OT: Big Apple Event Tomorrow at 10am Pacific Standard Time

[Bart]

Tomorrow Apple is supposed to show something very interesting at 10am Pacific Standard Time.

I was invited to join the team in 2018 after giving a GDC talk on HoloLens games I had built. What I spent most of my time working on from 2018-2021 is still a long ways away but my very first project at Apple was related to what will reportedly be shown tomorrow. Tune in to get a glimpse of the future.

[Ian]

Pretty interesting headset ... I mean the tech specs are great. Fantastic resolution. But $3500 lolol
I have a hard time seeing this as a successful business .. but who knows. Maybe people have money to literally burn.
It has almost no games ... I guess they'll need to be literally ported to this platform.
I wonder what about steamvr compatibility (or openxr) and connectivity to a PC or mac ? I guess that's a no go.
Imagine having a 3 grand headset and not being able to connect it to your pc.

[Bart]

Pretty interesting headset ... I mean the tech specs are great. Fantastic resolution. But $3500 lolol

It's definitely a prosumer device The specs are years ahead of the competition. And to think - it was designed in 2017! We used a succession of head-crushing dev kits because the silicon hadn't taped out yet, so it was simulated with 4 iPad SoCs on a bunch of logic boards with FPGAs. The dev kits were suspended from cranes attached via vice clamp to your desk. Had one here in Reno for several months.

I have a hard time seeing this as a successful business .. but who knows. Maybe people have money to literally burn.

Fair point. I'm 50/50 on whether this really takes off in the long-run. Keep in mind that Gen 1 Apple products offer only a glimmer of future potential. First gen Watch was pretty crap but look at it now. Could go the same way here. That said, the unveil was different than I expected and it's clear they ran into a lot of trouble along the way. The key pillar of the program, co-presence, wasn't really present in any recognizable form. Immersive FaceTime? Erm....

But you can see what they are going for with those digital scans of yourself to create rendered representations. Early word from journalists who tried it is that it really works and works well. It just isn't ready for full 3D avatar usage yet. Between Meta Reality Labs and Apple, I expect this problem to be solved on a 5 year time frame.

Of course you and I know the killer use case: Scud Race cabinets in your living room.

It has almost no games ... I guess they'll need to be literally ported to this platform.
I wonder what about steamvr compatibility (or openxr) and connectivity to a PC or mac ? I guess that's a no go.

Don't expect Steam or OpenXR. Games will need to be ported but the integration with Unity will be much deeper than I expected. A feature of visionOS is that it's a proper multi-tasking system, allowing multiple apps to live together simultaneously in space. Obviously, this would make it impossible to use a traditional game engine as the OS manages rendering as a system service via RealityKit. Well, Unity just announced something called PolySpace that will allow them to offload rendering to RealityKit while they handle everything else for your app (simulation, physics, etc.)
That's pretty wild and defied my own expectations!

Imagine having a 3 grand headset and not being able to connect it to your pc.

Sounds like an idea for a third party app I'm sure Virtual Desktop will be ported from Quest to this.

[Ian]

My issue is or was that almost all of the content was 2d in nature. Why would you want to use a headset for essentially 2d apps?

[Bart]

My issue is or was that almost all of the content was 2d in nature. Why would you want to use a headset for essentially 2d apps?

It was a weird demo no doubt. It can absolutely do spatial content and with ARKit, it's better than any other headset for that sort of thing. The developer sessions that are now popping up on the WWDC web site show plenty of spatial examples and attendees report spatial demos (e.g., a portal opening on the wall to a prehistoric landscape and a photorealistic dinosaur entering your room and snapping at your hands.)

2D UX at the system level is the right call IMHO. Fancy 3D interfaces are a distraction and unfamiliar. They nailed the UX by all accounts (it wasn't done when I was there). Eye tracking + pinch, with some direct touch support = Chef's Kiss.