Speaker 1: I tried Apple's first VR headset, but I don't have any pictures of me wearing it. Apple debuted the Vision Pro at its developer conference and we got to look at it sitting on a pedestal. I also got to demo it for a while in a session, but I didn't get to take any photos or videos. No, none of those were allowed, which is pretty common in VR and ar. I've tried VR and AR headsets going back over 10 years in a variety of places. Everything from Microsoft HoloLens to to the [00:00:30] Vibe to the Quest. But this headset, which is 34 99, really expensive, is claiming to be the ultimate mixed reality VR ar experience. And I will say that in terms of display fidelity, it may very well be what was instantly surprising putting on this was not only the quality of display, but the quality of apple's pass through cameras, which were really, really sharp.
Speaker 1: I looked at my watch, could see the notifications perfectly clearly, and it looked great. I didn't get a chance to look [00:01:00] at a computer monitor or to look at a TV screen. I'm curious how that will look at a further distance. But in this room that I was in, my watch looked great and everyone around me looked not that much different than when I didn't have the headset on. Setting up the headset was pretty simple. Again, if you've worn a VR headset before, there's a stretchy comfort strap on the back that's stretched over. I used to dial to attach it on one side and I had another strap on top to, to get my fit just right and it, it seemed to, to seal up the, uh, light leaks pretty [00:01:30] well. The interface, well, that's the other thing that's wild about this headset because there are no controllers.
Speaker 1: Apple's leaning entirely on hand tracking and eye tracking, and I've been skeptical about that because while Meta already has hand tracking on the Quest headset and Microsoft HoloLens has hand tracking as its main interface, it's not usually good enough to do everything yet. Apple's version of this and the demos I tried was really finesse. Eye tracking is a big part of that. It's leaning on being able to look at anything, [00:02:00] focus on it, and then use tiny pinches and poles to be able to interact with the display. And it was lazy in a good way, like I was able to rest my hand on my leg and just lazily pinch with my fingers and not have to lift my hand, which was great because I feel like if I'm sitting down using this headset, I'm not gonna want to do all of this. I feel like it's a couple of steps beyond anything that we've seen before.
Speaker 1: Not only in terms of the fidelity, but in terms of the way it layers things from the real world in not just virtual items that it puts in the real world, but the way can [00:02:30] recognize items in the real world and put them in a vr. Um, AR has already had some tricks that Apple has done before where it's able to segment and notice where your hands are and and kind of cut them out and show where they are, um, layered so that it looks like they're appearing in front of vr. This headset does that too, so that if you're in VR and you lift up your hands, you can actually see your hands. There's a little bit of a slightly rough outline, but I was able to do that and, and reach out and interact with things. Also, if I look at somebody next to me, I could see them ghostly appear into view with [00:03:00] this little halo and they would materialize through the VR like in a mist.
Speaker 1: Now that's something I've never seen before. Of course, this headset also has the ability to show your eyes on its curved ole display, which is totally weird and fascinating. We did have this FaceTime chat and then we opened up Freeform, which is Apple's Collaborative Workspace app that launched last year, which I felt like would be a headset app in the lurking in the wings. And we opened up some different, uh, files and she showed me, um, a 3D object [00:03:30] that then popped out of it because a big part of using a headset like this is to be able to open up and use 3D objects, scans, diagrams and things like that. The other thing that I saw that really made me feel almost a bit of chills ridiculously to say is, um, a clip of Avatar, the way of water, which I got to see in 3d.
Speaker 1: I saw Avatar the way of water in 3D back in December, and it almost felt immersive enough in IMAX to feel like vr. And I've seen 3D movies before and I thought this is a film [00:04:00] I'd like to see in a really high end VR headset. And now I have, and I think this is the headset, you'd wanna see a movie like Avatar. The Way of Water in Apple also showed little teaser tidbits of an immersive video format that they're gonna be launching, uh, on their Apple TV plus service. That's 180 degree video, this type of 180 degree immersive like video I've seen before in on other platforms. And, and YouTube dabbled in it a long time ago as well. The fidelity of Apples video and in [00:04:30] the headset looked a lot better. Um, they were also teasing bits of their sports packages because they acquired Next vr, which is a, um, a company that for years was looking at ways to have immersive courtside basketball and baseball and other things.
Speaker 1: One of the final demos I did get to see was something that brought dinosaurs into the room with me. And a lot of the stuff is probably gonna sound like classic entry level VR demos from the dawn of when we were looking at at Oculus, but I was really wowed again at how nice the dinosaurs looked. What I came away with [00:05:00] was this feeling that the interface really did seem to work, that the display really was better than just about anything. I've seen a lot of possibilities and right now we're just getting the entry level taste. My very first demo of Apple's emergent headset, and I guess we'll find out more in 2024 when this comes out. If you have more questions about this, which I'm sure you do, please leave them down below the comments. Thank you for watching and make sure to like and subscribe.
