The experience of creating in VR is more compelling than any user experience of any device Apple makes. Next to Tiltbrush in a Vive, painting apps on the iPad Pro are banal and dull. VR apps are a new artistic & creative medium, capturing the ability to draw in space, which sculptors have been chasing since the dawn of time.
Tiltbrush is a revelation. Absolutely one of the best experiences I've had with my Rift. The ability to draw in 3D space with no limitations of real-world physics unlike anything else. I've "lost myself", forgetting that the world I was in wasn't real, to a greater degree in Tiltbrush than I have with any other app, including slick "AAA" games like Robot Recall. It's really something that everyone should try.
Are you by any chance involved with Matterport? Just curious.
nope, but it's an interesting looking tech (if it's the VR house tours thing).
Unfortunately right now one of the holes in the VR toolset is something to link proper room-scale walkaround environments together into node-based tours, the way we used to in Quicktime VR with tools like Livestage Pro or Quicktime VR Authoring Studio. Currently you need to have a Unity developer or similar, and have them convert your output into game engine geometry.
VR and AR adoption may rapidly begin to accelerate. Particularly going mainstream with higher res devices that no longer have screen door effect, wider field of view, and when mobile processors are more powerful as stand alone. Apple will likely have all 3 of those on lock down as soon as they release something. Probably why they are waiting until they have addressed technical issues like lag, comfort, style, graphics power (high optimized), field of view, weight, optical lensing, input interface, display, etc.
Current vr has about half acceptable field of view, so that will make a big difference. When you can put on light weight glasses and have a no-compromised experience transporting to movie theaters, locations, sports, venues, adoption may start to pick up.
Generally Apple thinks about how to make something with daily repeatable value and how to solve obstacles to usefulness and usability required before moving forward. Other competitors tend to hit bullet marks on a spec sheet with less focus on ecosystem integration with high usability/low hassle/low complexity.
Another thing is creating high quality ar/vr experiences which is kind of hit and miss currently so it will be interesting what they come up with outside of games. It might be interesting if AppleTv is available right from AR/VR.
Are you by any chance involved with Matterport? Just curious.
nope, but it's an interesting looking tech (if it's the VR house tours thing).
Unfortunately right now one of the holes in the VR toolset is something to link proper room-scale walkaround environments together into node-based tours, the way we used to in Quicktime VR with tools like Livestage Pro or Quicktime VR Authoring Studio. Currently you need to have a Unity developer or similar, and have them convert your output into game engine geometry.
Yep that's what I meant, your handle was what made me wonder. Hopefully there will be a far better way to to move about in the new tech. Heck just playing GTA V or even in a OpenSimulator (I build and host servers for opensim) is light years ahead of QT VR and its nodes.
Wow some memories awakened there though. I used to make those QT VR linked node tours back in the ... when was it ... 90's I assume? My wife is a realtor and it was a brilliant way for touring homes but alas too complicated for most end users. Google maps when on the ground always reminds me of that project.
It was Microsoft's evil purloining of QT and making their Windows Media version non compliant that was the problem back then with QT VR Studio. Most people had a PC and nothing we built in the then amazing QT Studio environment worked under Windows correctly if at all.
Probably why they are waiting until they have addressed technical issues like lag, comfort, style, graphics power (high optimized), field of view, weight, optical lensing, input interface, display, etc.
It seems to be a common idea within the Apple-sphere that somehow Apple can produce some sort of "optimised" graphics hardware for VR, as if that is in some way going to make up for Apple being hamstrung with secondrate GPUs.
It's worth considering that the current graphics hardware IS the "highly optimised" hardware that is supposed to enable VR. Gaming-optimised cards, for a medium that is based on gaming engines.
It's entirely probable that it isn't actually possible for Apple to produce "VR specific" graphics hardware that's any better at the task, than that which Nvidia is making. There may not be an engineering solution to the problem of "we don't want to buy GPUs from Nvidia".
It was Microsoft's evil purloining of QT and making their Windows Media version non compliant that was the problem back then with QT VR Studio. Most people had a PC and nothing we built in the then amazing QT Studio environment worked under Windows correctly if at all.
To be honest, Microsoft didn't really have any impact on QTVR - that one is pretty squarely in Apple's court for the boneheaded idea of nagwareing people to pay for QT Pro. That was an almost universal complaint for windows clients having to install QT, also the lack of a built in loading progress indicator as a part of QTVR files.
That, and not producing a cubic QTVR update for QTVRAS, which was a kiss of death that Apple keeps making - coming up with formats and technologies, but not making the authoring tools to produce them (eg iBooks Author not being able to produce Fixed-Layout EPUB files, despite it being a format sold on the iBooks Store).
Instead of worrying about the AR headset market, why doesn’t Apple first make better use of AR on the iPhone?
When AR was first shown, There were illustrations showing it being used with the backside camera to give the viewer a constant picture of the real world on the other side of the phone, helping us to not be so distracted by our screens that we are unaware of the real world. Plus also be able to enhance the view with real time suggestions of restaurants, directions, warnings to avoid accidents, things that would really enhance our real world experience, rather than just putting a dinosaur on a desk or walking around with these ridiculous goggles, further divorcing ourselves from the world around us. Doesn’t sound like Apple’s values to me.
I am sorry these headset are geek products and there is no mass consumer appeal for something that sits on your head like these. Until people are not so worried about how they look a product like this will not have any use other than gaming or an application like the one in the video above.
Instead of worrying about the AR headset market, why doesn’t Apple first make better use of AR on the iPhone?
Apple's justification or not doing touchscreen on the Mac, is that holding the weight of your arms out to the screen is poor ergonomics - "gorilla arms" as Steve jobs said. On that basis, why is holding the weight of a device in your outstretched arm not a recipe for even greater gorilla-ism?
AR on the screen is an intermediate step to provide a public shakedown of the background image-matching tech, so that by the time glasses-tech catches up (and we could be a decade from that being compact and power efficient enough to do it in a mobile context), Apple has a mature technology stack.
A problem is that developers aren't really using Apple's stack directly, they're using intermediate layer development tools that go for the common denominators between Apple and Googles's technologies. Also, Leap Motion (who pivoted from an air-gesture puck for macOS, into hand tracking for VR) have got this glasses AR tech working already, and they're open-sourcing the hardware and software to do it. By the time Apple's tech is mature enough to be the way they'd *like* to do it, it may have already been commoditised.
Instead of worrying about the AR headset market, why doesn’t Apple first make better use of AR on the iPhone?
Apple's justification or not doing touchscreen on the Mac, is that holding the weight of your arms out to the screen is poor ergonomics - "gorilla arms" as Steve jobs said. On that basis, why is holding the weight of a device in your outstretched arm not a recipe for even greater gorilla-ism?
AR on the screen is an intermediate step to provide a public shakedown of the background image-matching tech, so that by the time glasses-tech catches up (and we could be a decade from that being compact and power efficient enough to do it in a mobile context), Apple has a mature technology stack.
A problem is that developers aren't really using Apple's stack directly, they're using intermediate layer development tools that go for the common denominators between Apple and Googles's technologies. Also, Leap Motion (who pivoted from an air-gesture puck for macOS, into hand tracking for VR) have got this glasses AR tech working already, and they're open-sourcing the hardware and software to do it. By the time Apple's tech is mature enough to be the way they'd *like* to do it, it may have already been commoditised.
Pretty cool demo there from Leap Motion. Not perfect, but the inclusion of masking for graphics obscured by hands is impressive. Real-time z-depth masking is something that's just starting to be utilized in filmmaking, so this will continue to improve.
What I’d like is an AR experience, where the glasses could basically make a LOT of stuff redundant.
Like at work. Why have anything else than a flat desk surface to work on? Literally anything else is data and could be rendered through AR glasses, then manipulated with your hands. You could have AR created papers, AR created computer screens (or just go all out and have the whole area around you be AR created data in some form). The only thing you’d need to keep is a keyboard, because our hands still need to feel stuff and we’re not close to making gloves with haptic feedback.
You wouldn’t need anything on the walls - all that would be AR created as well. You wouldn’t need to meet physically, unless you wanted to - AR would solve that immediately.
I don’t think that VR has a lot of future. But AR will be amazing.
I cringe when people suggest the headset NEEDS to have an iPhone strapped to your face.
Apple isn't into that Nerdy Google/MS stuff. They will make sleek glasses with no external hardware input if they enter the space. It won't be huge hardware like current models that makes us look like aliens.
NOPE
No cyborg fashion.
Something like this would be the goal:
Claire1 is right, all of the hardware and software has to fit into a regular pair of glasses, the GEEKS of the tech world don't seem to understand, and no one other than Apple has the in house hardware (CPU chips) and software (OS) ability to make it work 10 years from now....Remember the orignal iPad brick in 2001.
In short all of the electronics in a 12.9 iPad pro has to fit in (on) the left and right arms of a regular pair of glasses (includes a new OS too) with the screens being the left and right glass, we are 10 years away from that.
I think VR headsets will go the way of 3D on Television, into room 101, extinct in other words.
Hmm yeah except it’s already been here way longer (I played the VR game Dactyl Nightmare in an arcade decades ago). VR is a particular use case, which will survive for this reason. Unlike TV watching, which is not niche, which is why 3D failed to supplant it.
I think VR headsets will go the way of 3D on Television, into room 101, extinct in other words.
You clearly haven't used them. They are already fantastic and are getting better and cheaper going forward. My vive has almost completely replaced television for entertainment and is a fantastic for exercise too.
I am sorry these headset are geek products and there is no mass consumer appeal for something that sits on your head like these. Until people are not so worried about how they look a product like this will not have any use other than gaming or an application like the one in the video above.
last part is nonsense. People don't worry at all about how they look. They have fun. And what's wrong with having fun? Gaming, exercise, portable movie theater.
Every single person I've ever shown Beat Saber to wants their own VR system. It's only a geek product right now because it's too complicated to set up, too expensive to buy, and since it's tacked onto windows, there are occasional times you have to use the windows desktop to get the VR system to load. That all gets fixed by Oculus Quest when it comes out later this spring.
Also, I bring my Oculus Go on the airplane to watch Netflix (pretty much the only time I watch TV shows anymore) and every time I do, people ask about it, when I let them see what I'm seeing (a movie theater sized screen), they all want one. I don't use Oculus Go for normal VR, without 6 degrees of freedom and hand tracking it doesn't work for any of the best games.
Probably why they are waiting until they have addressed technical issues like lag, comfort, style, graphics power (high optimized), field of view, weight, optical lensing, input interface, display, etc.
It seems to be a common idea within the Apple-sphere that somehow Apple can produce some sort of "optimised" graphics hardware for VR, as if that is in some way going to make up for Apple being hamstrung with secondrate GPUs.
It's worth considering that the current graphics hardware IS the "highly optimised" hardware that is supposed to enable VR. Gaming-optimised cards, for a medium that is based on gaming engines.
It's entirely probable that it isn't actually possible for Apple to produce "VR specific" graphics hardware that's any better at the task, than that which Nvidia is making. There may not be an engineering solution to the problem of "we don't want to buy GPUs from Nvidia".
There really is no reason to think Apple couldn't build a VR CPU that is vastly better/faster at graphics than the chip being used for Oculus Quest. They kill it in mobile chip design.
Apple is missing the boat with VR. Oculus is killing it.
Where is Oculus is killing it? certainly not in any earnings report....The hardware for VR/AR has to get a lot smaller, even the Apple Watch still has to get smaller 2 generations away.
Apple is missing the boat with VR. Oculus is killing it.
Where is Oculus is killing it? certainly not in any earnings report....The hardware for VR/AR has to get a lot smaller, even the Apple Watch still has to get smaller 2 generations away.
Killing it with products, ecosystem, market share. Their most important product for all of that comes out in a few weeks. They aren’t trying to make profit yet, they are trying to create and lead a whole new platform of computing and be the company that controls the ecosyste the way apple and google do with mobile.
Room-scale VR is already moving away from Lighthouse-style external sensors and towards HoloLens-style "inside-out" systems with the sensors in the headsets. Microsoft's "Mixed Reality" standard uses this technique.
I'm really looking forward to more advancements in the AR space. I've spent some decent time with a HoloLens and it's a very exciting glimpse at what the future holds. The included games, in particular, are incredibly cool.
Some of the HoloLens applications are very impressive.
Demos like this illustrate that future workers will either be dummies who have no clue what they are doing and must be guided like sheep through every step of a process, or robots will soon replace manual laborers en masse. I think both scenarios will come to pass.
So maybe this technology will bring back jobs to America!!
Comments
Unfortunately right now one of the holes in the VR toolset is something to link proper room-scale walkaround environments together into node-based tours, the way we used to in Quicktime VR with tools like Livestage Pro or Quicktime VR Authoring Studio. Currently you need to have a Unity developer or similar, and have them convert your output into game engine geometry.
Particularly going mainstream with higher res devices that no longer have screen door effect, wider field of view, and when mobile processors are more powerful as stand alone.
Apple will likely have all 3 of those on lock down as soon as they release something.
Probably why they are waiting until they have addressed technical issues like lag, comfort, style, graphics power (high optimized), field of view, weight, optical lensing, input interface, display, etc.
Current vr has about half acceptable field of view, so that will make a big difference.
When you can put on light weight glasses and have a no-compromised experience transporting to movie theaters, locations, sports, venues, adoption may start to pick up.
Generally Apple thinks about how to make something with daily repeatable value and how to solve obstacles to usefulness and usability required before moving forward. Other competitors tend to hit bullet marks on a spec sheet with less focus on ecosystem integration with high usability/low hassle/low complexity.
Another thing is creating high quality ar/vr experiences which is kind of hit and miss currently so it will be interesting what they come up with outside of games.
It might be interesting if AppleTv is available right from AR/VR.
Wow some memories awakened there though. I used to make those QT VR linked node tours back in the ... when was it ... 90's I assume? My wife is a realtor and it was a brilliant way for touring homes but alas too complicated for most end users. Google maps when on the ground always reminds me of that project.
It was Microsoft's evil purloining of QT and making their Windows Media version non compliant that was the problem back then with QT VR Studio. Most people had a PC and nothing we built in the then amazing QT Studio environment worked under Windows correctly if at all.
It's worth considering that the current graphics hardware IS the "highly optimised" hardware that is supposed to enable VR. Gaming-optimised cards, for a medium that is based on gaming engines.
It's entirely probable that it isn't actually possible for Apple to produce "VR specific" graphics hardware that's any better at the task, than that which Nvidia is making. There may not be an engineering solution to the problem of "we don't want to buy GPUs from Nvidia".
To be honest, Microsoft didn't really have any impact on QTVR - that one is pretty squarely in Apple's court for the boneheaded idea of nagwareing people to pay for QT Pro. That was an almost universal complaint for windows clients having to install QT, also the lack of a built in loading progress indicator as a part of QTVR files.
That, and not producing a cubic QTVR update for QTVRAS, which was a kiss of death that Apple keeps making - coming up with formats and technologies, but not making the authoring tools to produce them (eg iBooks Author not being able to produce Fixed-Layout EPUB files, despite it being a format sold on the iBooks Store).
When AR was first shown, There were illustrations showing it being used with the backside camera to give the viewer a constant picture of the real world on the other side of the phone, helping us to not be so distracted by our screens that we are unaware of the real world. Plus also be able to enhance the view with real time suggestions of restaurants, directions, warnings to avoid accidents, things that would really enhance our real world experience, rather than just putting a dinosaur on a desk or walking around with these ridiculous goggles, further divorcing ourselves from the world around us. Doesn’t sound like Apple’s values to me.
Apple's justification or not doing touchscreen on the Mac, is that holding the weight of your arms out to the screen is poor ergonomics - "gorilla arms" as Steve jobs said. On that basis, why is holding the weight of a device in your outstretched arm not a recipe for even greater gorilla-ism?
AR on the screen is an intermediate step to provide a public shakedown of the background image-matching tech, so that by the time glasses-tech catches up (and we could be a decade from that being compact and power efficient enough to do it in a mobile context), Apple has a mature technology stack.
A problem is that developers aren't really using Apple's stack directly, they're using intermediate layer development tools that go for the common denominators between Apple and Googles's technologies. Also, Leap Motion (who pivoted from an air-gesture puck for macOS, into hand tracking for VR) have got this glasses AR tech working already, and they're open-sourcing the hardware and software to do it. By the time Apple's tech is mature enough to be the way they'd *like* to do it, it may have already been commoditised.
Like at work. Why have anything else than a flat desk surface to work on? Literally anything else is data and could be rendered through AR glasses, then manipulated with your hands. You could have AR created papers, AR created computer screens (or just go all out and have the whole area around you be AR created data in some form). The only thing you’d need to keep is a keyboard, because our hands still need to feel stuff and we’re not close to making gloves with haptic feedback.
You wouldn’t need anything on the walls - all that would be AR created as well. You wouldn’t need to meet physically, unless you wanted to - AR would solve that immediately.
I don’t think that VR has a lot of future. But AR will be amazing.
Claire1 is right, all of the hardware and software has to fit into a regular pair of glasses, the GEEKS of the tech world don't seem to understand, and no one other than Apple has the in house hardware (CPU chips) and software (OS) ability to make it work 10 years from now....Remember the orignal iPad brick in 2001.
In short all of the electronics in a 12.9 iPad pro has to fit in (on) the left and right arms of a regular pair of glasses (includes a new OS too) with the screens being the left and right glass, we are 10 years away from that.
Every single person I've ever shown Beat Saber to wants their own VR system. It's only a geek product right now because it's too complicated to set up, too expensive to buy, and since it's tacked onto windows, there are occasional times you have to use the windows desktop to get the VR system to load. That all gets fixed by Oculus Quest when it comes out later this spring.
Also, I bring my Oculus Go on the airplane to watch Netflix (pretty much the only time I watch TV shows anymore) and every time I do, people ask about it, when I let them see what I'm seeing (a movie theater sized screen), they all want one. I don't use Oculus Go for normal VR, without 6 degrees of freedom and hand tracking it doesn't work for any of the best games.
Apple is missing the boat with VR. Oculus is killing it.
So maybe this technology will bring back jobs to America!!