I have no need for a $3,500 augmented reality headset that turns my regular computer screen into a virtual computer screen floating in the middle of my apartment, but I regret to say that Apple’s unmatched ability to hype up a gadget has worked on me: the new VisionPro AR headset looks cool, even if it costs more than a lot of OLED TVs.
Here are some of the VisonPro features Apple revealed at its WWDC event today:
- Micro-OLED display with 23-million pixels across two “postage stamp” sized panels, which allow it to display virtual 4K screens
- Hand and eye tracking without controllers or external sensors, plus voice control
- Downward-facing cameras so that you don’t have to hold your hands in front of your face to use gesture controls
- If a person approaches you while you’re immersed in a 3D environment, it’ll detect and display them, which is kinda cool
- A knob you can rotate to control “immersion-level of environments”—how much of the 3D space or real space you see
- A curved OLED screen on the front which shows nearby people your eyes, which looks terrifying in videos, but apparently projects your eyeballs as the correct perspective for each viewer (it’s called “EyeSight,” which is already a word, Apple)
- A button for taking 3D photos and videos
- Avatars called Personas made by scanning your face (might turn out creepy, but certainly more interesting than what Meta’s showing)
- VisionOS, an operating system “designed from the ground up for spatial computing”
- Not-so-good: It uses an external battery pack that only lasts for two-hours
Previously, I’ve made fun of the idea that people are going to stand in empty offices with goggles on their faces, pointing at floating spreadsheets when they could just be using a regular PC. I still think it’s silly, but gee, Apple makes it look so much cooler than Mark Zuckerberg does.
We still haven’t reached RayBan glasses territory—this is still a headset like the $1,000 Meta Quest Pro—but the one-piece curved glass front is cool touch, even if I’m weirded out by the magnified-looking eyeballs it displays, which apparently will look correct in-person.
During its WWDC presentation, Apple spent a lot of time talking about VisionPro’s applications, which range from doing the stuff you’d do on an iPhone to capturing and watching 3D movies and playing games. It was a long presentation that concluded the WWDC keynote (the “one more thing”), and you can watch it in full here, but the gist is that the VisionPro sets itself apart in the way Apple products usually do: by being a complete, self-contained system rather than an interface for existing PCs. It has its own OS, and it’s not clear at the moment whether or not we’ll be able to hook the VisionPro up to a Windows PC to use it like a regular VR headset.
The tech still being young, it’s mainly the most basic specs of new AR or VR headsets that get me curious: tracking and resolution. As for tracking, the VisionPro is free of external sensors like the Meta Quest, but unlike the Quest is also controller-free. Meta can do hand tracking without a controller, too, but it perhaps speaks to Apple’s confidence that it hasn’t even announced VisionPro controllers. (Although, that might just indicate that Apple views the VisionPro as much more of a productivity, communication, and passive entertainment device than it does a gaming device.)
And then there’s the resolution: VisionPro promises 23 million pixels across two screens, which is more than 4K resolution per eye. The Meta Quest Pro’s two screens don’t come close at 1800×1920 each.
It sounds amazing, but simulated demo videos don’t give a true sense of what the field of view is like—Microsoft’s Hololens did not live up to the promises of stage demos in that respect. Apple claims that “a specially designed three‑element lens creates the feeling of a display that’s everywhere you look,” which is big if true, but a see-it-to-believe it sort of thing.
I’m sure there are plenty of others, but the two most apparent flaws are a short battery life—just two hours with an external battery pack (connected by a cable that will surely snag on stuff) before you have to charge it or plug the headset into something—and, of course, the price. $3,500 is a hell of a lot of money for the first iteration of a device that, like other VR/AR headsets, will surely get a lot better within a few years.
Then again, people spend over $1,000 on iPhones, so maybe gadget enthusiasts will bite on the VisionPro now while mere gadget enjoyers wait for the price to come down on this kind of AR experience.
There’s a lot of skepticism on the PC Gamer team that all this AR/VR stuff is anything more than just a novel fad for rich people—something like 3D TVs that’ll eventually be forgotten—but personally, I think it’s here to stay. After losing interest in my old Oculus Rift CV1 for a period, I’ve started using it regularly again over the past year, and it’s not even a good headset by today’s standards. Granted, I mostly just play a boxing game, and I certainly don’t plan to drop $3,500 on a VisionPro when it releases next year, but like the Meta Quest Pro, I’m afraid that I do think it looks pretty cool.