Apple VR headset with hybrid three-display combo will debut in late 2022, analysts claim

AppleInsider

Apple is predicted to release a VR headset with three displays and an AR pass-through mode in the second half of 2022, display analysts predict.

Apple's VR headset

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

Sony is expected to supply Apple with the necessary micro OLED panels. The company recently showed off a 4K VR display with about 4,000 pixels-per-inch, which DSCC says may have been developed for Apple. Going on an assumption of a 4,000 x 4,000 pixel array, DSCC estimates that the display will measure 1.4 inches on the diagonal.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

The advanced display configuration will likely come at a high price for consumers, DSCC said. The firm added that it expects the device to cost "several thousand dollars" -- and offered some predictions about its target market.

"Our assumption is that the first-generation headset will be a high-end device targeted at professionals and developers to expand Apple's ecosystem in AR/VR," the analysts wrote. "The device will also have multiple cameras enabling hand tracking and possibly a LiDAR sensor, according to rumors. Apple will likely include a powerful mobile CPU and GPU in the headset."

DSCC also notes that Meta -- formerly known as Facebook -- is "well on track" to capitalize on the appetite for VR, with an estimated installed base of 10 million headsets. Apple's entry into the space, however, will represent a "significant signal that AR/VR is set to become a major computing platform," the analysts wrote.

Rumors of a high-end Apple VR headset have been circulating for some time. Back in early 2021, a report indicated that the Cupertino tech giant could debut a $3,000 mixed-reality visor with ultra-high-resolution displays in 2022. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the device could weigh less than a pound, while Bloomberg expects the device to be able to handle "games in high-quality virtual reality with snappy chips and high-end displays."

DSCC is an analysis firm that has a good track record of forecasting Apple display moves. For example, DSCC correctly predicted that the iPhone 12 Pro would lack 120Hz support, and that the 2021 MacBook Pro models would have Mini LED displays.

Read on AppleInsider

mike1

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

byronl

mike1 said:

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

exactly. i don’t get this at all

geeaye

Apple is predicted to release a VR headset with three displays and an AR pass-through mode in the second half of 2022, display analysts predict.

So analysts predict that there will be a prediction?

marvin

mike1 said:

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

I would assume that one layer would be used for darkening like the dimming zones on the XDR display. One problem with AR is that when ambient light passes into the glasses, it's very bright, especially outside. Some glasses have tried to counter this by using extremely bright displays like 2,000 nits but this is still not enough in bright light and it impacts battery life a lot. It also affects the color accuracy and opacity because the ambient light mixes with the virtual images. If they have a dimming layer that blocks incoming light behind virtual images in AR, the front layer wouldn't need to be nearly so bright and would be much easier to produce opaque and color accurate images. This part of the display could be made fully dark to go into VR mode, blocking all incoming light and projecting virtual images in front. For example a high resolution microOLED for each eye and a lower resolution dimming layer behind.

For price, I don't expect it to be more than $999 and if it is, not by much, it's not going to be more complex than the premium iPhone lineup. If all the processing would be done by a connected device like an iPhone/Mac, it could be priced at $499 but I expect they will do on-device processing.

mattinoz

mike1 said:

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

Not if far enough away in front of the eyes, they could even put blinkers to make the screen stereoscopic. I'd assume even it's only for peripheral context it would only be grey scale as the outer part of the eye only sees grey giving them effectively 3 times the resolution. 

The 2 high density colour screens would need to track the eyes focus to give the detail to the most sensitive part of the eye.

Still that sounds like a fair high powered device with lots of complexity and sensors in bother direction.
M1 Max and a $3000 price tag doesn't seem out of the question.

edited January 2022

marvin

mattinoz said:

mike1 said:

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

M1 Max and a $3000 price tag doesn't seem out of the question.

M1 Max is an 80W chip with active cooling and a heatsink, they won't put this on glasses. Glasses will have an iPhone class chip like 4nm A16 (around 5W). Very few people would buy $3k glasses, especially if each member of a family has to get them. The iPhone works at premium prices because they are purchased on monthly plans and they sell 250 million units per year. M1 Max products sell low single digit millions. If glasses had this shipping volume, software devs wouldn't write software for them. They need to hit a mass market price point around $1k maximum. Essentially iPhone 14 Pro $999 in wearable form.

byronl

Marvin said:

mike1 said:

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

I would assume that one layer would be used for darkening like the dimming zones on the XDR display. One problem with AR is that when ambient light passes into the glasses, it's very bright, especially outside. Some glasses have tried to counter this by using extremely bright displays like 2,000 nits but this is still not enough in bright light and it impacts battery life a lot. It also affects the color accuracy and opacity because the ambient light mixes with the virtual images. If they have a dimming layer that blocks incoming light behind virtual images in AR, the front layer wouldn't need to be nearly so bright and would be much easier to produce opaque and color accurate images. This part of the display could be made fully dark to go into VR mode, blocking all incoming light and projecting virtual images in front. For example a high resolution microOLED for each eye and a lower resolution dimming layer behind.

For price, I don't expect it to be more than $999 and if it is, not by much, it's not going to be more complex than the premium iPhone lineup. If all the processing would be done by a connected device like an iPhone/Mac, it could be priced at $499 but I expect they will do on-device processing.

but this won't be AR glasses. it'll be a vr headset with passthrough AR using cameras. so ambient light won't be able to go to your eyes anyway because it'll be sealed like all VR headsets are

byronl

Marvin said:

mattinoz said:

mike1 said:

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

M1 Max and a $3000 price tag doesn't seem out of the question.

M1 Max is an 80W chip with active cooling and a heatsink, they won't put this on glasses. Glasses will have an iPhone class chip like 4nm A16 (around 5W). Very few people would buy $3k glasses, especially if each member of a family has to get them. The iPhone works at premium prices because they are purchased on monthly plans and they sell 250 million units per year. M1 Max products sell low single digit millions. If glasses had this shipping volume, software devs wouldn't write software for them. They need to hit a mass market price point around $1k maximum. Essentially iPhone 14 Pro $999 in wearable form.

this isn't glasses. this is an VR headset. and it won't be for all consumers, it'll be for professionals and developers, to build apps for AR glasses that'll come in a few years.

marvin

byronl said:

Marvin said:

mattinoz said:

mike1 said:

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

M1 Max and a $3000 price tag doesn't seem out of the question.

M1 Max is an 80W chip with active cooling and a heatsink, they won't put this on glasses. Glasses will have an iPhone class chip like 4nm A16 (around 5W). Very few people would buy $3k glasses, especially if each member of a family has to get them. The iPhone works at premium prices because they are purchased on monthly plans and they sell 250 million units per year. M1 Max products sell low single digit millions. If glasses had this shipping volume, software devs wouldn't write software for them. They need to hit a mass market price point around $1k maximum. Essentially iPhone 14 Pro $999 in wearable form.

this isn't glasses. this is an VR headset. and it won't be for all consumers, it'll be for professionals and developers, to build apps for AR glasses that'll come in a few years.

Direct from the top:



If they made a separate VR device, it wouldn't sell very well. Oculus Quest 2 has sold 10 million units, PSVR 5 million and these are viewer devices at a $299-399 price point.

VR mode can be added to a device that primarily functions as an AR product and can address a much wider audience.

A developer/professional testing product makes some sense but it's costly to manufacture and market and AR testing is being done on iOS devices. The initial use case for an AR product is to use phone apps, watch movies and as a display for Mac, it will have an immediate use case from launch and 3rd parties will quickly get up to speed in the first year.

If these rumors of a VR headset are from supply chain sources, I think either they're misinterpreting the use case for the displays or they are weeding out leakers. Tim Cook has said a number of times that a bulky headset isn't something they see as being worthwhile and I can't ever see them putting up marketing material with a person wearing a headset.

dewme

Re: “ Very few people would buy $3k glasses, especially if each member of a family has to get them.”

I’m always saddened when I’m in a restaurant or public place and I see an entire family or group of friends gathered around a table - and everyone has their chin on their chest as they stare zombie-like into the mindless abyss of their individual smartphones.  

Extrapolating this depressing scenario to everyone in a shared physical space having a VR headset strapped to their face is truly dystopian. I think this gets us one step closer to the Futurama “Head in a Jar” model of pseudo humanity, which may actually be an upgrade in some ways from the current “meat-a-verse” we’re living in. 

marvin

dewme said:

Re: “ Very few people would buy $3k glasses, especially if each member of a family has to get them.”

I’m always saddened when I’m in a restaurant or public place and I see an entire family or group of friends gathered around a table - and everyone has their chin on their chest as they stare zombie-like into the mindless abyss of their individual smartphones.  

Extrapolating this depressing scenario to everyone in a shared physical space having a VR headset strapped to their face is truly dystopian. I think this gets us one step closer to the Futurama “Head in a Jar” model of pseudo humanity, which may actually be an upgrade in some ways from the current “meat-a-verse” we’re living in. 

The VR headsets are really unpleasant from the outside. There was a conference where loads of people were wearing them and it showed how dystopian it looks:



They had glasses in the Back to the Future scene showing them taking calls on them:



I think as long as they look like normal glasses/sunglasses, it will be ok and they will be hands-free, which is a big part of the problem with smartphones because holding the device requires looking down.

mattinoz

Marvin said:

mattinoz said:

mike1 said:

AppleInsider said:

The Apple VR headset will reportedly sport an "innovative display configuration" consisting of two microOLED displays and a single AMOLED panel, according to analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants said. It will support both virtual reality (VR) and a passthrough augmented reality (AR) modes.

On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision. That's because AMOLED displays have traditionally had too low of a pixel density for VR.

That sounds odd. If the AMOLED display was for peripheral vision, you would need two of those and one of the MicroOLED displays front and center.

M1 Max and a $3000 price tag doesn't seem out of the question.

M1 Max is an 80W chip with active cooling and a heatsink, they won't put this on glasses. Glasses will have an iPhone class chip like 4nm A16 (around 5W). Very few people would buy $3k glasses, especially if each member of a family has to get them. The iPhone works at premium prices because they are purchased on monthly plans and they sell 250 million units per year. M1 Max products sell low single digit millions. If glasses had this shipping volume, software devs wouldn't write software for them. They need to hit a mass market price point around $1k maximum. Essentially iPhone 14 Pro $999 in wearable form.

Think VR headset as an eventual Mac replacement and AR as eventual iPhone replacement, iPad and Watch stays and finally grows into it market space. 
The market here is not every man and his dog it's the new desktop computer you go use it for part of the day while you need it then leave it there. 

fastasleep

Marvin said:
[stuff about AR]

You seem confused. This post is entirely about the VR HMD they're developing before we even hear about an glasses-style AR device, which uses an entirely different kind of image projection through waveguides in the lenses. This product has larger displays directly in front of the eyes, and the third display is for foveated rendering outside of the main areas of eye focus.

crowley

never mind

edited January 2022

marvin

fastasleep said:

Marvin said:
[stuff about AR]

You seem confused. This post is entirely about the VR HMD they're developing before we even hear about an glasses-style AR device, which uses an entirely different kind of image projection through waveguides in the lenses. This product has larger displays directly in front of the eyes, and the third display is for foveated rendering outside of the main areas of eye focus.

Foveated rendering doesn't need a second display, that would be a very impractical use for it and impossible to blend the images together in a good way. Foveated rendering is reducing the rendering quality of content at the periphery of the viewing region. PSVR 2 will use this and one of Sony's patents has some diagrams for how it works:

https://www.esportstalk.com/news/new-patents-from-playstation-show-foveated-rendering-for-psvr2/
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/76/e8/ba/82d4226a7270f3/US20210303067A1.pdf

It use eye tracking to find where the viewer is looking and reduces things like mesh resolution and shading complexity where the eye isn't focused so the software rendering engine can produce images more efficiently. The final rendered output goes to the same display.

If there's an exterior display layer in Apple's product, it won't be used for foveated rendering. I believe they aren't making a VR headset but a dual-mode AR wearable and the exterior layer will be used for dimming.

They are likely building prototype hardware internally that won't reflect the final commercial product.

edited January 2022

marvin

There are a lot of Apple's patent applications for AR/VR listed here:

https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/augmented-reality/

I suspect the foveated display assumption is based on this one:

https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/02/a-euro-patent-reveals-apple-is-working-on-an-8k-foveated-micro-display-for-a-heads-up-display-idevice-and-beyond.html



This uses a single display (14) and it's the content sent to the display that is multi-resolution. One multi-resolution setup described was image capture pass-through with one high-res camera, one low-res and the high-res one only needs to capture the environment where the user is looking, then they blend them.

They do have patents that describe rendering parts of a display but this is also a single display in different modes:

https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/03/apple-dives-deeper-into-a-future-headset-display-with-multiple-scanning-modes-with-one-for-high-refresh-rates.html

One patent describes processing on a separate device and transmitting the rendered image:

https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2019/01/apples-fourth-major-mixed-reality-headset-patent-uncovers-new-layers-of-deep-gaze-retina-technologies.html


If they wanted to avoid sending too much data, potentially they could use two displays and send only the high-res buffer to the front one that is partially drawn and the low-res buffer to the back one that is fully drawn minus the high-res portion and do some blending on the high-res but the high-res frame can easily be compressed.

Here is an Apple patent where they describe the dual mode setup:

https://patents.justia.com/patent/20200225489

"An electronic device such as a head-mounted device may have a display. In some cases, the display may be a transparent display so that a user may observe real-world objects through the display while computer-generated content is overlaid on top of the real-world objects by presenting computer-generated images on the display. The display may also be an opaque display that blocks light from real-world objects when a user operates the head-mounted device. In this type of arrangement, a pass-through camera may be used to display real-world objects to the user."

If they have 4k displays per eye, this would be around 3840 x 2160 x 2 x 24-bit x 90FPS = 4.4GB/s of data for a full frame. If they keep the middle 1/9th of the display at full res and use half res for the other 8/9ths, they could get that down to about 25% of the data. With some fast compression, they could get it down by another 1/3. They should be able to get it down to under 500MB/s, which can be sent wirelessly. The glasses would need to be able to send the tracking data to the device (Mac/iPhone/iPad) and get a rendered frame back very quickly, under about 20ms.

Having the processing and battery off the wearable seems like the best setup to have for the most comfort and would allow getting the full processing power of a Mac without figuring out how to strap it comfortably to someone's head.

mplsp

Call me cynical, but we’ve been hearing about VR and AR for the last 10 years with continual promises that it’s the next big thing and will be going mainstream, but it still hasn’t beyond the gaming market.

why will an Apple VR headset be any different?

marvin

MplsP said:

Call me cynical, but we’ve been hearing about VR and AR for the last 10 years with continual promises that it’s the next big thing and will be going mainstream, but it still hasn’t beyond the gaming market.

why will an Apple VR headset be any different?

The reason Apple usually succeeds with products is getting the user experience right. VR products have different reasons for lack of uptake. Microsoft Hololens is way too expensive at over $3k and it's very bulky. Valve's Index, the Oculus products, HTC Vive and PSVR are also expensive as peripherals that require a PC/console but are within reach of most people at around $299-999 entry points. The software is however lacking and only a handful of games have been worth investing in the hardware. $299 + $60 for 5-10 hours of gameplay and then nothing else to do with it. They are also bulky and not comfortable to wear for long periods of time.

According to the following leak from last year, Apple has an AR product ready to ship for $499, the leaker claimed he saw it on video:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/05/19/apple-glass-details-leaked-will-cost-499-and-work-with-prescriptions





The iOS software updates have had references to AR UI elements:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/10/20860023/apple-ar-headset-starboard-garta-luck-franc-holokit

This product would use the iPhone as a processing unit, possibly a Mac or iPad and would be similar to the Apple Watch type of device.

This has an instant use case as it can act as a virtual display for iPhone/iPad/Mac/TV and can be worn comfortably for long periods of time. Software developers, stock traders etc that have multiple displays in all sorts of orientations can make those all virtual and mobile and still use physical keyboards/mice/trackpads.

VR products don't have this selling point. You can view virtual displays with them but the headsets are bulky and disorienting even for short periods of time and don't offer good AR capability.

Prosser said the launch has been delayed due to Covid but maybe it's just not ready to ship. Apple put up job ads recently for AR software devs, there's dozens of ads, which suggests a launch might be later on.

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200320646/ar-vr-frameworks-engineer?team=SFTWR
https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200268477/ar-vr-systems-frameworks-engineer?team=SFTWR
https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200279221/ar-vr-video-processing-engineer?team=HRDWR
https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200304135/ar-vr-realtime-3d-software-engineer?team=HRDWR
https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200286471/ar-vr-media-tech-lead-engineering-manager?team=HRDWR
https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200156716/computational-display-engineering-manager?team=HRDWR

Those describe latency-critical system software and Apple's next generation interactive computing platforms.

The issue with relying on games to sell these platforms is that good games need a lot of work, they take around 3 years to make so for a gaming-oriented platform to take off, it needs a 3 year lead time in software and this only appeals to a fraction of a single platform's gaming audience. Movies and interactive content appeal to everyone and the same hardware that works for this can be made to work with VR. All Apple has to do to sell these is say you can watch Tiger king on a 100" virtual screen while taking a bath and they will sell like crazy. It's the iPhone without the phone with bigger screens and 3D.

fastasleep

Marvin said:

fastasleep said:

Marvin said:
[stuff about AR]

You seem confused. This post is entirely about the VR HMD they're developing before we even hear about an glasses-style AR device, which uses an entirely different kind of image projection through waveguides in the lenses. This product has larger displays directly in front of the eyes, and the third display is for foveated rendering outside of the main areas of eye focus.

Foveated rendering doesn't need a second display, that would be a very impractical use for it and impossible to blend the images together in a good way. Foveated rendering is reducing the rendering quality of content at the periphery of the viewing region. PSVR 2 will use this and one of Sony's patents has some diagrams for how it works:

https://www.esportstalk.com/news/new-patents-from-playstation-show-foveated-rendering-for-psvr2/
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/76/e8/ba/82d4226a7270f3/US20210303067A1.pdf

It use eye tracking to find where the viewer is looking and reduces things like mesh resolution and shading complexity where the eye isn't focused so the software rendering engine can produce images more efficiently. The final rendered output goes to the same display.

If there's an exterior display layer in Apple's product, it won't be used for foveated rendering. I believe they aren't making a VR headset but a dual-mode AR wearable and the exterior layer will be used for dimming.

They are likely building prototype hardware internally that won't reflect the final commercial product.

I was going by the article, which said: "On the third AMOLED display, the analysts predicted that it could be used for low-resolution peripheral vision"

So perhaps foveated isn't what I meant, but more like a surrounding display that is literally in your periphery that doesn't really display useful information but creates the illusion of a wider FOV by matching colors/etc at the edges of the primary displays, kind of like those stupid LED backlights for TVs that match the content on screen, if that makes sense. I could see that being used to reduce the snorkel mask tunnel vision effect further. 

fastasleep

MplsP said:

Call me cynical, but we’ve been hearing about VR and AR for the last 10 years with continual promises that it’s the next big thing and will be going mainstream, but it still hasn’t beyond the gaming market.

why will an Apple VR headset be any different?

Because it's still nascent tech and we're only starting to see previews of next gen VR tech. AR is even further behind for obvious reasons. There are millions of VR users out there enjoying this stuff for years, PSVR and Oculus are moderately successful for first gen products, and it's about to get much better with PSVR2 etc coming out with far better and easier to use hardware with a better overall experience. As prices come down and quality improves, of course it'll see more adoption. AR is further behind, but the tech will get there.

"Why will Apple" ... uh, /points to iPhone, iPad, Watch, AirPods, ....