I thought it was pretty good - but nowhere near ideal of course.
But discovered I could dispense with both of Apple's "Light Seal Cushions" and simply line the light seal with some 1/8 adhesive foam. It took a little experimenting to avoid hard pressure points, and then make it comfortable.
It is now very comfortable with the following benefits:
1. The field of view is noticeably wider. Yay! The immersion improvement feels cognitively significant.
2. I realized that greater peripheral vision downward is more important than upward. Being more aware of down makes us feel safer and is also where are our hands and keyboards live.
So I arranged the padding to wear the head set slightly lower, allocating all the increased vertical FOV downward.
3. The combination of being 1/4 inch or so closer to the face, and firmer padding, reduced the feeling of weight on the front of my head.
Warning - literally. I get an occasional popup warning that my eyes are too close to the lenses. The danger being if I were to fall I could potentially hit my eyes. I stay seated most the time, but occasionally walk through rooms, so it is worth being careful.
I use my Vision Pro for 10 hours a day on many days, comfortably. I had to switch to the two-strap support to do this. But I have ordered an adapter that allows the original behind the heat cushion strap to be used with a second cushion strap over the head. I anticipate that working even better, given how much surface area weight will be distributed across. (Also turning a knob is easier for adjustments than messing with velcro.)
Also, got some thicker (in width) lighter foam, to add some more light seal around the edges.
This feels like a real upgrade, a year or so before Apple will release a bump.
In the recent update it now lets you mouse off your Mac and onto vision apps just like iPad hands over. It made me switch my desk setup to have the desk attached to my chair so I can have 360 range of screens. The resolution is stupidly high.
I’ve attempted a coding workflow in all of the quests and it just wasn’t possible. It’s awesome in vision
No. Works in the dark. The vision has IR lights on it.
No the personas aren’t right. They just creep people out. They need more work, or some basic editablity. It generally nails your eyes perfectly at the expense of everything else.
Unrelated-but-related -- your username is fantastically appropriate for this discussion. I'm imagining a website with the same name, filled with images of people whose headsets have permanently melted onto their faces, like a Dali painting :D
For me it is not a novelty, it has completely stuck.
Yes, on comfort for 10 hours. I have even worked 12 hours, then watched a long 3D movie (Blade Runner 2049, Dune I, etc.) without hesitation.
I cannot imagine going back to only physical screens. I have a 98" monitor with two 55" monitors in portrait angled towards me on either side (heights all match), all wall mounted. Truly wonderful! But this has replaced that for me.
I have even considered beheading a MacBook Pro.
I love the following:
• Never needing to put on or take off reading glasses to see far, or within inches.
• I can have my main Mac "screen" whatever size I want, typically large. Also that I can lean into it when focusing on a patch of code, and it always looks perfect.
• Having multiple Vision safari screens, or utilities, surrounding me. With the look and pinch interface being very nice for navigating.
• Being able to tune out 180 degrees of my space with a natural scene so I am completely undistracted. Wish I could go 360 degrees, and still leave keyboard visible. (Either by having an unobstructed low circle, or having the keyboard "punch through" like hands do.
• Flexible screen position lets me sit with great posture all the time. I tend to pull right up to my desk, push my keyboard far out and lean forward on my elbows a bit. Have the screen large but close enough that I can lean in to focus on something.
• Two environments in one! I will put project organization and context notes on huge screens behind me on a wall. Personal mission control. In thoughtful moments I get out of my chair, walk around the room and see the large screens from anywhere, walk right up to it, make small edits with pinch and zoom.
• The incredible ergonomics of being able to code comfortably in bed, on a couch, recliner, etc. with good ergonomics, due to the screens being flexibly placed. Being able to code in many places keeps my brain fresh.
• I use a holster for the battery. Geeky, but after dropping it as I walked away from my desk 100 times I realized I need that. That elminated inhibitions about moving, and feelings of being chained down.
• I haven't been in flow so consistently for so many hours for a long time. For me the Mac interface expansion/isolation chamber IS what Vision is for.
Issues:
• As noted, wish the keyboard and my drinks would "punch through" 360 degree scenes, or there was an optional lower circle of punch rough.
• Keyboard and trackpad pointer are fussy when switching between Mac and Vision screens.
• Wish I could have more Mac screens, and drag Mac windows out to their own screens. Also pull in iPad and iPhone screens. And push windows/app-states back out to those machines too. Or two other people's devices.
• Wish the Mac screen operated with look and pinch. I do this a few times every day when in flow.
• Wish I could disconnect/reconnect my MacBook Pro screen. The headless MacBook Pro for Vision would be absolutely great. But having the option to use it as a laptop too would be great. Maybe remove my MacBook screen, but set it up so I can clip my iPad Pro to it too?
• Need a Vision Spaces interface for setting up work then moving to a different context, but being able to come back to those screens. Being able to set up a space that is location sensitive, so always available in that room, seat, whatever.
>• Never needing to put on or take off reading glasses to see far, or within inches.
Can you expand on this? Does it basically have built in vision correction? This actually sounds like a 'killer' feature if you don't need to mess with glasses.
It has optics to correct for vision problems yeah, you give Apple your prescription when buying the Vision Pro.
But more importantly, your eyes are always focusing at a consistent 1ish meter in front of you. That's why you don't have to switch vision correction ever when using the Vision Pro (or any VR display).
just for your information. there is only little knowledge about the influence of vr glasses on the vision. there have been reports of developers that worked in vr for a long time that had issues with theyr sight afterwards.
problems can come from increased heat within the vr device, but also because every lighty our eye receives comes in at the same angle, and thus the eye never needs to adjust to different distances, as it would have to do in a real environment. while it appears / looks the same as in reality it really isnt. thats also the reason you only need one correction.
> • Being able to tune out 180 degrees of my space with a natural scene so I am completely undistracted. Wish I could go 360 degrees, and still leave keyboard visible. (Either by having an unobstructed low circle, or having the keyboard "punch through" like hands do.
Oculus quests have had this feature for a while now so I guess it'll come to AVP too. It only supports a handful of models but that's no big deal for Apple users as they mostly will use Apple keyboards anyway.
Let me put it this way, then: having used a Vision Pro for two weeks (I bought one and returned it) I would gladly take a greater field of view in exchange for a slightly lower pixel density, and it would be a very easy decision.
I had some major issues with the Vision Pro, but pixel density was not one of them.
When I did the AVP demo I was impressed by how quickly my eyes would relax and drift away slightly from looking at something after initially focusing on it. It took some conscious effort at first to maintain steady eye focus on an object whilst actuating it with a gesture.
This is, coincidentally, one of my biggest issues with the Vision Pro. I never got used to it. I'd very frequently want to select one thing while also moving my eyes around to look at other things.
• The pinching focus remains on the control you just looked at for a fraction of a second as your eyes zoom off it.
That would be killer.
In retrospect, it would have been vintage Apple to have realized this was an important detail and resolved it already.
Also widely spreading fingers within a moment of looking at a control could act as "hovering" with a mouse pointer. Add some kind of glow to the control as an intuitive indicator that it is staying in pinch focus. So you can lock in, still look around, and pinch if you decide to - or just relax the hand to abort.
This ability to lock on last gaze, and pinch/abort, would dramatically free the eyes to continue roaming naturally.
> • The pinching focus remains on the control you just looked at for a fraction of a second as your eyes zoom off it.
I'm not convinced this would solve it. What if I really do want to select a different button quickly? Certainly, when I use traditional computers I hate mouse latency. You could add additional pinch controls like you said, but I think it would all continue to be finicky.
I think the problem is that eye tracking is bad, at least as a primary input mechanism.
If I were Apple, I would focus more on hand gestures. The Vision Pro lets you move application windows around with your hands (although you need to initially select them with your eyes), and this always felt much more natural to me than. I can imagine a system where you use your hands to manipulate a cursor in space, possibly even a 3D cursor.
I think if you pinch within fraction of a second after a minimum time previous gaze, and before another minimum time next gaze, it would work really well.
These minimum gaze times could be quite small. When we move our eyes, they move fast. I am guessing in the order of 10-30 ms. Just under our perception of what we are actually doing.
I find myself deciding and starting to pinch, but moving my eyes away at the same time. That is a small window where carry-over gaze would reliably do-what-I-mean without undercutting a follow up gaze and pinch
I thought it was pretty good - but nowhere near ideal of course.
But discovered I could dispense with both of Apple's "Light Seal Cushions" and simply line the light seal with some 1/8 adhesive foam. It took a little experimenting to avoid hard pressure points, and then make it comfortable.
It is now very comfortable with the following benefits:
1. The field of view is noticeably wider. Yay! The immersion improvement feels cognitively significant.
2. I realized that greater peripheral vision downward is more important than upward. Being more aware of down makes us feel safer and is also where are our hands and keyboards live.
So I arranged the padding to wear the head set slightly lower, allocating all the increased vertical FOV downward.
3. The combination of being 1/4 inch or so closer to the face, and firmer padding, reduced the feeling of weight on the front of my head.
Warning - literally. I get an occasional popup warning that my eyes are too close to the lenses. The danger being if I were to fall I could potentially hit my eyes. I stay seated most the time, but occasionally walk through rooms, so it is worth being careful.
I use my Vision Pro for 10 hours a day on many days, comfortably. I had to switch to the two-strap support to do this. But I have ordered an adapter that allows the original behind the heat cushion strap to be used with a second cushion strap over the head. I anticipate that working even better, given how much surface area weight will be distributed across. (Also turning a knob is easier for adjustments than messing with velcro.)
Also, got some thicker (in width) lighter foam, to add some more light seal around the edges.
This feels like a real upgrade, a year or so before Apple will release a bump.