I tried the Apple Vision Pro….and yeah it’s way better than any other headset I’ve had!
I’ve had several versions over the years and this definitely blows them all away.
Apple famously doesn’t call this “Virtual Reality” and I 100% understand why. While technnnicalllllly this is a VR headset strapped on your face, it feels so much different!
It’s so different from VR in many ways:
- VR: You need your own dedicated space devoid of obstacles you might hit. I usually use my Quest VR headset in my garage for this reason.
- Apple: It’s meant to be worn around and you’re aware of your surroundings.
- VR: You can always see the pixels, taking you out of the experience.
- Apple: The resolution is like….REALISTIC clear. You can’t see pixels.
- VR: You can occasionally do “passthrough” which lets you see the world around you, but it’s not good.
- Apple: Passthrough is part of the whole experience, and you can use a knob to “tune out the world” as much as you want. You can always see through to real life, but if you turn the knob it darkens everything in the real world not in your immediate vicinity, or you can turn it all the way down and block out the entire real world and it feels like you’re perched uptop a mountain.
In 2019 my friend Sam Parr punched and broke my TV while playing a boxing game in my living room….this was one of the dangers of VR. To be fair the “Guardian System” Meta developed for Quest was pretty damn good, but the way Apple Vision Pro works is so much more integrated with the real world that this almost isn’t even a problem anymore.
This feels like an iPhone 1 moments, where everyone saw the potential….but it really took off with the iPhone 3.