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this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Magic Leap fell for the same trap as many VR/AR projects before it: let the marketing department overpromise, then have clients disappointed when they underdeliver. Don't get mistaken, I also think this Apple Vision Pro is overpromising, and that they'll get hit hard for it.
Still, most people would jump at the opportunity of shitting in the woods, or on the moons of Jupiter, or in their favorite fantasy porn den... it's part of why making appealing marketing for this stuff is so easy: people love to get carried away by gimmicks.
And yet again, none of that changes the actual utility of AR, which, if implemented correctly, goes far beyond a gimmick and becomes life changing.
It just needs to pass a single filter: human capabilities. In particular, vision and balance perception.
Vision
Vision is ironically a pretty low and high bar at the same time: the optical nerve only has 1M signals going through it, that's about 640x480x3, a VGA display could fool it. At the same time, the eye can scan its surroundings with a fovea with an equivalent 60 pixels per degree, with about 135° horizontal × 180° vertical.
The Magic Leap 2 has a 45°×55° FOV (70° diagonal), with a 1440×1760 display, giving it a 30PPD, or about 1/4 (square) of human vision, and a very limited viewing area.
The Apple Vision Pro claims a 110° FOV (presumably diagonal) with 4K displays or 2160×3840... for around a 40PPD, or about 1/2 (square) of human vision, with still a quite small viewing area.
Human vision with a 135°×180° FOV at 60PPD, would require something in the range of 8100×10800px static displays.
Balance
Balance perception has to do with visual feedback, and the vestibulo-ocular reflex... which is informed on one side by the vestibular system, that barely reacts at more than 10Hz, and the retina cones that are capable of reacting at up to 400Hz!
The idea of pre-scanning the environment in the Magic Leap and Apple Vision Pro, looks like a step in the right direction, allowing the system to pre-render images into the future, adapted to the probable environment... but I think they'll still get smashed against the 400Hz barrier.
Meaning, a static display system would need a couple of 16K HDR screens running at 480Hz... which is way above anything being sold or even planned right now. There have been alternative technical solutions, like eye tracking while projecting directly onto the retina, but they seem to still have most of the same limitations.
So... 10 years into the future you said? Maybe. I got an Oculus DK1 about 10 years ago... then promptly went part blind in one eye... but still had a chance at seeing what 640x800 per eye at below 10PPD and 250Hz looked like (like crap, and made a lot of people vomit).
10 years sounds like the timeframe for a wide adoption where people go around with their AR goggles onto the street, some in groups with their virtual friends, some on a peaceful meadow with no one in sight, some with their IRL families or friends and any mix of the aforementioned.
You're mixing AR and VR all the time. VR has a lot of entertainment potential that will be realized once the tech gets better and cheaper, probably fairly soon. For AR to be useful for normal users it will have to replace phones, not PCs. I can see people using it on the subway to browse isntagram or while walking for navigation and answering calls. For this it will have to become super small and light, just like normal glasses. Vision pro is 600g + battery pack. We're decades away from something that will be able to compete with phones.
I don't think I'm mixing anything, buy just in case:
Oculus is VR, Magic Leap is AR, Vision Pro is PVR.
Regardless of mode, any head mounted display has to overcome user sensory input capabilities to fool them properly and not induce explosive vomiting.
Vision Pro is less likely to be used on the exterior, because unlike Magic Leap or HoloLens which let you see everything outside of the rendered area, the Vision Pro may record more, but will only show the rendered display area.
Yet going back to the "walking with headphones" example, some people seem pretty happy to put 400g on their heads just to not hear oncoming traffic, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone put 600g on their head just to see all people rendered as sheep (just an idea).