Today the announcement of the Vision Pro by Apple. Is in my opinion a game changer. Here are some reasons why:
The Motion Sickness Problem: Solved
It really seems with the new “see thru” interface as well as a new CPU on board a real-time chip called the R1 that Apple has solved the Motion Sickness Problem. For those that don’t know. Systems like Facebook’s Oculus suffer very heavily from the motion sickness problem of Virtual Reality. This problem in essence is because your eyes and body are not experiencing the same thing in real time. Your body thinks you have been poisoned. So then your body forces you to expel the poison (i.e. to vomit). After using systems like the Oculus for just minutes can induce feelings of needing to vomit in many individuals. Making the VR experience no matter how good something they don’t want to keep experiencing since the feeling of being poisoned and needing to vomit, or vomiting is not a pleasant one. Apple’s solution to this is two fold. You can see through the environment to the real world, which will be moving in line with your body. Meaning you won’t want to vomit since your body and eyes are in sync for that part of the world/experience. In addition a new real time chip the R1 will have blazing fast reactions which if a environment is fast enough it can overcome the motion sickness problem. No wonder it required a solution getting right down to the architecture of the CPU itself in order to address this problem. Something Facebook has not been able to address since they aren’t a manufacturer of CPUs the way Apple is.
Why have a screen anymore?
If any wall can be the screen of your experience then why does anybody buy screens anymore? The virtual screen provided by the Vision Pro can be as large and as numerous as several large screens and can adjust in real time to your situation. Something that would have required an extended budget to say the least to try and accomplish the same thing in the real world. Instead for $3500 you get this capability of a screen at any resolution. That feature alone besides all the immersion experiences available makes this a device to take a look at.
Full Immersion
Hyped for a long time as the benefit of VR the full immersion and 3D experience is wonderful. Which if it wasn’t for the motion sickness problem discussed above. Devices like the Oculus would have taken the market by storm in the past. Instead it is left to Apple to redefine this sphere. In Apple’s announcement video is a video of a real size virtual dinosaur walking directly into your living room. It is that kind of experience of seeing a virtual dinosaur in the flesh in front of you as if it was real is something that the iPhone can’t match.
This isn’t the Final Form
For those who play video games or watch Anime. They may remember beating what they thought was the final boss only to find out that wasn’t the final form the boss. Just a pretender and the real form of the boss had just appeared. Examples like Chrono Trigger‘s final boss, or Feiza from DragonBall Z come to mind. That is exactly how Vision Pro will unfold. It might look like a Ski Mask right now, but that is just the first version of it. I predict in the future it will take on a much cooler look and become a status symbol to own and wear one. I imagine it will just be like the iPhone only the richest will be able to afford the latest version of this product which will become a status symbol to wear and own one.
