13 ms·

Vision Pro teardown part 2: What’s the display resolution?

171 points by mzs 3y ago

kj99 3y ago
“friend of iFixit Karl Guttag has a blog post explaining why using the Vision Pro as a replacement for a good monitor is “ridiculous.” … This, says Karl, makes for a virtual Mac display with low enough PPD to see individual pixels—not quite the standard desktop display” So rather than just trying it for themselves and realizing Karl is wrong, they quote this uncritically? For what it’s worth, there’s nothing wrong with Karl’s math. He’s just not taking into account the fact that the Vision Pro isn’t mounted in a fixed position and that your brain integrates information over time. In practice it certainly is as clear as my 4K display when I use it for mirroring. It’s definitely not as good as a 5K studio display, but then Apple never makes that claim.
- lukev 3y ago
  Eh... it's extremely good and more than I expected, but it's not quite 4k quality IMO. Not because I can see the pixels (I can't), but just because of very slight inconsistency across the field of vision, and motion blur when I move my head.
  - WhatIsDukkha 3y ago
    I've wondered how it looks with a very large spreadsheet filled with figures? That big span of numbers should be fairly revealing of its display capabilities, with all the lines and columns. How is the fringing and aliasing as you look at different angles? Is a large pdf filled with math and tables comfortable to spend a few hours with taking notes?
    - phonon 3y ago
      Here you go! It's not great. https://kguttag.com/2024/02/05/spreadsheet-breaks-the-apple-vision-pros-avp-eye-tracking-foveation-the-first-through-the-optics-pictures/ https://kguttag.com/2024/02/05/spreadsheet-breaks-the-apple-...
      - WhatIsDukkha 3y ago
        Haha I hadn't checked my rss feed! I love it when someone smarter and more diligent than me does the work :)
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  One of my friends who got a Vision Pro is disappointed in its use as a monitor, but only because he has multiple large monitors on his Mac, yet you can only set up one 4k display inside the Vision Pro, so it ends up being effectively much smaller and lower resolution for him. Slightly different problem, but related. I'm sure it'll get there over time.
  - ballresin 3y ago
    This was going to be my complaint with the headset as well. I use 2x 49" super ultrawide displays, as well as 2x 27" 4k displays. Lots of real estate. But then I started to think harder about what I was consuming display space with, and started to peel those things out into their Vision or iPad app equivalents. I'll not get into the obvious trade-offs of using iPad apps, but it largely suits the need. Once I had Slack, Outlook, a Terminal, and TablePlus floating separately from the Mac display, I started to see a path toward potentially not caring if I even had the Mac display.
    - elliotbnvl 3y ago
      How did you manage the terminal? How do you use it?
      - kj99 3y ago
        Blink works great. Not as a local terminal, but it’s very good for remote shells.
      - ballresin 3y ago
        I've used Terminus and Prompt in the past on iOS. For remote dev work over SSH using nvim.
  - kj99 3y ago
    Apple only ever promised it would mirror one 4K display. They announced that clearly when they introduced it. It does that as well as the promised, but nothing more.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Karl Guttag has a history of getting a lot of excruciatingly difficult details right, and missing the literal big picture right in front of him. I think he makes great technical contributions to the field (at least from my perspective as a layman), but every one of his analyses that I have read ends with something to the effect of "and this is why it is physically impossible for AR/VR to ever work", which is far beyond skepticism. It makes it hard to take the rest of his analysis seriously because it shows an irrational bias against the technology.
  - kj99 3y ago
    Yeah. It’s weird. Even the analysis of passthrough is so off. If I look out of my window with AVP on, it’s obvious that I’m looking at a comparatively low res screen, but if I look at digital content, passthrough seems perfect because it’s not in my fovea, and given that the point of the device is to interact with digital content, passthrough is definitely at the level of being good enough.
- threeseed 3y ago
  Karl Guttag: "As per last time, since I don’t have an AVP." For a device like this where there is so much more than just raw hardware impacting user experience anyone who doesn't own one should have their opinion immediately discounted.
  - phonon 3y ago
    He owns one now. https://kguttag.com/ https://kguttag.com/
    - kj99 3y ago
      Doesn't seem as though he's produced any new material since receiving it.
      - phonon 3y ago
        Errr...two posts so far, and he is also collaborating with iFixit?
- LegitShady 3y ago
  saying 4k and 5k displays while talking about PPD, without mentioning display size, is sort of useless. a 22" 4k display is going to look different than 85" 4k display.
jkubicek 3y ago
> The Vision Pro comes in at a stunning 3,386 PPI. Sweet jesus. I know that PPD is the actual important measurement here, but still, a display with 3K PPI is outrageous.
- michaelbuckbee 3y ago
  Agree, but also the closer the screen gets to your eyeball the more it matters.
  - nomel 3y ago
    How so? The light coming into your eyes is taking the exact same physical path through your lens, and inside, as if the virtual display actually existed*. It's a physical requirement that the optics achieve this, for you to be able to see the image. * Assuming the virtual display is virtually positioned at the focal plane of the lens, which is usually around 3m.
    - bongodongobob 3y ago
      How does pixel density not matter the closer the display gets to your eye? What? No idea what focal length has to do with anything, we're talking apparent pixel density which is directly related to screen distance.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - nomel 3y ago
        > we're talking apparent pixel density which is directly related to screen distance. If you ignore all the glass/plastic between the screen and your eye that's required to focus on it.
    - dnissley 3y ago
      Simple: Pixels appear larger when they are closer to your eye.
modeless 3y ago
> they also offer bifocals, and progressives Wow, really? I don't see how that makes any sense. Bifocals are for things that vary in distance, but the displays are at a constant distance from your eyes. Are people really so used to looking through bifocals that they need them in a headset just to feel comfortable even though they aren't necessary to focus? I'm disappointed there is zero detail about the eye tracking cameras. Where they're located, what kind they are, how they see around/through the lenses, where the infrared illumination is. Has anyone else been investigating this?
- pram 3y ago
  I’ve found a lot of recent teardowns from them are light on interesting details. They seem to be making short YouTube videos now that don’t really cover everything. The screen analysis was interesting but they rushed through the rest, and didn’t even look at any of the cameras???
- daemonologist 3y ago
  I'm not aware of any information on camera details, but you can see the locations of the cameras and illuminators in this image from Apple: https://web.archive.org/web/20240206041049/https://www.apple.com/v/apple-vision-pro/c/images/overview/technology/features/eye_tracking_on__ln11reqs6mi6_large.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20240206041049/https://www.apple... The tracking system is inboard of the lenses, so it doesn't need to look through them. There are two cameras per eye, below and on the inside (near the nose), and infrared illuminators (not sure if they're just LEDs or something more complex) surrounding the lenses on all sides.
  - modeless 3y ago
    Thanks for that image, I can see the locations in the teardown now as well. But it couldn't be more clear that the cameras do need to look through the lenses. And furthermore, the IR LEDs also go through the lenses. They are all on the display side of the lens. It must have been tricky to avoid reflections from the illuminators going through those very fancy lenses.
xnx 3y ago
Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the Apple Vision Pro as a product, this is a marvel of engineering. The APV seems to include the most advanced version of the output from several industries (semi conductors, display, materials, assembly, etc.)
- mastax 3y ago
  Also textiles. The solo knit band is a technical marvel. A single 3D knit with embedded mechanical parts and hidden cables to adjust tension. It’s not my wheelhouse but I’d love to read a textiles expert’s take on it.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    It's a shame the solo knit band seems to be form-over-function, it looks cool and a ton of work clearly went into developing it, but nearly everyone seems to find the much simpler dual loop band to be more practical. e: I stand corrected, the reviewers I've watched mostly preferred the dual loop but there's plenty of solo knit fans here. I guess that YMMV factor is why they include both.
    - ericlewis 3y ago
      Anecdotally the solo knit is much more comfortable on my head than the dual loop. The dual loop seems designed for people with more elongated heads.
      - ribosometronome 3y ago
        >The dual loop seems designed for people with more elongated heads. As the owner of a long head, I definitely struggled with feeling like I couldn't get the VP to sit right for my eyes with the solo loop. The dual resolved that easily. Then you get to have the single loop as new fidget toy.
    - fumar 3y ago
      I prefer the solo band over the dual loop. I've used it since launch with the solo band. It should sit slightly high on the back of your head.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
> we estimate the Vision Pro to have an average of 34 PPD I'm not sure that is interesting though. I would expect tradeoffs on PPD for my peripheral vision, higher density for the center of my vision. I want PPD numbers like perhaps an average PPD for the center 30 degrees FOV.
- hnuser123456 3y ago
  Issue is that you can look around with your eyes at any part of the display, so the whole display needs to be able to show very high PPI/PPD, if you look at it. They can save on compute by detecting where your eyes are looking and reducing render resolution on the edges of your eye's FOV though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    True, but once you glance to the side and something catches your attention it's not unreasonable to turn your head to get more detail/resolution.
akamaka 3y ago
The potential of the display is what convinces me that Vision will be a breakthrough device. If Apple has a roadmap to keep scaling up the resolution, while only incurring a fixed manufacturing cost of producing a small 2cm display, there will soon be no other device category that will be able to offer such image quality at so low a cost, not laptop screens or desktop monitors or TVs or movie theatres.
- mastax 3y ago
  If I understand your point, I don’t think it makes as much of a difference as it may seem. Display panels are typically made from large “mother glass” panels out of which smaller display panels are cut. So you can make many different sized panels from a single type of mother glass (all with the same PPI of course). And the TV/monitor industry has delivered remarkable improvements in quality and cost very quickly, so it’s not as if our current methods aren’t working. It’s an interesting thought though, let’s see how it develops.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    The process used to make Micro-OLED displays is very different to the processes used for large OLEDs or LCDs, it has more in common with silicon manufacturing than conventional display manufacturing. AIUI that means the panel size will always be limited by the maximum reticle size of the silicon process, which is usually at most ~800mm². That lines up with the 27.5x24mm size of the panels in the Vision Pro - that's 660mm², already close to the largest silicon die you can make.
- holman 3y ago
  After using it since launch, the displays are still startling every time I step back to really look at them. They look so good. There's a few things that could be improved upon — let me look at my phone, or project a digital display over my phone screen — but the UI and virtual displays you see in Vision Pro feel just like reality. It's startling, and bodes well for future Vision Pro devices (and other VR handsets, too).
  - 3y ago
dyno12345 3y ago
discussion of Part 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39246664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39246664
robg 3y ago
Can someone explain why they think the AVP version in 2034 will be light years ahead of v1? I see amazing engineering but not many places to shrink everything into a lightweight pair of glasses.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  What other physical tech product doesn't meaningfully improve in a decade? (Maybe the TI-83 calculator?)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- nomel 3y ago
  You should ignore anyone claiming unquantifiables like "light years ahead". In 10 years, my hopeful list is: * More custom/specialized silicon for XR. There's aren't many players here currently. * Retina/~60 PPD. * Micro LED (not OLED), making varifocal and HDR possible. * Varifocal lenses, which are just as important for comfort as high res. * Cameras optimized for passthrough, rather than borrowed from cellphones. * Lighter weight. They're almost tolerable, rather than acceptable, as is. This almost certainly involves offloading some of the compute. But, a powerful untethered XR system and a lightweight set of untethered glasses will necessarily be very different, in capabilities. I imagine I'll end up with a tethered device, as a display replacement, in the next 10 years.
  - robg 3y ago
    Thanks for this list, doesn’t seem like the pair of glasses that people are envisioning, more like iPhone X, lots of incremental improvements but not a major difference from v1 to v10 or even v15.
    - nomel 3y ago
      > doesn’t seem like the pair of glasses that people are envisioning Do you have an example of these people, or what they're envisioning? Are they expecting ready player one type glasses in the next 10 years? I think there will be different classes of devices: everyday wearable AR more than XR, and screen replacement/heavy compute XR, with vastly different experiences. > lots of incremental improvements As should be expected. This is the only way tech has ever progressed, without exception. The only perceived exceptions involved shifting existing tech into a space that it wasn't present before. > from v1 to v10 or even v15. I think it's a little more than that. I think most would agree that it's not usable, in its current state, for a screen replacement, or as a primary computing device. Even Apple suggested so in their announcement, saying something like "short trips". I suspect that V15 will be the primary computing device, for most people. If that ends up being true, that's significant.
mschuster91 3y ago
> Looking like a bulked-up first-gen iPhone, the case is milled out of a single chunk of aluminum, and the lid snaps into place with firm perimeter clips, leaving little to no seam for us to pry at. We needed a hammer and chisel to open it up! Adhesive also lines the lid, just to make sure you get the message: this pack is not designed to be opened. > Currently, iFixit engineering intern Chayton Ritter has Apple’s proprietary battery cable splayed out on a breadboard, and is trying to determine what sort of electronic handshakes are required to make the Vision Pro accept battery packs. Apple really dropped the bar on this one. It's high time the EU forces companies to design their hardware in a way that allows the user (or a recycling company!) to replace the batteries inside without destroying it in the process, and for fucks sake what happened to the USB-C requirement for electronic devices?
- lawik 3y ago
  The brick/battery charges via USB-C from what I have seen. Casey Neistat ran that into a battery pack for extended use. I think that makes them plenty compliant. I asusme the custom connector on the head unit is better fit for purpose (comfort, not getting snagged) than USB-C would be.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    Or, to put it even more simply -- the battery pack is the replaceable battery. Which is fine; it's little different from the similarly sealed battery packs on electric power tools, for instance.
  - ribosometronome 3y ago
    The battery charges via USB-C. The battery connects to the headset with a weird side-snap connector that's rather flat. As designed, there's not anywhere obvious that a USB-C port could really fit on the headset and assuming they hope to make it smaller in future years, the problem only amplifies. I think other headsets have cables coming out of them when they need to connect to other things, rather than relying on a port. It's not particularly aesthetic.
- threeseed 3y ago
fumar 3y ago
Living with the Vision Pro is much easier than I expected. I thought it would feel bulky to manage with the external battery — it hasn't. I put the battery in my pocket and pop into visionOS without any hassle. I found the max time is about 1.5 hours before I feel slight eye and physical pressure fatigue from the headset.
- nomel 3y ago
  > and physical pressure fatigue from the headset. Is this double loop, or cloth band?
  - fumar 3y ago
    Solo band, not the double loop.
joshstrange 3y ago
The displays on the AVP are truly amazing, the best I've ever seen. In fact I noticed zero issues relating to the displays themselves. Where this device stumbles is the passthrough (cameras) and the Mac Virtual Display (AirPlay). If/when those get better I'll buy another one but for now I'm planning on returning mine before the 14 days are up.
dwallin 3y ago
One thing the article doesn't get quite right is you can't compare ppd of a virtual display directly to an IRL screen. The virtual pixels are not 1:1 to device pixels. Your perspective is constantly shifting slightly and the virtual pixels being sampled from is constantly changing. This is providing your eyes and brain a lot more data to sample from and means the perceived resolution can be higher than the actual resolution.
- garbageman 3y ago
  This is an interesting perspective. Genuine question: would it not be the other way - seeming lower than actual resolution when slightly moving? Why? Could this be used to simulate a higher pixel density? Maybe doing something crazy vibrating the display in some kind of circular motion or something silly?
  - axoltl 3y ago
    There are projectors that do this trick! The technology is called XPR: https://www.projectorjunkies.com/4k-dlp-projectors-is-it-real-4k-xpr-technology-explanation/ https://www.projectorjunkies.com/4k-dlp-projectors-is-it-rea...
  - layer8 3y ago
    The issue is that the original Mac pixels get 3D-projected and thus interpolated onto the VP panels pixel grid. This invariably loses some sharpness and detail. Even just 2D-rotating a Mac screenshot by some non-orthogonal angle will make it more blurry.
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  I am not convinced. Your eyes are literally magnifying the pixels compared to being at a distance from a modern 2k display. You may have dense PPD in AVP but being that close to them doesn't do it any favours. I mean, if you can see a pixel you can see a pixel, there is no getting around that. It's like once you notice a blemish you can't not notice it anymore. From what I hear from users is you can absolutely see the pixels.
CobrastanJorji 3y ago
This article does a fantastic job of explaining how good the screen is in clear, easy to understand language. Good job! Is it a good display? It's incredibly good, far beyond the DPI of your phone or monitor. Does it look as good as your phone or your computer monitor when used? No, at the distance you'd look at them from, it looks much worse.
mrcwinn 3y ago
The display may be 3,386 PPI, but wow my laptop screen has never looked sharper after taking the AVP off my head. Screen sharing from my Mac looks distractingly bad, which is a huge bummer. (AVP apps, by contrast, look fantastic.) No matter how I scale or where I place the space, it just never looks very good. I'm really hoping this improves because it's nice to turn my 14" MacBook Pro into a theater screen of sorts alongside native apps. For the moment, though, AVP doesn't seem very useful apart from watching movies (which is amazing).
- dvdhsu 3y ago
  Agreed. I find my AVP actually quite bad for using my Mac. I use a MBP instead of a MBA because 120hz makes a big difference. The MBP screen within AVP is probably something like 30hz (likely because it's using Airplay, and it doesn't have enough bandwidth). And I can't change the resolution either! It's kind of like working on a TV — I don't see why it's any better than the 14" MBP screen. Overall, the AVP is a disappointment for me. Most of the new UX patterns I find far worse than keyboard shortcuts. (For example, a window manager is _much_ easier to use than having to pinch to drag windows around. For example Vimium is much easier to use than looking at elements and pinching at things.) I don't consume much content (e.g. TV), but of the content that I do consume, it feels lower resolution to me. The demos they have (e.g. the Alicia Keys video) feels nothing like real-life to me. As a parallel to what you said — real life has never looked better (after taking off the AVP), haha.
  - bookofjoe 3y ago
    I agree with much of what you wrote — except I found the Alicia Keys video staggeringly good. It felt like I was in the studio with her and her band.
  - Sephr 3y ago
    You can combine paradigms for the best of both worlds (e.g. physical keyboard + your apps). I imagine that IDE experiences will only improve as time goes on.
  - sjm 3y ago
theogravity 3y ago
> The Vision Pro has another small problem for spectacles wearers. Contrary to some reports, Apple says that corrective lenses are available for most conditions, including astigmatism (which we weren’t sure about in part one), and they also offer bifocals, and progressives. But if you have a prism value included in your prescription, you’re out of luck. Prism correction is used to correct for diplopia, or double vision. The easiest way to see if your vision prescription is supported is to use ZEISS’s online tool. As someone that has prism in their glasses, that sucks. I do have custom lenses with prism for my Quest 2. Not sure why apple can't offer it as well, especially if the lens comes from ZEISS.
- mac-mc 3y ago
  I think it's because of eye tracking issues. If you need a prism then you probably have other issues with how your eyes move around and they haven't developed for that yet. They are thinking about it although as shown with the accessibility options. I think they will figure it out eventually.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    I suspect I might need prism lenses, but there's already an eye tracking option that tells it to only use my left eye. Used that option during the in-store demo, and it worked pretty well. If the image in the right eye were adjusted to match my condition then that would've been even better, but my brain already mostly ignores the image from the right eye so it didn't matter that it wasn't.
seydor 3y ago
Perceptible resoultion is what 's missing from all these VR goggles. The density of the screen doesn't matter much if the angular resolution isnt great. I was hoping Apple would be the first to rival our actual Retina
FredPret 3y ago
It will be so cool once these are miniaturized to those big square 70's glasses or smaller. Maybe contact lenses in some sci-fi future. I imagine popping on a pair and suddenly you have a huge wrap-around workstation in front of you.
LASR 3y ago
I've said this before, but until we have gimballed screens that can reposition a very high-density portion of the display to always be on the eye's fovea, we will not have a good productivity tool headset. AVP v1 does the eye tracking quite well. I bet real $ that v2 will have motors internally to reposition the screens.
- hartator 3y ago
  I will take that bet. $5?
jxy 3y ago
So the PPD means we only need a factor of 2 denser pixels and we can throw all other 4K screens away. Wait for a factor of 3 higher PPD (~ 100?) and we may get rid of all of our single-person-use monitors. I guess I'll wait for Vision Pro 4 to get the "retina display."
gpm 3y ago
Disappointing that more analysis isn't put into the lense effect on PPD. SimulaVR (a competitor) has an extremely good blogpost about this [1] where they argue that the PPD in the central 30 degrees is far more important than the average PPD over the whole headset (because you very rarely turn your eyes more than 15 degrees off center, and your eyes have the highest resolution right in front of them), justifying the same sort of lenses that Apple appears to be using. They claim that this allows them to reallocate pixels for ~45% higher "foveal PPD" than would otherwise be expected. [1] https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/ https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/
- zaptrem 3y ago
  Does Apple focus pixels in the center?
  - gpm 3y ago
    Yeah, there's a picture of the lense above a grid of lines demonstrating this in the article (which is the first time I've seen that confirmed).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gattr 3y ago
I'm waiting for a "monitor-replacement glasses" - show me a device which simulates an equivalent of my current 24"/4K/60 Hz monitor (same amount of pixels, same angular size in my FOV). Since I can touch type, I don't need AR/motion sensing, just the display.
bredren 3y ago
Vision Pro is not capable of delivering the level of low-strain fidelity needed to work long hours on anything related editing text. I think it is fair to say a 4k display or near equivalent is the minimum generally needed for this now, particularly for programming. [1] Spatial Computing is not about arranging windows and using interfaces designed for flat surface devices. It is about addressing problems using a three dimensional space. Instead of dashboard panels showing graphs in a window floating in the air, there are zones laid out in front of you showing data illustrated using 3D infographics Apple has had to provide many examples and artful ways to work with windows because it is the only way people understand multi-tasking applications today. "This device has to be good at window management or it isn't a useful device" is the reasonable thinking of a person who will continue to spend most of their time in flat-land, relating to others who also live in flat-land computing. I think Apple knows very well that traditional application presentation is not actually where visionOS / spatial computing aspires to be. You can almost derive this from the types of games they put in the Apple Arcade of the app store. These do more than anything else to show where productivity will go. Even for programming, spatial computing will shine by providing intuitive and interactive visualizations of software systems and infrastructure. Not because it renders an IDE in a window really well. That's what monitors are for! In some way, how we solve problems has to evolve to make use of what spatial computing can provide. Focusing on how the Vision Pro falls short of presenting the old interaction model served via hardware designed for that model is missing the true intent of the product and where it is all headed. Apple is in a tough spot with this, because without handling some of the old way, the Vision Pro doesn't solve any "real world" problems. However, spatial computing solutions to old problems do not really exist yet. Most VP apps are just rebuilt iPad stuff in windows. I think this is why the home screen apps are locked and Apple is so careful to subjugate apps not designed for VP. Also, why the App Store doesn't just show you a list of all apps published with VP entitlements. I suspect they already have internal disagreement between product and marketing on what the low bar should be to qualify for an app getting to be listed as a Vision Pro-ready at all. [1] I use an XDR Pro at my home office and a Dell U2723QE at my coworking space and the 4k is cringe-worthy in comparison. The VP comes nowhere near the experience of the Dell.
paganel 3y ago
Has anyone done any studies on what the corresponding carpal tunnel-like diseases will affect the eyes of the people that will start using this device quite a lot. Meaning that our eyes (and the associated "mechanics" behind them) for sure weren't meant to fiddle with computer windows on a "screen", the same as our hands weren't meant to type on a keyboard/click on a mouse for hours on end, that's why I'm curious about the potential side-effects.
- fckgw 3y ago
  How would it be any different than the normal eye strain from looking at a computer screen? It's essentially the same movements.
  - paganel 3y ago
    Never used this thing but as far as I understood you have to "move" your eyes in order to drag a window, or to click on something, or to do anything of the sorts, while when I'm looking on a screen I generally read stuff (which doesn't involve that "much" of an eye movement) or watch a video (which doesn't involve eye movement almost at all).
it 3y ago
Isn't it going to give people a terrible case of myopia to have a screen this close to their eyes?
- gpm 3y ago
  The actual distance doesn't matter at all, only the apparent distance after taking into account the optics, your eyes can only see the latter. I don't know the number for the Vision Pro, but it's probably similar to most VR headsets at ~2 meters away, far better than most computer screens that people work at all day.
holoduke 3y ago
You need 2x 32k screens per eye to have no pixel visibility.
weltensturm 3y ago
> which is why your phone’s screen needs a higher resolution than your TV, and why a movie at the theater looks fine, even though it may only be 2K They should have measured the angular screen area for those scenarios, because this is entirely backwards.
atombender 3y ago
Anyone know how the Vision Pro handles focus distance? I use multifocal contact lenses, but even with the contacts, I can't focus on anything closer than 25-30 cm. I assume VR headsets like the AVP — where the screen sits much nearer the eyes — use lenses that move the focus distance, but does it work well even for people like me?
askonomm 3y ago
3000+ PPI, yet here I am, unable to get a decently priced 200+ PPI 27" monitor.
hotdogscout 3y ago
Does anyone know how the finger tapping tracking work? Is it just the Lidar sensors?
fouc 3y ago
> This, says Karl, makes for a virtual Mac display with low enough PPD to see individual pixels—not quite the standard desktop display experience. I haven't seen any reviewers saying they can see pixels in AVP, in fact they usually say the opposite. So this part is surprising. There's also a strange complaint about "not real 4K" but I'm far more interested in if it's a retina display or not. i.e. if it visually manages to look like 227 PPI or better, then I'm happy. In Apple world, retina 4K is 4096×2304, which is 9,437,184 pixels.

171 points by mzs 3y ago

kj99 3y ago

“friend of iFixit Karl Guttag has a blog post explaining why using the Vision Pro as a replacement for a good monitor is “ridiculous.” … This, says Karl, makes for a virtual Mac display with low enough PPD to see individual pixels—not quite the standard desktop display” So rather than just trying it for themselves and realizing Karl is wrong, they quote this uncritically? For what it’s worth, there’s nothing wrong with Karl’s math. He’s just not taking into account the fact that the Vision Pro isn’t mounted in a fixed position and that your brain integrates information over time. In practice it certainly is as clear as my 4K display when I use it for mirroring. It’s definitely not as good as a 5K studio display, but then Apple never makes that claim.

lukev 3y ago
Eh... it's extremely good and more than I expected, but it's not quite 4k quality IMO. Not because I can see the pixels (I can't), but just because of very slight inconsistency across the field of vision, and motion blur when I move my head.
- WhatIsDukkha 3y ago
  I've wondered how it looks with a very large spreadsheet filled with figures? That big span of numbers should be fairly revealing of its display capabilities, with all the lines and columns. How is the fringing and aliasing as you look at different angles? Is a large pdf filled with math and tables comfortable to spend a few hours with taking notes?
  - phonon 3y ago
    Here you go! It's not great. https://kguttag.com/2024/02/05/spreadsheet-breaks-the-apple-vision-pros-avp-eye-tracking-foveation-the-first-through-the-optics-pictures/ https://kguttag.com/2024/02/05/spreadsheet-breaks-the-apple-...
    - WhatIsDukkha 3y ago
      Haha I hadn't checked my rss feed! I love it when someone smarter and more diligent than me does the work :)
steveklabnik 3y ago
One of my friends who got a Vision Pro is disappointed in its use as a monitor, but only because he has multiple large monitors on his Mac, yet you can only set up one 4k display inside the Vision Pro, so it ends up being effectively much smaller and lower resolution for him. Slightly different problem, but related. I'm sure it'll get there over time.
- ballresin 3y ago
  This was going to be my complaint with the headset as well. I use 2x 49" super ultrawide displays, as well as 2x 27" 4k displays. Lots of real estate. But then I started to think harder about what I was consuming display space with, and started to peel those things out into their Vision or iPad app equivalents. I'll not get into the obvious trade-offs of using iPad apps, but it largely suits the need. Once I had Slack, Outlook, a Terminal, and TablePlus floating separately from the Mac display, I started to see a path toward potentially not caring if I even had the Mac display.
  - elliotbnvl 3y ago
    How did you manage the terminal? How do you use it?
    - kj99 3y ago
      Blink works great. Not as a local terminal, but it’s very good for remote shells.
    - ballresin 3y ago
      I've used Terminus and Prompt in the past on iOS. For remote dev work over SSH using nvim.
- kj99 3y ago
  Apple only ever promised it would mirror one 4K display. They announced that clearly when they introduced it. It does that as well as the promised, but nothing more.
danpalmer 3y ago
Karl Guttag has a history of getting a lot of excruciatingly difficult details right, and missing the literal big picture right in front of him. I think he makes great technical contributions to the field (at least from my perspective as a layman), but every one of his analyses that I have read ends with something to the effect of "and this is why it is physically impossible for AR/VR to ever work", which is far beyond skepticism. It makes it hard to take the rest of his analysis seriously because it shows an irrational bias against the technology.
- kj99 3y ago
  Yeah. It’s weird. Even the analysis of passthrough is so off. If I look out of my window with AVP on, it’s obvious that I’m looking at a comparatively low res screen, but if I look at digital content, passthrough seems perfect because it’s not in my fovea, and given that the point of the device is to interact with digital content, passthrough is definitely at the level of being good enough.
threeseed 3y ago
Karl Guttag: "As per last time, since I don’t have an AVP." For a device like this where there is so much more than just raw hardware impacting user experience anyone who doesn't own one should have their opinion immediately discounted.
- phonon 3y ago
  He owns one now. https://kguttag.com/ https://kguttag.com/
  - kj99 3y ago
    Doesn't seem as though he's produced any new material since receiving it.
    - phonon 3y ago
      Errr...two posts so far, and he is also collaborating with iFixit?
LegitShady 3y ago
saying 4k and 5k displays while talking about PPD, without mentioning display size, is sort of useless. a 22" 4k display is going to look different than 85" 4k display.

jkubicek 3y ago

> The Vision Pro comes in at a stunning 3,386 PPI. Sweet jesus. I know that PPD is the actual important measurement here, but still, a display with 3K PPI is outrageous.

michaelbuckbee 3y ago
Agree, but also the closer the screen gets to your eyeball the more it matters.
- nomel 3y ago
  How so? The light coming into your eyes is taking the exact same physical path through your lens, and inside, as if the virtual display actually existed*. It's a physical requirement that the optics achieve this, for you to be able to see the image. * Assuming the virtual display is virtually positioned at the focal plane of the lens, which is usually around 3m.
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    How does pixel density not matter the closer the display gets to your eye? What? No idea what focal length has to do with anything, we're talking apparent pixel density which is directly related to screen distance.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - nomel 3y ago
      > we're talking apparent pixel density which is directly related to screen distance. If you ignore all the glass/plastic between the screen and your eye that's required to focus on it.
  - dnissley 3y ago
    Simple: Pixels appear larger when they are closer to your eye.

modeless 3y ago

> they also offer bifocals, and progressives Wow, really? I don't see how that makes any sense. Bifocals are for things that vary in distance, but the displays are at a constant distance from your eyes. Are people really so used to looking through bifocals that they need them in a headset just to feel comfortable even though they aren't necessary to focus? I'm disappointed there is zero detail about the eye tracking cameras. Where they're located, what kind they are, how they see around/through the lenses, where the infrared illumination is. Has anyone else been investigating this?

pram 3y ago
I’ve found a lot of recent teardowns from them are light on interesting details. They seem to be making short YouTube videos now that don’t really cover everything. The screen analysis was interesting but they rushed through the rest, and didn’t even look at any of the cameras???
daemonologist 3y ago
I'm not aware of any information on camera details, but you can see the locations of the cameras and illuminators in this image from Apple: https://web.archive.org/web/20240206041049/https://www.apple.com/v/apple-vision-pro/c/images/overview/technology/features/eye_tracking_on__ln11reqs6mi6_large.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20240206041049/https://www.apple... The tracking system is inboard of the lenses, so it doesn't need to look through them. There are two cameras per eye, below and on the inside (near the nose), and infrared illuminators (not sure if they're just LEDs or something more complex) surrounding the lenses on all sides.
- modeless 3y ago
  Thanks for that image, I can see the locations in the teardown now as well. But it couldn't be more clear that the cameras do need to look through the lenses. And furthermore, the IR LEDs also go through the lenses. They are all on the display side of the lens. It must have been tricky to avoid reflections from the illuminators going through those very fancy lenses.

xnx 3y ago

Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the Apple Vision Pro as a product, this is a marvel of engineering. The APV seems to include the most advanced version of the output from several industries (semi conductors, display, materials, assembly, etc.)

mastax 3y ago
Also textiles. The solo knit band is a technical marvel. A single 3D knit with embedded mechanical parts and hidden cables to adjust tension. It’s not my wheelhouse but I’d love to read a textiles expert’s take on it.
- jsheard 3y ago
  It's a shame the solo knit band seems to be form-over-function, it looks cool and a ton of work clearly went into developing it, but nearly everyone seems to find the much simpler dual loop band to be more practical. e: I stand corrected, the reviewers I've watched mostly preferred the dual loop but there's plenty of solo knit fans here. I guess that YMMV factor is why they include both.
  - ericlewis 3y ago
    Anecdotally the solo knit is much more comfortable on my head than the dual loop. The dual loop seems designed for people with more elongated heads.
    - ribosometronome 3y ago
      >The dual loop seems designed for people with more elongated heads. As the owner of a long head, I definitely struggled with feeling like I couldn't get the VP to sit right for my eyes with the solo loop. The dual resolved that easily. Then you get to have the single loop as new fidget toy.
  - fumar 3y ago
    I prefer the solo band over the dual loop. I've used it since launch with the solo band. It should sit slightly high on the back of your head.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

> we estimate the Vision Pro to have an average of 34 PPD I'm not sure that is interesting though. I would expect tradeoffs on PPD for my peripheral vision, higher density for the center of my vision. I want PPD numbers like perhaps an average PPD for the center 30 degrees FOV.

hnuser123456 3y ago
Issue is that you can look around with your eyes at any part of the display, so the whole display needs to be able to show very high PPI/PPD, if you look at it. They can save on compute by detecting where your eyes are looking and reducing render resolution on the edges of your eye's FOV though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  True, but once you glance to the side and something catches your attention it's not unreasonable to turn your head to get more detail/resolution.

akamaka 3y ago

The potential of the display is what convinces me that Vision will be a breakthrough device. If Apple has a roadmap to keep scaling up the resolution, while only incurring a fixed manufacturing cost of producing a small 2cm display, there will soon be no other device category that will be able to offer such image quality at so low a cost, not laptop screens or desktop monitors or TVs or movie theatres.

mastax 3y ago
If I understand your point, I don’t think it makes as much of a difference as it may seem. Display panels are typically made from large “mother glass” panels out of which smaller display panels are cut. So you can make many different sized panels from a single type of mother glass (all with the same PPI of course). And the TV/monitor industry has delivered remarkable improvements in quality and cost very quickly, so it’s not as if our current methods aren’t working. It’s an interesting thought though, let’s see how it develops.
- jsheard 3y ago
  The process used to make Micro-OLED displays is very different to the processes used for large OLEDs or LCDs, it has more in common with silicon manufacturing than conventional display manufacturing. AIUI that means the panel size will always be limited by the maximum reticle size of the silicon process, which is usually at most ~800mm². That lines up with the 27.5x24mm size of the panels in the Vision Pro - that's 660mm², already close to the largest silicon die you can make.
holman 3y ago
After using it since launch, the displays are still startling every time I step back to really look at them. They look so good. There's a few things that could be improved upon — let me look at my phone, or project a digital display over my phone screen — but the UI and virtual displays you see in Vision Pro feel just like reality. It's startling, and bodes well for future Vision Pro devices (and other VR handsets, too).
- 3y ago

dyno12345 3y ago

discussion of Part 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39246664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39246664

robg 3y ago

Can someone explain why they think the AVP version in 2034 will be light years ahead of v1? I see amazing engineering but not many places to shrink everything into a lightweight pair of glasses.

ceejayoz 3y ago
What other physical tech product doesn't meaningfully improve in a decade? (Maybe the TI-83 calculator?)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
nomel 3y ago
You should ignore anyone claiming unquantifiables like "light years ahead". In 10 years, my hopeful list is: * More custom/specialized silicon for XR. There's aren't many players here currently. * Retina/~60 PPD. * Micro LED (not OLED), making varifocal and HDR possible. * Varifocal lenses, which are just as important for comfort as high res. * Cameras optimized for passthrough, rather than borrowed from cellphones. * Lighter weight. They're almost tolerable, rather than acceptable, as is. This almost certainly involves offloading some of the compute. But, a powerful untethered XR system and a lightweight set of untethered glasses will necessarily be very different, in capabilities. I imagine I'll end up with a tethered device, as a display replacement, in the next 10 years.
- robg 3y ago
  Thanks for this list, doesn’t seem like the pair of glasses that people are envisioning, more like iPhone X, lots of incremental improvements but not a major difference from v1 to v10 or even v15.
  - nomel 3y ago
    > doesn’t seem like the pair of glasses that people are envisioning Do you have an example of these people, or what they're envisioning? Are they expecting ready player one type glasses in the next 10 years? I think there will be different classes of devices: everyday wearable AR more than XR, and screen replacement/heavy compute XR, with vastly different experiences. > lots of incremental improvements As should be expected. This is the only way tech has ever progressed, without exception. The only perceived exceptions involved shifting existing tech into a space that it wasn't present before. > from v1 to v10 or even v15. I think it's a little more than that. I think most would agree that it's not usable, in its current state, for a screen replacement, or as a primary computing device. Even Apple suggested so in their announcement, saying something like "short trips". I suspect that V15 will be the primary computing device, for most people. If that ends up being true, that's significant.

mschuster91 3y ago

> Looking like a bulked-up first-gen iPhone, the case is milled out of a single chunk of aluminum, and the lid snaps into place with firm perimeter clips, leaving little to no seam for us to pry at. We needed a hammer and chisel to open it up! Adhesive also lines the lid, just to make sure you get the message: this pack is not designed to be opened. > Currently, iFixit engineering intern Chayton Ritter has Apple’s proprietary battery cable splayed out on a breadboard, and is trying to determine what sort of electronic handshakes are required to make the Vision Pro accept battery packs. Apple really dropped the bar on this one. It's high time the EU forces companies to design their hardware in a way that allows the user (or a recycling company!) to replace the batteries inside without destroying it in the process, and for fucks sake what happened to the USB-C requirement for electronic devices?

lawik 3y ago
The brick/battery charges via USB-C from what I have seen. Casey Neistat ran that into a battery pack for extended use. I think that makes them plenty compliant. I asusme the custom connector on the head unit is better fit for purpose (comfort, not getting snagged) than USB-C would be.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  Or, to put it even more simply -- the battery pack is the replaceable battery. Which is fine; it's little different from the similarly sealed battery packs on electric power tools, for instance.
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  The battery charges via USB-C. The battery connects to the headset with a weird side-snap connector that's rather flat. As designed, there's not anywhere obvious that a USB-C port could really fit on the headset and assuming they hope to make it smaller in future years, the problem only amplifies. I think other headsets have cables coming out of them when they need to connect to other things, rather than relying on a port. It's not particularly aesthetic.
threeseed 3y ago

fumar 3y ago

Living with the Vision Pro is much easier than I expected. I thought it would feel bulky to manage with the external battery — it hasn't. I put the battery in my pocket and pop into visionOS without any hassle. I found the max time is about 1.5 hours before I feel slight eye and physical pressure fatigue from the headset.

nomel 3y ago
> and physical pressure fatigue from the headset. Is this double loop, or cloth band?
- fumar 3y ago
  Solo band, not the double loop.

joshstrange 3y ago

The displays on the AVP are truly amazing, the best I've ever seen. In fact I noticed zero issues relating to the displays themselves. Where this device stumbles is the passthrough (cameras) and the Mac Virtual Display (AirPlay). If/when those get better I'll buy another one but for now I'm planning on returning mine before the 14 days are up.

dwallin 3y ago

One thing the article doesn't get quite right is you can't compare ppd of a virtual display directly to an IRL screen. The virtual pixels are not 1:1 to device pixels. Your perspective is constantly shifting slightly and the virtual pixels being sampled from is constantly changing. This is providing your eyes and brain a lot more data to sample from and means the perceived resolution can be higher than the actual resolution.

garbageman 3y ago
This is an interesting perspective. Genuine question: would it not be the other way - seeming lower than actual resolution when slightly moving? Why? Could this be used to simulate a higher pixel density? Maybe doing something crazy vibrating the display in some kind of circular motion or something silly?
- axoltl 3y ago
  There are projectors that do this trick! The technology is called XPR: https://www.projectorjunkies.com/4k-dlp-projectors-is-it-real-4k-xpr-technology-explanation/ https://www.projectorjunkies.com/4k-dlp-projectors-is-it-rea...
- layer8 3y ago
  The issue is that the original Mac pixels get 3D-projected and thus interpolated onto the VP panels pixel grid. This invariably loses some sharpness and detail. Even just 2D-rotating a Mac screenshot by some non-orthogonal angle will make it more blurry.
monkeynotes 3y ago
I am not convinced. Your eyes are literally magnifying the pixels compared to being at a distance from a modern 2k display. You may have dense PPD in AVP but being that close to them doesn't do it any favours. I mean, if you can see a pixel you can see a pixel, there is no getting around that. It's like once you notice a blemish you can't not notice it anymore. From what I hear from users is you can absolutely see the pixels.

CobrastanJorji 3y ago

This article does a fantastic job of explaining how good the screen is in clear, easy to understand language. Good job! Is it a good display? It's incredibly good, far beyond the DPI of your phone or monitor. Does it look as good as your phone or your computer monitor when used? No, at the distance you'd look at them from, it looks much worse.

mrcwinn 3y ago

The display may be 3,386 PPI, but wow my laptop screen has never looked sharper after taking the AVP off my head. Screen sharing from my Mac looks distractingly bad, which is a huge bummer. (AVP apps, by contrast, look fantastic.) No matter how I scale or where I place the space, it just never looks very good. I'm really hoping this improves because it's nice to turn my 14" MacBook Pro into a theater screen of sorts alongside native apps. For the moment, though, AVP doesn't seem very useful apart from watching movies (which is amazing).

dvdhsu 3y ago
Agreed. I find my AVP actually quite bad for using my Mac. I use a MBP instead of a MBA because 120hz makes a big difference. The MBP screen within AVP is probably something like 30hz (likely because it's using Airplay, and it doesn't have enough bandwidth). And I can't change the resolution either! It's kind of like working on a TV — I don't see why it's any better than the 14" MBP screen. Overall, the AVP is a disappointment for me. Most of the new UX patterns I find far worse than keyboard shortcuts. (For example, a window manager is _much_ easier to use than having to pinch to drag windows around. For example Vimium is much easier to use than looking at elements and pinching at things.) I don't consume much content (e.g. TV), but of the content that I do consume, it feels lower resolution to me. The demos they have (e.g. the Alicia Keys video) feels nothing like real-life to me. As a parallel to what you said — real life has never looked better (after taking off the AVP), haha.
- bookofjoe 3y ago
  I agree with much of what you wrote — except I found the Alicia Keys video staggeringly good. It felt like I was in the studio with her and her band.
- Sephr 3y ago
  You can combine paradigms for the best of both worlds (e.g. physical keyboard + your apps). I imagine that IDE experiences will only improve as time goes on.
- sjm 3y ago

theogravity 3y ago

> The Vision Pro has another small problem for spectacles wearers. Contrary to some reports, Apple says that corrective lenses are available for most conditions, including astigmatism (which we weren’t sure about in part one), and they also offer bifocals, and progressives. But if you have a prism value included in your prescription, you’re out of luck. Prism correction is used to correct for diplopia, or double vision. The easiest way to see if your vision prescription is supported is to use ZEISS’s online tool. As someone that has prism in their glasses, that sucks. I do have custom lenses with prism for my Quest 2. Not sure why apple can't offer it as well, especially if the lens comes from ZEISS.

mac-mc 3y ago
I think it's because of eye tracking issues. If you need a prism then you probably have other issues with how your eyes move around and they haven't developed for that yet. They are thinking about it although as shown with the accessibility options. I think they will figure it out eventually.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  I suspect I might need prism lenses, but there's already an eye tracking option that tells it to only use my left eye. Used that option during the in-store demo, and it worked pretty well. If the image in the right eye were adjusted to match my condition then that would've been even better, but my brain already mostly ignores the image from the right eye so it didn't matter that it wasn't.

seydor 3y ago

Perceptible resoultion is what 's missing from all these VR goggles. The density of the screen doesn't matter much if the angular resolution isnt great. I was hoping Apple would be the first to rival our actual Retina

FredPret 3y ago

It will be so cool once these are miniaturized to those big square 70's glasses or smaller. Maybe contact lenses in some sci-fi future. I imagine popping on a pair and suddenly you have a huge wrap-around workstation in front of you.

LASR 3y ago

I've said this before, but until we have gimballed screens that can reposition a very high-density portion of the display to always be on the eye's fovea, we will not have a good productivity tool headset. AVP v1 does the eye tracking quite well. I bet real $ that v2 will have motors internally to reposition the screens.

hartator 3y ago
I will take that bet. $5?

jxy 3y ago

So the PPD means we only need a factor of 2 denser pixels and we can throw all other 4K screens away. Wait for a factor of 3 higher PPD (~ 100?) and we may get rid of all of our single-person-use monitors. I guess I'll wait for Vision Pro 4 to get the "retina display."

gpm 3y ago

Disappointing that more analysis isn't put into the lense effect on PPD. SimulaVR (a competitor) has an extremely good blogpost about this [1] where they argue that the PPD in the central 30 degrees is far more important than the average PPD over the whole headset (because you very rarely turn your eyes more than 15 degrees off center, and your eyes have the highest resolution right in front of them), justifying the same sort of lenses that Apple appears to be using. They claim that this allows them to reallocate pixels for ~45% higher "foveal PPD" than would otherwise be expected. [1] https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/ https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/

zaptrem 3y ago
Does Apple focus pixels in the center?
- gpm 3y ago
  Yeah, there's a picture of the lense above a grid of lines demonstrating this in the article (which is the first time I've seen that confirmed).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gattr 3y ago

I'm waiting for a "monitor-replacement glasses" - show me a device which simulates an equivalent of my current 24"/4K/60 Hz monitor (same amount of pixels, same angular size in my FOV). Since I can touch type, I don't need AR/motion sensing, just the display.

bredren 3y ago

Vision Pro is not capable of delivering the level of low-strain fidelity needed to work long hours on anything related editing text. I think it is fair to say a 4k display or near equivalent is the minimum generally needed for this now, particularly for programming. [1] Spatial Computing is not about arranging windows and using interfaces designed for flat surface devices. It is about addressing problems using a three dimensional space. Instead of dashboard panels showing graphs in a window floating in the air, there are zones laid out in front of you showing data illustrated using 3D infographics Apple has had to provide many examples and artful ways to work with windows because it is the only way people understand multi-tasking applications today. "This device has to be good at window management or it isn't a useful device" is the reasonable thinking of a person who will continue to spend most of their time in flat-land, relating to others who also live in flat-land computing. I think Apple knows very well that traditional application presentation is not actually where visionOS / spatial computing aspires to be. You can almost derive this from the types of games they put in the Apple Arcade of the app store. These do more than anything else to show where productivity will go. Even for programming, spatial computing will shine by providing intuitive and interactive visualizations of software systems and infrastructure. Not because it renders an IDE in a window really well. That's what monitors are for! In some way, how we solve problems has to evolve to make use of what spatial computing can provide. Focusing on how the Vision Pro falls short of presenting the old interaction model served via hardware designed for that model is missing the true intent of the product and where it is all headed. Apple is in a tough spot with this, because without handling some of the old way, the Vision Pro doesn't solve any "real world" problems. However, spatial computing solutions to old problems do not really exist yet. Most VP apps are just rebuilt iPad stuff in windows. I think this is why the home screen apps are locked and Apple is so careful to subjugate apps not designed for VP. Also, why the App Store doesn't just show you a list of all apps published with VP entitlements. I suspect they already have internal disagreement between product and marketing on what the low bar should be to qualify for an app getting to be listed as a Vision Pro-ready at all. [1] I use an XDR Pro at my home office and a Dell U2723QE at my coworking space and the 4k is cringe-worthy in comparison. The VP comes nowhere near the experience of the Dell.

paganel 3y ago

Has anyone done any studies on what the corresponding carpal tunnel-like diseases will affect the eyes of the people that will start using this device quite a lot. Meaning that our eyes (and the associated "mechanics" behind them) for sure weren't meant to fiddle with computer windows on a "screen", the same as our hands weren't meant to type on a keyboard/click on a mouse for hours on end, that's why I'm curious about the potential side-effects.

fckgw 3y ago
How would it be any different than the normal eye strain from looking at a computer screen? It's essentially the same movements.
- paganel 3y ago
  Never used this thing but as far as I understood you have to "move" your eyes in order to drag a window, or to click on something, or to do anything of the sorts, while when I'm looking on a screen I generally read stuff (which doesn't involve that "much" of an eye movement) or watch a video (which doesn't involve eye movement almost at all).

it 3y ago

Isn't it going to give people a terrible case of myopia to have a screen this close to their eyes?

gpm 3y ago
The actual distance doesn't matter at all, only the apparent distance after taking into account the optics, your eyes can only see the latter. I don't know the number for the Vision Pro, but it's probably similar to most VR headsets at ~2 meters away, far better than most computer screens that people work at all day.

holoduke 3y ago

You need 2x 32k screens per eye to have no pixel visibility.

weltensturm 3y ago

> which is why your phone’s screen needs a higher resolution than your TV, and why a movie at the theater looks fine, even though it may only be 2K They should have measured the angular screen area for those scenarios, because this is entirely backwards.

atombender 3y ago

Anyone know how the Vision Pro handles focus distance? I use multifocal contact lenses, but even with the contacts, I can't focus on anything closer than 25-30 cm. I assume VR headsets like the AVP — where the screen sits much nearer the eyes — use lenses that move the focus distance, but does it work well even for people like me?

askonomm 3y ago

3000+ PPI, yet here I am, unable to get a decently priced 200+ PPI 27" monitor.

hotdogscout 3y ago

Does anyone know how the finger tapping tracking work? Is it just the Lidar sensors?

fouc 3y ago

> This, says Karl, makes for a virtual Mac display with low enough PPD to see individual pixels—not quite the standard desktop display experience. I haven't seen any reviewers saying they can see pixels in AVP, in fact they usually say the opposite. So this part is surprising. There's also a strange complaint about "not real 4K" but I'm far more interested in if it's a retina display or not. i.e. if it visually manages to look like 227 PPI or better, then I'm happy. In Apple world, retina 4K is 4096×2304, which is 9,437,184 pixels.