparing a recipe, and even setting up multiple timers hovering over the different pots on her stovetop:

And yes, one of the many features of the Apple Vision Pro is that you can set up displays anywhere, as demonstrated by in this mind-bending one-minute YouTube video by Himels Tech, as he walks around his house showing off his set-up:

There are many other reviews out there, but these four video reviews between them cover pretty much all the bases, so if you watch all of them, you’re up to speed!

The eye-watering price is not the only hurdle to be overcome by whoever wants to possess one of these Holy Grail devices! Unlike every other VR headset I have purchased, I will not be able to wear my glasses underneath the face-fitting, ski-goggle-like design. So I have two options: to get soft contact lenses (which I have not worn for a couple of decades), or to buy magnetically-attached prescription lens inserts from Apple’s partner, Zeiss. According to an Apple Support article:

To purchase ZEISS Optical Inserts for Apple Vision Pro, you need a legible comprehensive prescription. Here’s the information your comprehensive prescription should contain:

Your distance correction and near correction needs, indicated separately but on the same prescription sheet. This is known as the full manifest refraction. 

An expiration date, which should not be expired.

Your date of birth, your full name, and your prescriber’s license number and signature.

Intermediate distance, task distance, or computer distance should not be part of that prescription, and contact lens prescriptions are not accepted. If you’re not sure if your prescription is comprehensive, consult an eye care provider and reference the description in this article.

ZEISS Optical Inserts are available for the vast majority of corrections, including for customers who normally use progressive or bifocal lenses. A very small percentage of people have a prism value added to their glasses prescription. At this time, ZEISS cannot manufacture ZEISS Optical Inserts based on a prescription containing prism value. If you have a prism value, it is labeled on your prescription and noted separately from sphere, cylinder, axis, and ADD values. If you’re not sure if your prescription includes prism, consult with an eye care provider.

Depending on your prescription, your vision needs might not be met through ZEISS Optical Inserts.

Annoyingly, there doesn’t seem to be any publicly-available chart to give the ranges of presecription lenses which they will support, instead asking you to fill out a form with your prescription details, and promising that they’ll get back to you as quickly as possible:

So it looks as though I am going to have to go see my eye doctor first, then submit my prescription, then cross my fingers that they will support my combination of nearsightedness and astigmatism (not to mention my need for progressive lenses!). Honestly, it all sounds rather discouraging and disheartening.

But perhaps my apprehension about the Vision Pro not working for my elderly eyes is misplaced, because even blind people are finding the device to be useful! Check out this mind-blowing YouTube Shorts video by James Rath, who tests out some of the accessibility features and settings, James says that he can actually see more clearly with the Vision Pro, than without! This device could open up a whole new use case for the visually impaired.

So, yes, I am very eager to get my hands on an Apple Vision Pro sometime this year! I don’t want to wait; I want to experience this envelope-pushing product as soon as possible. I haven’t been this excited about a headset since the Oculus Rift back in 2016. So please stay tuned as I report on my odyssey to acquire the new Holy Grail of spatial computing!

Two Recent Video Essays on the Metaverse: Straszfilms Looks at There.com, and Dan Olson Dissects Decentraland

I have a great deal of respect and admiration for those people who create metaverse-themed video essays and documentaries on YouTube. I simply don’t have the time and energy at this point in my life to fiddle with video editing software, and I don’t particularly consider myself photogenic enough to put my face on your screen! So today, I want to introduce you to two new (and very different!) documentaries about the metaverse, by two creators whom I admire.

A little over a year ago, I blogged about Straszfilm’s thoughtful and nostalgic video essay on Active Worlds, which can be considered the granddaddy of virtual worlds, founded on June 28th, 1995, and somehow still limping along 27-¾ years later. Well, Strasz (a.k.a. Chris Hornyak) is back with a second video essay about another almost-forgotten virtual world, There, in a video cleverly titled Nobody’s There: The First Failed Metaverse (I wrote about There on my blog here). And, as a fellow virtual worlds nerd myself, I really enjoyed it!

There has to go down as one of the worst possible names for a virtual world—something which becomes rapidly apparent when you try to search on Google for it. In his video essay, he compares and contrasts There with another virtual world started around the same time, Second Life. I recommend Strasz’s video because of his insightful commentary on why There ultimately failed, tying the discussion to Second Life and to the newer NFT metaverse platforms. Here’s a representative extract (but watch the whole 45-minute video, it’s great!):

It is utterly bizarre to me to look back on this almost two decades later for a bunch of interconnecting reasons. Obviously, the concept of buying digital goods isn’t new or interesting now. But in 2003, it absolutely was. Almost bizarrely so. It’s wild to read journalists fawning over buying Levi’s for your avatar [in There] in a time when buying actual Levi’s online was so new. It’s almost unbelievable, and I mean that in a very literal sense. So, just for a second, imagine taking that out-there idea and then deciding that you were going to build an online 3D chat program on it in 2003…While this sort of thing is a little more acceptable today, it’s still readily mocked, and for a pretty good reason. I was recently interviewed in Esquire for a story about virtual fashion in the metaverse. During that discussion, the concept of NFT clothing came up, or just metaversal clothing in general.

Fashion is expression. With it you can quickly communicate who you are to the world…Yet, in the real world, that expression is always a bit limited…On the internet, especially in 3D social places, you were free from those boundaries. You can be anything, you can wear anything. And yet, it’s in that context that folks have stood back, folded their arms, and gone, “Hey, what people really want to do is own things.” It’s so utterly bizzare to think that, in the period I’m writing this, places like Decentraland and The Sandbox are being widely mocked for the very same sort of attitude. These places took one look at past and current virtual spaces that exist, and essentially just tossed all the creativity and novelty to the side, somehow coming out the other end thinking that the most important part of a seemingly post-scarcity virtual world is owning something…

To be clear, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with designers being paid. When someone in Second Life makes a piece of clothing for others to wear, or someone makes a model in VRChat, I think it’s important that those people get paid for their labour. Yet, when a big fashion brand comes in, it feels like you’re not paying for their handiwork, but rather the opportunity to paste a digital logo on your avatar. I mean, at least with IRL fashion, outrageous pricing is justified by craftsmanship, aesthetic leadership, small product runs, and exotic materials. But here, in this 3D space, there is limitless possibility, and we’re deciding to celebrate that by selling branded jean textures?

Of course, none of this worked. It didn’t work in There, and it isn’t working now. It would be fair to say that, in the last few months, the NFT market has just completely cratered. Just like with There, creators of these new technologies seem to have missed the part about people having to want to spend money before they, well, spend money. You have to be making something desirable before actual humans want to buy it.

There, as well as every metaverse/NFT/Web3 project or whatever, both fundamentally made the same mistake. They just didn’t pause to try and understand why people will dress up their avatars, or spend time in these spaces. It’s not just the peacock, it’s because it’s fun! It’s expression in its purest form. It’s finding your, well, YOU, then hanging out with other people who were doing the same.

In other words, it’s about the community and community-building first, with fashion as a secondary add-on, not the other way around! Second Life started as a place for people to gather, make friends, and form communities first. I was around during the big corporate boom in 2007 when companies like Playboy trooped into SL, set up shop, and tried to sell branded products. In all cases, these companies eventually left, because they didn’t understand what Second Life was all about. First you have to have places like role-play communities spring up, which then organically leads to things like stores selling medieval role-play outfits! Putting the sales cart before the community horse (for example, in Decentraland) doesn’t tend to lead to engaging metaverse platforms, which keep people coming back.

Speaking of Decentraland, last night I watched the latest documentary by Dan Olson, whose YouTube channel, Folding Ideas, is well-known for his year-old video critique on blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (a.k.a. NFTs), titled Line Goes Up, which has racked up over 10 million views to date. Dan’s latest video essay is a nearly two-hour-long documentary about Decentraland titled The Future is a Dead Mall – Decentraland and the Metaverse, and it’s two hours very well spent!

Dan’s documentary, split into six chapters, is an intelligent dissection of the concept of the metaverse in general, and Decentraland in particular. He is obviously extremely well-read, citing a wide variety of sources, including Ryan Bolger’s concept of reified space and Johan Huizinga’s concept of the “magic circle”, in this video. Dan is someone who has clearly put a lot of research into this work, and it shows!

Like Straz, Dan casts a very critical eye upon recent corporate forays into the metaverse, remarking on Lindt’s virtual chocolate store in one section of his video as follows:

…[T]he whole of it is elevated to transcendental when you see the actual thing that they’re describing: a laggy, hideous, cheap, faux-3D website that would probably be a camp hit if it were pitched instead as a throwback to FMV video games from the 90s….The vast majority of these so-called metaverse offerings are virtual spaces only insofar as they are painted to resemble a store. We already tried this 25 years ago, and discarded it because it turns out the human brain can shop from a list of items or a grid of photos far better than in can from an imagemap photo of a display case.

However, the main part of this documentary is a devastatingly detailed critique of everything that’s wrong with Decentraland. Having followed the Decentraland saga almost from the beginning back in 2018 on my blog, I already knew most of this, but it’s a truly a joy to watch Dan do such a wonderful job of pulling everything together into such a neat package, with a bow on top! I highly recommend this documentary.

Among other topics, Dan Olson discusses the many corporate (mis)adventures in Decentraland, as well as a lawyer’s office that is really nothing more than a (presumably) expensive three-dimensional brochure with links to outside websites like Facebook. He critiques the Decentraland Report news site at great length. He also talks about marquee events such as the Metaverse Fashion Week and the Metaverse Music Festival, and he takes a whole chapter in his video essay to dissect, at length, Decentraland’s somewhat byzantine DAO or governance structure.

Dan sums up his tour-de-force opus with the following summary, again referring to Huizinga’s magic circle:

So the authors of Decentraland, its creators and users, paint a magic circle around it with a narrative of inevitability, a narrative of the metaverse, a narrative of a true, separate, new world that you will eventually move your life into. Because if your neighbours aren’t going to eventually be compelled to be here tomorrow, why would you ever want this today?

Decentraland is, at every level, a collective fairy tale. Just people playing pretend… Whether it be the Pedigree Fosterverse scraping data from Adopt a Pet, users playing lawyer in their corporate offices or purporting to be the future of news, Decentraland’s value to businesses is patently absurd. And, as we’ve seen, even its decentralized premise is a fantasy. The DAO has no authority and is comically hapless—content to play politics, all the while pretending they have a stake in a billion dollar product. And it’s not enough to convince themselves, they need to convince you. So that is what they do by any means necessary. They will pander, mislead, outright lie—whatever it takes for you to buy into their narrative. Because this only makes sense from inside the circle.

Decentraland is a farce and a tragedy. It is painted into a corner by a combination of ineptitude and inherently bad ideas, and it cannot escape its fundamental being. Whatever other ideals are spit out, whatever rhetoric about liberation or political experimentation is employed, the simple fact that it was materially born as a pre-sale of lots of “land” based on a fiction of people “moving in” sets off a chain of decisions and incentives about design and functionality that bind it, forever, to being little more than a fantasy real estate scheme, an endless world of uniquely scarce dead malls.

So, go pop some popcorn, perhaps grab some wine to go with it, and settle in for a some entertaining and enlightening videos about the metaverse! And please, leave a comment on the videos, and tell’em Ryan sent you. 😉

Varjo Aero: A New, ULTRA-High-Resolution Consumer VR Headset

The new Varjo Aero VR headset offers a resolution of 2880 x 2720 pixels per eye!
(image source)

Varjo, the Finnish manufacturer of ultra-high-end virtual reality and mixed reality headsets for the corporate market, which boast photorealistic levels of resolution, has announced a brand new VR headset intended for the consumer/prosumer market: the Varjo Aero.

This new PCVR headset (selling for US$1,990, which is just the price for the headset alone, but you can use Valve Index Knuckles controllers and base stations with it) has the following key features:

  • Dual Mini LED LCD lenses with a resolution of 2880 x 2720 pixels per eye at 90Hz (which completely removes the screen-door effect seen in lower-resolution VR headsets);
  • Automatic interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment (i.e. you just put it on and the device automatically adjusts to your eyes), plus ultra-fast, built-in eye-tracking at 200 Hz;
  • Weighing in at 617 grams, offering 4 separate adjustment dials for a custom fit, with active cooling and optimized ergonomics for long-duration usage; and
  • Unlike Varjo’s corporate line of VR/AR/XR headsets, there is no annual software subscription fee.

However, there are also a few drawbacks to the Varjo Aero: there is no built-in audio and, even worse, no built-in microphone! (There is, of couse, an audio jack to attach an external set of headphones.) Also, as Jamie Feltham notes in his review of the product on UploadVR:

So let’s start with what has been my biggest issue in my time testing the headset. Yes the Aero is impeccably clear and I’ll touch on that in a second, but over the past four weeks using the headset I’ve noticed significant peripheral distortion when rotating my head. As I look away from a virtual object or surface, it appears to warp as if not entirely solid. Only the very center of my view looks stable. It’s incredibly distracting (which, ironically, is only enhanced by the clarity of the display).

In pretty much all the apps I’ve tested, including big-budget titles like Half-Life: Alyx and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and indie projects like Gorn and Sweet Surrender, it’s been a noticeable issue.

Crucially, Varjo itself knows about this. I’ve been on multiple troubleshooting calls with the company over the past few weeks to talk about it and have been repeatedly assured that this is a software issue it’s aiming to fix with subsequent updates. In fact, the company says it expects to have its Base software fully ready for the Aero in December, which is when it also expects the first units ordered today to arrive.

And, of course, the YouTube VR vloggers were all over this new release! I have attached review videos by Thrillseeker, Cas and Chary, and Sebastian Ang of MRTV below (if you only have time to watch one, watch Thrillseeker’s; his mind is just blown by the Varjo Aero, although he also notes the visual distortion Jamie mentioned, and says that the company assured him that they would fix the issue before shipping product):

As Thrillseeker says in his review video, improvements to virtual reality hardware and software are accelerating, and slowly but surely filtering down to the consumer market! It’s an exciting time to be in VR!

I leave you with another video showing how the Varjo Aero VR headset is being used in aircraft pilot training:

The First User Reviews of Facebook Horizon Are Mixed

Wuhao from the RyanSchultz.com Discord server alerted me to the Oculus page for the invite-only beta version of Facebook’s new social VR platform, Facebook Horizon, where (much as they do on Steam) the first users have weighed in with their reviews.

As of this morning, there are 93 ratings in the Oculus five-star rating system, which break down as follows:

Half of the earliest reviewers give Horizon 5 out of 5 stars

One common complaint is that, while people liked the ease of use of the in-world building tools, Facebook Horizon lacks in tutorials and documentation for its scripting abilities. One user said:

The tutorials don’t go deep enough into using Scripts and Gizmos, and I have had to resort to deconstructing scripts inside the script example room. This is a horribly inefficient way to learn for a newbie. I find myself having to Google what some words mean (like [what the f*ck] is a Boolean?), and I’m having to connect the dots to figure out how variables and logic work inside the tools. A YouTube tutorial series, or even a series of help pages is sorely needed.

I met a man with experience in the game industry that said someone helped him learn how to build in Horizon over the last few months (he was in the Beta beta). Not all of us will be blessed with that opportunity to have a mentor.

I had to laugh at the Boolean comment; most people who have done even rudimentary computer programming know what Boolean logic is (AND, OR, NOT). But, of course, the target audience for Horizon is not computer programmers; it is the soccer moms of America, the millions of people who post cat pictures to their Facebook feeds and like other people’s posts. (Make that billions of people; Facebook has 2.7 billion monthly active users worldwide. That is whom Horizon is squarely aimed at. They’re not aiming this at the Second Life crowd, either, many of whom will not doubt be horrified that you can’t hide behind an avatar identity.)

And (of course) there are the usual complaints that are common to any brand-new social VR platform: not a lot of people (yet), and the usual severe gender imbalance, with way more men than women participating. One woman wrote in her review:

I have never been in an online community before, so this was a treat. It was pleasant talking to people and getting help on how to do things. My one criticism is that the few people there were all male. I was the only female there, and it would have been nice to have some female company, especially more mature women. I am 65. I visited some of the worlds and had fun shooting at a monster and a dragon, once I figured out how to make the weapons work (not much help from the app, but another player showed me how). One of the worlds where you build things out of building blocks needed multiple players, and I was the only one there. That was my other criticism: hardly any people were there. I guess that will be rectified once the app hits the market.

There are a few less-than-positive reviews:

Maybe I’m missing something but this felt like just another Rec Room, only far inferior, with other people’s avatars wandering around tring to work out what to do.

and…

Wasn’t that impressed was waiting and waiting for this thought it was gonna be something totally different than what was delivered. I’m not a tech nerd or a genius I couldn’t get anything to work in building mode I don’t know anything about coding or scripting I feel like if you want more people to contribute worlds and items your gonna have to dumb it down a little I actually only found the boomerang throw entertaining in the plaza. I’ve checked out a few worlds I thought some were kinda ok but nothing wow I might continue to pop in once in awhile to see what’s new but this isn’t my go to for fun.

and…

For anyone that has played Rec Room, they know that [it] is much better.

1. When you grab anything in here, the physics are terrible. Almost everything is going through your hand or not feeling realistic at all.
2. The graphics aren’t anything to be in awe of. Many other games have better and smoother graphics.
3. Almost no options for avatars. The avatar options are VERY limited.
4. I tried playing multiple games and I was the only person in any of them. Very very very boring.
5. Facebook takeover…talking about how much they monitor you. It’s just unsettling how they will record and watch and listen in on you and you won’t know.

And some people were just downright cranky:

Interesting. I liked the interaction as I first met up with older beings. But I’m hoping there are some filter/settings? to limit age groups? I think it would be a good idea to keep adults out of kids playing. (obvious reasons) and personally as a older man I had fun working with others until a young man (maybe 9 yr old?) joined us and though he was over all nice… I still got a head ache quickly with his noises and yapping and all around high pitched voice. Nothing wrong with that but it ruined my experience and the two other people I was working with on a puzzle… left. (I think for same reason). So I suggest adding a limit (who you see/join?) maybe setting a low limit of 18 and a higher limit of 40… or older folks like myself might want to limit 40-70. It just keeps those with more in common together and doesn’t let a youngster ruin a good thing like we had happen today. Personally I’d prefer 20+ and prefer no profanity. (maybe a setting). There were a couple of f’bombs and though I’m no prude… I’d prefer no hearing cursing unless it’s a slip.

One user felt that the actual product didn’t really match up to the advertising:

After spending a couple of days doing a little bit of everything, I have to say it’s not at all what I expected. Last year’s commercials set a much higher bar. However, world creation tools exceeded expectations as it almost seems to be a 3D modeling community more than anything else. (The problem with that is the majority of community members today are not modeling artists, so I miss the ‘consistently’ rich environments I get in Bigscreen for example.) IMO if the worlds could be made richer by novices then that would be spectacular! To do that I would suggest you offer room templates and a variety of editable objects like furniture and room boxes that we could customize —but it would be good if you could beat Rec Room’s childish templates, and get closer to the standard of last year’s Horizon commercials.

Here’s the commercial he was probably referring to:

But there are also many positive comments in the user reviews (and half of the earliest reviewers gave Facebook Horizon the highly favourable rating of five stars out of five):

After going through a couple hours of what Horizon has to offer I must say I’m very pleased and impressed by what I’ve seen so far. This definitely has a ton of room for all types of possibilities. I got one am very excited to see what will be coming as more and more developers contribute to this great app!!!

Of course, Facebook Horizon is still in an invite-only beta test mode, and is still very much a work-in-progress. Once Facebook adds to and refines the features of the product, and decides to open the doors to the general public, it will be very interesting to monitor this page over time, to see if the overall tone of the user reviews changes over time. (For example, Sansar has been absolutely crucified in its Steam reviews.)

Thank you to Wuhao for the heads-up!