Apple fans are starting to return their Vision Pros::The return window for the very first Apple Vision Pro buyers is fast approaching — and some have taken to social media to explain why they won’t be keeping their headsets.
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The influencers got their videos, I guess.
Yeh I’d be curious if these people ever intended to hang on to it or off it was just for the grams.
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Or just to try it out. I would totally like to try one on for a few days.
These are the same complaints most report for most vr headsets, headaches, nausea and dry eyes… Disappointing article.
Some are, sure. But others have to do with the weight. The most interesting rationals for returning it are because it’s shit as a productivity tool. So if you can’t really use it for work, there aren’t many games on it, then why are you keeping it? At that point it’s just a TV that only you can watch (since it doesn’t support multiple user profiles).
It’s obviously made for porn only, that’s they only thing you can do with it
Actually, according to reports it can’t even do that right.
and its kinda creepy to masturbate with a bunch of cameras pointed at it
And here I am just thankful that I don’t have to hold the camera with one hand
360° babyyy
It’s the pinch gesture isn’t it…
Nah the battery only lasts a couple of hours.
I can’t come more than 20 times anymore. What do I do with the other hour and a half of battery time?
Put it away and play a niche mod for a beloved Ukranian developed game from 2007?
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Same Apple story: great hardware, but their walled ecosystem. They would sell so many more units if they were compatible with software used by millions of people and corporations…
The other thing I keep hearing is that it’s a super expensive purchase that people don’t know what to do with once they’ve got it. I’m old enough to remember when they said the same thing about early home computers ($3000-$5000 in equivalent cost) from the late 70s and early 80s.
Silicon and engineering has come down in price and vr is hardly revolutionary at this point so yea price point is stupid high but what do people expect from apple
Given the odd weight distribution, it’s also unfortunate that this may have been their first headset.
Making a VR headset from aluminium and glass with nothing to balance it in the back is yet again another perfect example of Apple going hard with form over function.
One reason for not balancing it in the back is probably because putting stuff in the back makes it uncomfortable if you want to lean back in a chair or a couch which is probably very important for the device since it’s primarily for sitting down compared to most other VR headsets.
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You put it on, and your neck just makes an accordion noise.
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Your comment suggests you read the first paragraph and didn’t read the rest which is disappointing.
The article talks about the most common complaint being comfort, then goes on to other complaints like the fact it offers no productivity savings and is expensive.
It’s a bit of a no brainer though at end of day. Anyone surprised this is just a gimmick like any other is new to the VR space.
Yea looking at the site I mistook the large gaps between paragraphs to be the end of the article. Going over it and I can see I missed a large deal. But I am still unsurprised with the reasons why people are returning the headsets. Its expensive, sold for productivity yet is restricting and uncomfortable. Vr has a place in the world and that is mostly media consumption.
Some people are returning it because they had expectations that using VR would be immediately comfortable. The headset is heavier and more poorly strapped/distributed than ‘alternatives’ but it’s also graphically far more stunning. I honestly hope they stay in the game and push the competitors to up their game. maybe we can get pancake lenses, foveated rendering and eye tracking in a $1500 package.
So the quest pro? Foveated rendering only matters if you don’t have the graphics throughput to render it all, so I don’t totally buy that it’s key to a good vr headset so much as helps you get away with cheaper silicon. Maybe enough-lower tdp that it enables slimmer design.
I think foveated rendering also helps with immersion. Being able to blur things you are not specifically looking at and are farther away is a closer match to reality.
Reality doesn’t downsample when you’re not looking at it, your eye does that.
As far as I understand (and do correct me if I’ve got it wrong), your eyes still know they are looking at very small and very rapidly blinking lights in close proximity and in a flat array, which is why it mostly feels like uncanny valley in regards to that exact experience, and why software enhancement/approximation of the effect could be beneficial.
Delayed response but if you’re talking about the general experience of VR being an uncanny valley experience then no, I don’t agree. It’s very common for people who use VR to say that they forgot for a moment that it wasn’t real.
reality doesn’t downsample when you’re not looking
As far as you know. Maybe that’s the reasoning behind weird stuff in quantum mechanics. The cat is both alive and dead until you open the box and look at it.
The whole point of the cat thing was to point out the absurdity of the claim that reality isn’t real until you know about it. The cat is already in whatever state you observe when you open the box. It’s not both alive and dead, it’s either alive or dead. The thought experiment isn’t serious, and it’s not supporting the idea that the cat is somehow magically in both states just because you haven’t yet manipulated the lid of a wooden cube.
When we talk about the cat being both alive and dead, it’s a simplification to help visualize a quantum phenomenon where particles exist in multiple states simultaneously until measured or observed.
Schrodinger came up with the cat to represent the absurdity of quantum mechanics because he thought it was absurd - but that doesn’t mean his metaphor isn’t a useful one. Particles like electrons or photons can exist in a state of superposition, where they hold multiple potential states (e.g., spin up and spin down) at the same time. This isn’t just a theoretical curiosity; it’s been experimentally verified in numerous quantum experiments, such as the double-slit experiment.
The act of measurement in quantum mechanics forces a system to ‘choose’ a definite state from among its superposed states, a process known as wave function collapse. Before measurement, the system genuinely exists in all its possible states simultaneously, not in one state or the other. This is a fundamental aspect of the quantum world
I don’t really look at it as a symptom of lack of graphics throughput, but more as a benefit of eye tracking, which is also potentially something that benefits, say, the immersion of others through portraying your facial expressions more realistically, or something to that effect. You could also use it as a kind of peripheral for games or software, and apple currently uses it as a mouse, so it’s not totally useless. But I also can’t imagine that most developers are going to be imaginative enough to make good use of it, if we can’t even think of good uses for basic shit, like haptic feedback.
Perhaps it breaks even in terms of allowing them to save money they otherwise would’ve spent on rendering, but I dunno if that’s the case, since the camera has to be pretty low latency, and you have to still dedicate hardware resources to the eye tracking and foveated rendering in order to get it to look good. Weight savings, then? I just don’t really know. I guess we’ll see, if it gets more industry adoption.
Sounds exactly what pimax crystal offers
Problem is it comes with pimax customer support
Make it standalone and there you are.
Portal buyers would be suspicious
The problem with this article is that it’s all circumstantial. Sure these are people complaining of problems and critiques, but we’ll never get the full report of how many returns there actually are and why they were returned. That’s just not data Apple will ever give out.
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Can’t use it for games. Can’t use it for porn. What is it for?
For showing off. Of course.
It runs Steam Link very well and has a number of built in games too. And it runs porn great, just not the stereoscopic videos by default, but you can sideload an app for that too.
Yeah, but surely you’d want actual VR games, rather than just Steam Link to a big virtual screen.
Half Life Alyx is a great game, but there’s no way it would ever come to this headset just because of the lack of VR controllers.
I played Alyx already twice through and have no desire to play it again. I have a valve index and a gaming PC for those experiences. The AVR most definitely won’t replace those games, but they are few and far in between right now.
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3D VR porn. You can still watch 2D pornhub porn.
Build it and they will cum
I just gotta say that’s a really great comeback 😂
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Easier said than done. Apple likes to moderate every app and there’s 0 sideloading.
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Oh yea, credit where credit is due. Apple products are always engineering marvels. But man you can do so much more for almost 1/10th of the cost.
Meh, lots of Apple products have heat dissipation issues. Most notably some of the recent macbooks had that issue iirc.
They’re good, but some of the design choices force some hefty technical compromises.
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It can be side loaded actually
Why doesn’t it support 3D VR porn?
Most of those are just video’s aren’t they? Can’t the Apple glasses run videos?
It doesn’t support it out of the box but it’s just a computer… you install the media player that supports that.
Not just porn, but 3D videos in general are stereoscopic videos where it’s side by side. They look like this. Without something proper to split the video across your eyes, you just see this 2D video floating in space rather than get the full 3D experience.
You can do that on a normal screen though.
some are reviewers, i betcha.
Some? Probably most. The others are social media “influencers” making it look like someone would actuality want to buy it.
Don’t most reviewers get their sets for free?
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not the freelance ones, or not always anyway. i think you’re right about the ones that wrote for tech blogs.
Yaaah.
The problem with AVP is that it constantly feels extremely lonely. The fun part about VR is playing stuff together, games, being in the same room even if others are in different countries, have funny full size avatars, interact in a “vr-chat” kind of way. VR is supposed to be a fun version of our world. AVP is extremely serious, too “professional” focused, and especially b o r i n g. All you do on AVP is exactly the same that you would do by yourself with your current devices already. Just even more isolated from the world. And even the most enthusiastic Apple users eventually get this feeling when using AVP. While stuff like Quest 3, Valve Index, PSVR2 all might look “cheap” and “not polished” at first, while using them all you get is “wooow” factor and fun. AVP, yes its well crafted and polished, but it does basically nothing and feels lonely inside it.
I keep reading AVP as Alien vs. Predator, which makes this hilarious. Sorry… that’s on me.
AVP is extremely serious, too “professional” focused, and especially b o r i n g.
But what about the part where the Predator body-slams an Alien? That wasn’t boring! :P
Nah, me too. My A-Level Physics teacher had it on Atari Jaguar.
AVP, yes its well crafted and polished, but it does basically nothing and feels lonely inside it
Gilded cage sort of vibe, yes.
I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem for pretty much most of my life, and I’m all for what the AVP is bringing to the table. However, one VR enthusiast Youtuber I watched recently (Thrillseeker) put down the most compelling argument against the AVP I’ve seen thus far. The AVP does well what all the other headsets don’t, but the AVP also kind of sucks at what other headsets have learned to do well. At the price of the AVP, not only could you buy a Quest 3, but you’d have enough leftover to just build an entire VR Gaming rig to back it up. Then you’d have a setup exponentially more capable than what the AVP is offering.
There’s a lot of salient points here, but here’s my perspective. I have a gaming rig and a high end headset (index) and it’s tied down to one room. The sensors are mounted on the wall and my gigantic PC isn’t going anywhere. The controllers are usually dead, the sensors disconnect when my cats pull the cords. It takes a while for anything to load up and my room has to remain clean and empty. To get a VR experience going it takes time and effort which often is too much for me. The only thing I’m going to do with that setup is play a VR game and I’ve already gotten bored of most of those. The Vision Pro can just go on anytime anywhere and I just gesture to use it. I can stream Steam Link from my gaming PC to allow me to game anywhere and AVP pairs with my Xbox controller. I can take the AVP to work and look at my Mac mini and start working in it. Sure, the setup you describe is more capable for gaming, but AVP fills a wider role, is more accessible, and just works each time I use it. It won’t replace my VR setup for high end VR gaming at home but it’s much more attractive to use regularly, at least for me personally.
I’m not really a fan of Facebook, but I’m kind of wanting a Quest 3 because the cost of the AVP and other headsets just reinforce how much of a value it must be. Maybe it’s just early days, but the AVP just doesn’t do enough of what I want from a headset at even half its price point.
I do want to see what an AV (non pro) will bring to the table, but I think Meta is in a better position to impress with their next Quest headset now that apple has laid their cards on the table. They could sell a quest 4 at twice the price of a quest 3, add in whatever new technologies that might afford, and still be insanely more affordable than an AVP.
100% fair. The price on the AVP is insane compared to the competitors and definitely is not worth it right now unless you are evaluating the AVP for your clients or for programming apps.
Found the Apple marketing person.
Shit, you got me. How did you see through my clever ruse? I’ve spent 8 months commenting and posting to Lemmy in order to blend in, all for this very moment where I can say one tiny positive thing about a new piece of tech. My plans are foiled.
That’s a solid argument toward using an AVP vs a traditional PCVR set up.
… So why not just do that for a fraction of the price on the Quest 3? I do everything you listed on mine, I even take it with me when I travel without any perceived constraints. I, too, can use Steam Link (although I prefer Virtual Remote Desktop currently) and even found myself making some use of the new Xbox GamePass app, and yes, it also pairs with my controller, and my Logitech keyboard and mouse too.
I understand the AVP can fill a wider role than a standard PCVR gaming rig set up, but I feel what you describe as something to compare with the AVP is honestly kind of outdated.
Eye tracking, hand gestures and resolution are superior on AVP. It accesses all my content already in the Apple ecosystem, has no noticeable latency when working from my Mac minis display. It does not require room setup and remembers the locations of my virtual displays all around my home or office. It can display all the spatial videos I’ve shot over the past year on my iPhone 15 pro. I also don’t trust facebook and refuse to have their data farming device scanning my every move. Yes, apples device also has access to that data, but I don’t believe they are allowing it to leave the Secure Enclave chip inside the AVP.
Because Meta can suck my saggy man tits
Apple deserves to be humbled for once!
Apple sucks.
Open Source and Open API or bust. Simple as that for me.
As someone who is unironically into a lot of VR stuff and even owns a pricey headset myself, I did not understand the appeal from the features I’ve seen past looking “”“cool”“”. Even the stuff that looks at least somewhat fun or useful doesnt seem worth it considering the price, especially now that reviews are reporting there are basic features that cheaper headsets perform much better at and are way more comfortable.
Fr, I love VR, but this headset is just Apple trying to cash in on the VR market without understanding what people actually like about VR.
I think they totally understand that there is a legitimate mixed reality / AR use case that people have wanted addressed for decades, but the hardware has never been able to pull it off well.
If I could pop on a light weight headset, and have a desktop with infinite 4K monitors, with a high refresh rate, without breaking my wallet, I would 1000% buy that product.
The hardware isn’t there yet, but I’m glad to see people are investing in platforms that could get us there in a decade or two.
It has some neat features and ideas, but nothing I haven’t seen in other products before. Definitely more polished, and it brings all of those big features together in one package. But for me, it’s the price that kills it. Maybe Apple had a hunch that all of this might happen and they just wanted it out as a setup for the next version?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Parker Ortolani, The Verge’s product manager, told me that he thought using the device led to a burst blood vessel in his eye.
“Despite being as magical to use as I’d hoped, it was simply way too uncomfortable to wear even for short periods of time both due to the weight and the strap designs.
For smart glasses and headsets, having a low nose bridge can mean the device just slips off your face or fails to adequately block out light.
Another engineer wrote on the social media platform X that the “coding experience failed to convince [him]” and focusing issues caused headaches.
“If I’m not using this for productivity, and if I don’t love it for entertainment, and if there aren’t enough games to play on it - I just can’t justify keeping it,” one Reddit user wrote.
While these users are speaking out on social media, we have no idea of the actual return rate — or what Apple’s internal expectations for the Vision Pro are.
The original article contains 621 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It needs controllers and PCVR support. Then it might be worth it.
SOME WOULD SAY you don’t need the controllers. Then you’re just a regular VR headset. Would Apple say that? No. I think this boils down to a dumb product with lackluster payoff at $3.5k.
Less $3.5k and more 3.5mm headphone jack Apple
Most people should just buy a Quest 3
Honestly, no one should buy a Quest 3, or any other Quest for that matter… Meta doesn’t need any more money or tracking data. PS VR2, Vive Pro 2 or even the Valve Index would be better.
850-1200 vs 650 CAD and it’s stand alone. Yah, not exactly comparable.
Paying with your privacy does that
I’m thinking on buying a Quest to dip into PCVR. I’ve heard horror stories about the Index’s poor QC (which is weird given the Steam Deck’s done me well so far) and PSVR2 isn’t compatible with PC. Yes, iVRy exists but that driver is in development and the developer basically said “just buy a Quest if you want a cheap PC VR headset”.
For PCVR only you can get a Quest 2 for $250. Worth it.
Yeah I’m looking at that as well. Friend of mine does say if you want to do full-body tracking the Quest is a pain to do it with, but I’m not deep in PCVR right now haha.
It needs to be maybe 75% cheaper as well as what you’ve said and it becomes worth it.
At this price point it will never be successful.
Is it a flop after all?
We’ll never know. This is all based on people’s complaints online. Apple will never actually release how many were returned and for what reasons.
They’re a public company, we’ll get sales figures and enough proxy numbers to have a good guess. Shareholders are going to want to know.
So, is VR actually good, or is it mostly just for wealthy silicon valley furries to hang out with each other in VRchat, like everyone used to do in second life? The only game that really comes to mind as being something that’s even close to a killer app is beatsaber, and that’s basically just DDR with your upper body. I really haven’t seen much support, both in the way of games, and more importantly, in the way of, say, 3d modelling apps, or something to that effect. Utility software, stuff that’s useful, but is specifically more convenient in virtual reality, stuff that might be benefited by the platform. But then, it’s not really something I’ve looked into much.
Have you tried VR? Because I couldn’t tell from your comment.
If not, then you should try it somewhere. It is pretty neat tech that will blow you away the first time.
If yes, VR still has a way to go. It is out of its honeymoon phase, but the tech is getting better and more companies can see the advantages it can bring. Doubt we will see many simulators in the future with big giant screens, for example.
I’ve tried it at a friend’s house, quest 2, like the other guy, and I think an oculus at another friend’s house, but a quest 2 more recently. It was probably due to game selection, but it was kind of underwhelming, personally. headset was also way too heavy for me.
I dunno, I was more impressed when I used a wii back in 2009 or whatever, when I was like 7. Partially because I was a kid, probably, partially because wii sports is based, but I also think there’s something to be said of the natural symbiosis between motion controls, couch co-op, and a shared screen, even if there’s a lot of inherent limitations to that approach in terms of game design. I might be falling behind all of that in terms of the internet being the new couch co-op, though.
I also think the lack of easy, built in locomotion is something that probably needs to be solved, because it seems like a pretty big limitation in terms of game design and immersion, and I also wanna bring up haptic feedback again because I like haptic feedback and find it useful but nobody else does and it has no support. I think it might help.
I also haven’t really seen many devs taking advantage of the platform’s actual like, capabilities. I’ve seen more devs try to recreate things as they exist in the real world almost 1 to 1, and almost constantly in first person, instead of devs that are like, okay, we have head tracking, we have active motion controls in both hands, we have 3D capable perspective, what can we do with all of that? I haven’t seen many games that are playing with that in a more abstract way. Something like ping pong, for instance, would kind of make a lot of sense, when you look at it from the angle of, what are the specific capabilities are of the platform. You could make a lot of interesting perspective based puzzle games, like echochrome on the PSP, I think that would be worth pursuing.
As for future capabilites, I really have no idea. I think we’ve kind of achieved optimal pixel density for whatever screens we might employ, right, mostly as evidenced by the smartphone market (though we might see some innovations there, I really don’t know). I think the main limitation now would probably be how optics are designed, which seems like kind of a harder problem to deal with. I’d like to see phased array optics with lasers and holograms and stuff become a thing, but that’s still quite a ways off.
I’ve tried Quest 2 once at a friend’s house. I thought it was pretty neat but nothing about the experience made me want to run out and buy one or even plan to buy one in the future. I believe that unless good VR headsets come down in price significantly (sub $100) they’re never going to be more than a niche hobby.
I can tell you straight up right now it’s not just the wealthy furries that are hanging out in VRChat.
VRChat, and similar apps, is their ultimate escapism; they actually get to be and walk around as the character they want themselves to be. So most of the furries I know, some of them not even living in their own apartment, have spent time putting money aside to buy VR headsets complete with full motion setups. Those who really couldn’t save up like that, and/or afford building a PC capable of handling VR, go for the cheapest option of buying a Quest.
Remember Ready Player One? Everyone is poor, living in pretty blegh conditions, yet many people have put a significant portion of their income aside to buy VR headsets? Those would be furries.
damn, I didn’t really know it was that intense, that serious. I guess I have, once again, underestimated the furries, my greatest rivals on this god forsaken planet.
nah but fr that makes a lot of sense. I would’ve just kind of thought, you know, stereotype of wealthy furries in IT shelling out for fursuits and shit, and furries in VR, put 2 and 2 together and blam, wow, the math checks out, but yeah, I do believe there’s probably a good proportion of people for whom it’s important enough to kind of get on top of it asap.
also VR headsets are getting cheaper than I thought, so that’s another factor.
Yes. If “Sadly It’s Bradley”'s YouTube channel is anything to go by, furries (and maybe enterprises) will be the primary purchasers of the AVP. He’s absolutely over the moon about it.
So, I have no idea if it’s any good, but PTC just released an OnShape AR app for AVP.
As an aside, have wanted to like OnShape, but I just can’t get past the sloppy Terms of Use for the free version that appear to bar you from commercializing your designs (expected… several other vendors do this), but they allow anyone who downloads your public designs to commercialize them. That, and the fact that they charge three times as much for their subscription as Fusion does.
That kinda sucks. I would expect more of your mainline 3D modelling things to be on top of this, or there to maybe be some sort of blender modification, some blender fork, that gets it to work in VR. Seems like kind of an obviously much better use case, to me, compared to memorizing a shit ton of hotkeys, and having to maybe buy one of those space mice they sell for the same price as a whole ass VR headset.
There are amazing VR games like HL:Alex and Resident Evil. Not as many as we’d all like but then are out there, and I do believe as porting becomes easier, we will see more AAA titles like this. And honestly playing these games in VR puts their flatscreen versions to shame, so I do think this will become more popular going forward.
For AR we are just at the beginning. I think AVP has proved the concept that you could use such a device for productivity, but I think mass adoption will take many more iterations. But I am sure that bothe AR and VR have long futures ahead of them.
VTOL VR is awesome too. The problem with a lot of games that support VR is they don’t support the controllers to the same extent. Playing VR with an Xbox controller instead of the motion tracking Index controllers just ain’t the same.
I have only owned an oculus quest, and a PlayStation vr2, So I have never had this issue before
