6 ms·

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

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
  You can change the resolution though? If you go to Displays on your mac you can change the resolution of the AVP mirroring. I find it works much better at "1080p" than the default since it makes small text much more readable.
zerohp 3y ago
How is your wifi network? Have you tried changing the display resolution on the Mac while you're connected to the Vision Pro? The virtual display doesn't look as good as the laptop screen, but it looks as good or better than the 1440p monitor I normally use at my desk.
- mrcwinn 3y ago
  Thank you, I’ll fiddle with that. WiFi is good and my 14” M3 is using its native resolution, whatever the default is.
- gpm 3y ago
  For comparison purposes can you share the size of your monitor and how far away you sit from it? Trying to decide if it's worth getting one of these (which would be a bit of a pain since I'm in Canada).
jolt42 3y ago
Disappointing to hear. I was hoping laptop work to be on par with a 27" 4k monitor, otherwise can't see I'd use it "enough".
- mil22 3y ago
  Matching the 60° FOV of a 27" monitor at close distance, it's equivalent to 1080p or less. It gets even worse at FOVs equivalent to more reasonable distances.
- matsemann 3y ago
  Given that the screen inside the AVP is basically 4k, your screen would then have to fill your entire vision to have the same resolution. So almost like having your nose touching the screen.
mil22 3y ago
It's not surprising. The AVP has a PPD of 34. A 14" MBP screen with a resolution of 3024x1964 already has a PPD of 66 at a close 14" viewing distance and it gets higher as you move further away [1]. Retina is considered 60+ at 20/20 vision. Of course a real display has no resampling or micro-OLED smearing to overcome either. To achieve the same effective pixel count as a MBP, a virtual screen at the AVP's PPD would have to be resized to 90° horizontal FOV, which is just too big to be comfortable, equivalent to sitting 6" from a 14" MBP screen. The technology just isn't there yet. We need at least another doubling of PPD. See you in 10 years. [1] https://qasimk.io/screen-ppd/ https://qasimk.io/screen-ppd/
- jsheard 3y ago
  That's the great irony of Apple trying to make AR work as a monitor replacement, their existing users will be some of the hardest to please in terms of resolution since they've been spoiled by retina displays as standard on every Mac for the last decade.
  - sitzkrieg 3y ago
    yea i truly do not understand. not to mention cranking your neck for more than 2 seconds a workday is going to make this a nonstarter once most people get over the cost justifications
    - snakeyjake 3y ago
      My current setup is 3x monitors + a laptop screen to the side at the office and 3x monitor + a wall-mounted television in my home office. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what people are willing to do for screen real estate. Many people are accustomed to working with 3x or more display devices where at least one of them is out of their field of view no matter where they are looking so I imagine the primary adaptation to using a vision pro would be the weight. I am a color accuracy and resolution snob so I only use professional monitors: BenQ at home and Eizo at the office. If one day the vision pro can match the performance of color-critical monitors for less than $5,100 it will be a definite "oui-starter". If one day the vision pro can BEAT the performance of color-critical monitors for less than $5,100 I will hire a personal trainer for the sole purpose of getting my neck buff enough to use one without strain.
lukev 3y ago
I for one don't notice any quality/resolution difference between native apps and a mirrored Mac screen. I agree it feels "worse" than a physical screen - it is certainly less crisp. But I ran an experiment, and created a doc with font sizes from 1-15 pt, then viewed it on my physical 24" 4k monitor, and on a mirrored Mac display in the AVP set to the same (virtual) dimensions and distance away. Interestingly, text became illegible (without leaning closer in either case) for me at around the 6pt mark for both of them. Objectively speaking, the size of font I can read is pretty equivalent, although I find myself preferring fonts about 2pts larger on the AVP than on my physical monitor. I suspect this is because the physical display is able to benefit from precise pixel alignment and subpixel rendering, which the AVP can't. But the "average density" feels pretty equivalent... it somehow feels more an issue of optical sharpness than of "pixel size" (even I know the two are related.)
- cubefox 3y ago
  > I for one don't notice any quality/resolution difference between native apps and a mirrored Mac screen. I wonder how so different opinions exist on things that should be pretty much the same for everyone.
  - Retric 3y ago
    People’s eyes vary quite a bit even with corrective lenses.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    Some people immediately notice 90/120Hz screns vs 60. Some will see pixels on a 3K 14" screen while it will "good enough" for most. Aside from sheer eye sight, I think there's also attention and sensibility to these specific things. The same way web designers recognize fonts from 4 letters when generic users barely pay attention to whether it's serif.
  - ekms 3y ago
    Some people have much worse vision? Makes sense that people would perceive visual clarity differently
jeppester 3y ago
> 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 think a big part of the difference is that your feed is rotated and skewed raster graphic. That might work fine for photographs and movies. But UIs and text will quickly suffer from washed out edges when you apply transformations to otherwise "perfect" pixels. The resolution of the pre-transformed image would have to be vastly higher to counteract the fuzzyness. An even better solution would be if the UI could be rendered directly to the AVP rather than being a screen capture.
- lancesells 3y ago
  The thing I wonder is can't you fix the screen to be straight relative to your head at all times? Or is it always fixed to the environment?
  - jeppester 3y ago
    The pixels of the AVP display are wrapped around your eyes, so pixel perfect rendering would result in an out of shape screen (although it would likely be much sharper). Also - from my experience - it doesn't feel good to have a large object unnaturally fixed to the center of your view in VR.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  There's so many layers of compression and scaling and transforming going on that it's never going to look Great. macOS renders to 5120x2880 'display', then it's downscaled to 4k, which is then streamed to the Vision Pro with whatever compression or bitrate, where it's scaled to whatever size you display it as.
pciexpgpu 3y ago
How much of that is compression artifacts of streaming via wifi?
fabifabulous 3y ago
Maybe it‘s linked to streaming resolution and bitrate.
seec 3y ago
Of every major issue with the AVP the fact that they not only avoided but made impossible to have a wired connections to anything even though they laughably made the battery pack external is really the most stupid thing ever. As a display replacement for more powerful hardware, we will never overcome the bandwidth problem (heck, it's already hard enough to do 5k at high fps with a wire) no matter how good the compression is. It makes no sense that they built and advertise this "feature" when it could have been so much better with a thunderbolt/usb c input on the battery pack... It doesn't spell much good for the future of the device, because it seems it will be largely locked down and limited like the iPad but even less enticing uses cases...

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
You can change the resolution though? If you go to Displays on your mac you can change the resolution of the AVP mirroring. I find it works much better at "1080p" than the default since it makes small text much more readable.

zerohp 3y ago

How is your wifi network? Have you tried changing the display resolution on the Mac while you're connected to the Vision Pro? The virtual display doesn't look as good as the laptop screen, but it looks as good or better than the 1440p monitor I normally use at my desk.

mrcwinn 3y ago
Thank you, I’ll fiddle with that. WiFi is good and my 14” M3 is using its native resolution, whatever the default is.
gpm 3y ago
For comparison purposes can you share the size of your monitor and how far away you sit from it? Trying to decide if it's worth getting one of these (which would be a bit of a pain since I'm in Canada).

jolt42 3y ago

Disappointing to hear. I was hoping laptop work to be on par with a 27" 4k monitor, otherwise can't see I'd use it "enough".

mil22 3y ago
Matching the 60° FOV of a 27" monitor at close distance, it's equivalent to 1080p or less. It gets even worse at FOVs equivalent to more reasonable distances.
matsemann 3y ago
Given that the screen inside the AVP is basically 4k, your screen would then have to fill your entire vision to have the same resolution. So almost like having your nose touching the screen.

mil22 3y ago

It's not surprising. The AVP has a PPD of 34. A 14" MBP screen with a resolution of 3024x1964 already has a PPD of 66 at a close 14" viewing distance and it gets higher as you move further away [1]. Retina is considered 60+ at 20/20 vision. Of course a real display has no resampling or micro-OLED smearing to overcome either. To achieve the same effective pixel count as a MBP, a virtual screen at the AVP's PPD would have to be resized to 90° horizontal FOV, which is just too big to be comfortable, equivalent to sitting 6" from a 14" MBP screen. The technology just isn't there yet. We need at least another doubling of PPD. See you in 10 years. [1] https://qasimk.io/screen-ppd/ https://qasimk.io/screen-ppd/

jsheard 3y ago
That's the great irony of Apple trying to make AR work as a monitor replacement, their existing users will be some of the hardest to please in terms of resolution since they've been spoiled by retina displays as standard on every Mac for the last decade.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  yea i truly do not understand. not to mention cranking your neck for more than 2 seconds a workday is going to make this a nonstarter once most people get over the cost justifications
  - snakeyjake 3y ago
    My current setup is 3x monitors + a laptop screen to the side at the office and 3x monitor + a wall-mounted television in my home office. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what people are willing to do for screen real estate. Many people are accustomed to working with 3x or more display devices where at least one of them is out of their field of view no matter where they are looking so I imagine the primary adaptation to using a vision pro would be the weight. I am a color accuracy and resolution snob so I only use professional monitors: BenQ at home and Eizo at the office. If one day the vision pro can match the performance of color-critical monitors for less than $5,100 it will be a definite "oui-starter". If one day the vision pro can BEAT the performance of color-critical monitors for less than $5,100 I will hire a personal trainer for the sole purpose of getting my neck buff enough to use one without strain.

lukev 3y ago

I for one don't notice any quality/resolution difference between native apps and a mirrored Mac screen. I agree it feels "worse" than a physical screen - it is certainly less crisp. But I ran an experiment, and created a doc with font sizes from 1-15 pt, then viewed it on my physical 24" 4k monitor, and on a mirrored Mac display in the AVP set to the same (virtual) dimensions and distance away. Interestingly, text became illegible (without leaning closer in either case) for me at around the 6pt mark for both of them. Objectively speaking, the size of font I can read is pretty equivalent, although I find myself preferring fonts about 2pts larger on the AVP than on my physical monitor. I suspect this is because the physical display is able to benefit from precise pixel alignment and subpixel rendering, which the AVP can't. But the "average density" feels pretty equivalent... it somehow feels more an issue of optical sharpness than of "pixel size" (even I know the two are related.)

cubefox 3y ago
> I for one don't notice any quality/resolution difference between native apps and a mirrored Mac screen. I wonder how so different opinions exist on things that should be pretty much the same for everyone.
- Retric 3y ago
  People’s eyes vary quite a bit even with corrective lenses.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Some people immediately notice 90/120Hz screns vs 60. Some will see pixels on a 3K 14" screen while it will "good enough" for most. Aside from sheer eye sight, I think there's also attention and sensibility to these specific things. The same way web designers recognize fonts from 4 letters when generic users barely pay attention to whether it's serif.
- ekms 3y ago
  Some people have much worse vision? Makes sense that people would perceive visual clarity differently

jeppester 3y ago

> 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 think a big part of the difference is that your feed is rotated and skewed raster graphic. That might work fine for photographs and movies. But UIs and text will quickly suffer from washed out edges when you apply transformations to otherwise "perfect" pixels. The resolution of the pre-transformed image would have to be vastly higher to counteract the fuzzyness. An even better solution would be if the UI could be rendered directly to the AVP rather than being a screen capture.

lancesells 3y ago
The thing I wonder is can't you fix the screen to be straight relative to your head at all times? Or is it always fixed to the environment?
- jeppester 3y ago
  The pixels of the AVP display are wrapped around your eyes, so pixel perfect rendering would result in an out of shape screen (although it would likely be much sharper). Also - from my experience - it doesn't feel good to have a large object unnaturally fixed to the center of your view in VR.
madeofpalk 3y ago
There's so many layers of compression and scaling and transforming going on that it's never going to look Great. macOS renders to 5120x2880 'display', then it's downscaled to 4k, which is then streamed to the Vision Pro with whatever compression or bitrate, where it's scaled to whatever size you display it as.

pciexpgpu 3y ago

How much of that is compression artifacts of streaming via wifi?

fabifabulous 3y ago

Maybe it‘s linked to streaming resolution and bitrate.

seec 3y ago

Of every major issue with the AVP the fact that they not only avoided but made impossible to have a wired connections to anything even though they laughably made the battery pack external is really the most stupid thing ever. As a display replacement for more powerful hardware, we will never overcome the bandwidth problem (heck, it's already hard enough to do 5k at high fps with a wire) no matter how good the compression is. It makes no sense that they built and advertise this "feature" when it could have been so much better with a thunderbolt/usb c input on the battery pack... It doesn't spell much good for the future of the device, because it seems it will be largely locked down and limited like the iPad but even less enticing uses cases...