The Apple Vision Pro’s launch in Europe this week has given those of us on this side of the Atlantic the first chance to go hands (well, face) on with Apple’s latest attempt to transform and dominate an emerging tech market. Whether you call it virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality or spatial computing, all of these headsets lean on the same fundamental components and are pulling in roughly the same direction. So, how is Apple Vision Pro now that it’s in UK English? And can it really be another step on a path to a new paradigm of computing?
Our experience with Apple Vision Pro comes primarily from a 30-minute demo at an Apple retail store, first customising the headset to our particular specification and then running through a sequence of apps and experiences.
To be utterly reductive, it’s the retail store equivalent of popping the original PSVR on your nan’s head and loading up that shark tank demo. However, where you wouldn’t expect that one tech demo to convince your nan to rush out, buy a new console and headset, and then become an avid gamer, Apple’s more general approach and demo could have broader appeal in the long run.
And one thing’s certain: the first impressions of Apple Vision Pro, as carefully managed and guided as they are, are fantastic.
The demo starts with scanning your face using your own iPhone to get the best fit for your particular noggin, which is then prepared in the back of the store (now notably using the dual strap instead of the knitted solo loop) while you’re given a short rundown of the handful of gestures you’ll need through the 20-30 minute demo, right down to how you should pick it up.
Coming from other VR and AR headsets, the pass-through video for your surroundings is ridiculously good. Sure, there is some warping and distortion around the periphery because of the lenses between your eyes and the screens, but the raw video feed is incredibly high quality, the per-eye pixel density exceptional, and the way that the Vision Pro’s chips blend elements into this is almost flawless. The user interface is all about focussing on elements with your eyes, and then touching thumb to index finger to select, to grab and move, and both hands to zoom, and again, it’s impressive how good the tracking is.
Apple Vision Pro effortlessly blends real and virtual environments. (Photograph by Apple)
A few key elements are highlighted by Apple, with a tour through various photos and videos that show off the raw quality of rendering them in a floating window before you, the ability to wrap a panorama around you, and to have 3D videos and photos with shifting perspectives – a little skewed, admittedly, with a video featuring a birthday cake that appears more oval than round, but it’s effective, nonetheless.
The effect is absolutely perfected by the other elements of the demo. The virtual immersive environment that you can blend in and out to cover up just the right amount of your surroundings can give a serene escape, while keeping you as grounded in reality as you need. If you want to watch TV, that can either be floated in the real world or in these spaces, and there’s a fantastic way that flashes of light can illuminate the virtual space, and be reflected in the water of the lake at Mount Hood.
There’s some fantastic effects with virtual displays casting light and reflections in Immersive Environments (Photograph by Apple)
While enhancing general computing is a key part of their pitch, Apple realise that entertainment will be pretty important here. A demo reel of 180° captured video runs through all manner of sports highlights, musical performances, parkour and close ups with animals in the wild. It’s the 3D TV fad taken to the next level, but with dramatically positioned angles for basketball and football, there’s a sense of presence that is exceptional for how just how unspectacular it actually feels to watch like this.
Arguably, they’re yet to deliver on any of that promised content, and we’re in that uncomfortable chicken and egg situation that various VR platforms have ended up in. Apple needs to get their special camera rigs placed in two or three places at every MLS stadium, every NBA court, and bring this to viewers live.
But as much as Apple is targeting Spatial Computing, and as high end as their approach is, it’s come at the expense of also catering to the one real niche that general consumers have latched onto: gaming. There’s a wealth of flatscreen games that you can play using their iPad versions, and a handful of games that have been adapted to play in augmented reality – What the Golf? is one such example, beaming the quirky puzzles onto your environment. However, you need to either be using a traditional gamepad or leaning purely on eyes and pinched interactions, which is inherently limiting.
The popular Steve Jobs adage for the iPhone was that if you saw a stylus then they’d failed, but that was an inherently limiting stance for the iPad that it took years before the Apple Pencil rectified it, turning it into an exceptional platform for artists in one fell swoop. The simple fact is that Apple Vision Pro needs to have controllers in order to be a viable VR gaming platform, and cannot simply rely on hand and eye tracking to get the job done. Having controllers, whether made by Apple or their usual close partners, won’t detract from the hand tracking that enables everything else the system does more generally and how it puts augmented reality first, but will enable and improve much broader gaming experiences that can match what’s on Quest, SteamVR and the likes.
Gaming on Vision Pro currently relies mostly on augmented reality. (Photograph by Maze Theory)
Our one minimal gaming demo came with Infinite Inside a few weeks ago, a title that blends AR and VR into one and has minimalist direct interactions and constrained motion. Anything that needs full locomotion, though, or more complex interactions will benefit greatly from analogue sticks and button presses, not to mention greatly reduce the burden on motion tracking and hand analysis by having more precise IR tracking of the controller itself.
It’s often the way that Apple launches a new product and then figures out what the true purpose and appeal of it is – the Apple Watch for fitness, iPhone as a hub for apps, etc. etc. – and Apple will need to hone in on what the Vision is really for and best at. The second problem, in a period where Apple hardware has become more and more expensive, is bringing the price down far enough to make that compelling, and the third is juggling Vision Pro, the new push for Apple Intelligence in every platform, and maintaining all their other products. We don’t know what Apple’s metric for success will be here, but this will be a niche category for the foreseeable future. Hopefully they don’t lose interest, because as we often see, Apple often helps to rise the tide for their rival ships as well.
