Apple introduced the new Vision Pro yesterday. The device could revolutionize the digital use of future generations, like the iPhone once did. A comment by Niels Held.
With the 2002 film Minority Report, Steven Spielberg created a vision of what the future of device control would look like: touch and gesture, something that only became a mainstream reality five years later with the iPhone. In 2018, the director showed a vision of how virtual reality will change our world with his film Ready Player One. Exactly five years later, Apple is showing that he was right again with its Vision Pro augmented reality headset.
Apple has understood that virtual or augmented reality is not a niche topic for gamers, but has the potential to change our world. The Vision Pro removes the boundaries between the virtual and real worlds instead of cementing them like previous VR headsets. Exciting current devices such as Sony’s game console extension PSVR2 or the Meta Quest 2 are primarily gaming devices that you put on in order to immerse yourself, to leave the real world behind.
The Vision Pro will be set up to add new functions to the real world.
Apple Vision Pro: The high price is justified given the performance
There is only one way for this feeling to be authentic: no compromises in technology. It is therefore absolutely the right step for Apple to pack the best possible equipment into the Vision Pro. Twelve cameras, five sensors, an incredibly high-resolution display with 23 megapixels and a spatial sound system that adapts to the user and the environment. To do without complicated controllers, but to rely only on eye tracking, gesture control and voice input.
This drives the price up to several thousand euros – ten times that of Meta Quest 2. But this is the only way to create a world that is fully immersive. Which doesn’t let the illusion collapse through visible pixels, color errors or scratchy sound. Where there is no nausea from delayed presentation. A world that expands and erases the distinction between VR and real life.
“Ready Player One” already showed what VR could do in the future
Anyone who knows the pace of innovation in the technology industry and Apple and looks at the natural part that smartphones play in the lives of younger people can imagine what impact the Vision Pro will have on future generations in subsequent iterations .
The fact that the film Ready Player One works so well is due to the naturalness with which the protagonists slide into and out of the virtual world. For example, chases from the real world continue into the virtual world. The participants do not question their possibilities in VR, but use them to their advantage.
Even if we are still a few device generations away from this – Apple has also shown the same implicitness, the limitless gliding between the worlds, with its Vision Pro.
Apple Vision Pro will play the same role as the iPhone did for generations to come
And the linking of the virtual and real world through the EyeSight function also supports the experience completely. A display on the outside of the glasses shows the wearer’s eyes when communicating with people in the real world. Previous VR glasses also allowed a (low-resolution) view of the surroundings, but this was always a one-way street: it was never clear to outsiders whether the attention of the VR user was really on them. Interestingly, the Vision Pro looks almost exactly like the VR glasses in Ready Player One, especially due to the external display.
You have to experience VR yourself to really feel the fascinating experience. This is probably still one of the reasons why many people have so far had little interest. Apple can at least minimize this problem with its global stores. From next year you will be able to try out the glasses yourself there.
I am confident that the Vision Pro will be to the next generation of personal computing what the iPhone was to the smartphone triumph.