5 ms·

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 get

by 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.
    - lttlrck 3y ago
      For me the interest here is VR making your set up hyper-portable. And even if it could I'd still want that physical set up in my workspace. Currently though it cannot match the efficiency of a single monitor with a tiling WM.
      - angra_mainyu 3y ago
        > Currently though it cannot match the efficiency of a single monitor with a tiling WM. This. More than anything else, I've found tiling to be the single most important improvement in my workflow in ages. Specifically, the Pop OS Tiling extension, which is zero-config. The closest I've found on Mac (besides some wm attempts), is Rectangle.app, though it's still a long ways off from a tiling wm.
    - quatrefoil 3y ago
      > That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what people are willing to do for screen real estate. Very, very few people. I would be surprised if it's more than a fraction of a percent of the home computing market. In fact, most people seem quite content to downgrade. They have laptops or desktops that are collecting dust while they're browsing the web on their phones while at home. My entire family does that, I'm the only outlier. I'm sure that cost and convenience are factors and there would be a larger market for zero-hassle "high-FOV" computing, but a bulky headset isn't it. As it is, the market for Apple Vision Pro is almost nonexistent - not without some killer use case that appeals to more than just hardcore geeks.
    - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 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. Well, that only leaves one question: Why so few monitors? More seriously, I'd be really interested to hear your system for arranging things across all that real estate and how you use it optimally. I used to have 2.5 monitors (two widescreens + a laptop off to the side) --- but after several moves, the inexorable passage of time, and my growing laziness, I now just spend my workdays hunched over a single laptop.
- sporkland 3y ago
  OP was saying the native apps look good but screen sharing is bad. How does this explain that?
Ericson2314 3y ago
Nice website. I got a 27" 5K UHD LG monitor at 90 PPD, so I'll never be able to use these things. So sharp I have to wear glasses not contacts.
- mil22 3y ago
  That's my kind of monitor. :) It's not wasted either. Foveal cone angular density is actually around 12,000 cones/deg^2, or 110 PPD, so anything up to that is achievable with perfectly corrected vision. That's a lot higher than the 60 PPD typically claimed for retina PPD, which is at an imperfect 20/20. 110 PPD is more than 3x the PPD of the AVP...
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    Good to hear! I wonder how many people kinda need glasses and don't get them, making the popular opinion of what the retina is capable of much too low.
  - mac-mc 3y ago
    Has anyone done studies showing how much people notice the difference between 60 and 110 PPD photos for example? There are many people who have a hard time articulating 30 vs 60 PPD as it is with computer monitors. How much of a diminishing return is it to go beyond 60 PPD?
    - cubefox 3y ago
      I don't know about studies, but I'm pretty sure there is a large difference between very high contrast edges (worst case: text rendered without anti-aliasing) and photos or even videos, where there usually aren't any high-contrast high-frequency edges (black pixel next to white pixel). Since anti-aliasing is standard in font rendering and pretty common in computer games, I don't think very high PPD content would often be noticable.
      - Ericson2314 3y ago
        On the monitor I mentioned, this text is about 15-20 pixels tall mostly-white on mostly-black, and I can read it from ~4 feet away. (website says that is ~186 PPD)
ionwake 3y ago
i dont know why it took a week but i finally have you to confirm my suspicions based on the nebulous " its a bit out of focus i dont know" crap from every review I came across. keep it up good man.
Dave_Rosenthal 3y ago
I think we need to withhold analysis based on the 34 PPD number. In the article you can see that the rendering projection is quite distorted, with the apparent effect of using more pixels per degree for the center part. They don't account for this when calculating the 34 number. Of course a "fisheye" lens would also be "distorted" and allocate an equal number of pixels to each angle, so it's hard to tell by just eyeballing things. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual PPD number in the center, where it matters, is higher.
- mil22 3y ago
  I think the article merely superimposed manually distorted screenshots from the AVP onto a photo of the sensor, rather than taking a photo of the sensor while turned on, so it's not representative of the distortion, but yes, I agree, you make a good point - the pancake lens optics might be nonlinear, with higher PPD in the center. There's some interesting analysis here: https://kguttag.com/2023/06/26/apple-vision-pro-part-4-hypervision-pancake-optics-analysis/ https://kguttag.com/2023/06/26/apple-vision-pro-part-4-hyper... He concludes, by making comparison with the Meta Quest which has similar pancake optics to the AVP, and by scaling up the PPD, that the AVP's PPD could be as high as 39 PPD in the center of the image. I think most of the conclusions derived from the analysis here will still hold true if the central PPD does turn out to be as high as 39, rather than 34. It's still a very long way from 20/20 retina at 60, from foveal cone density at 110, and pales in comparison to the PPD achieved by even entry level 14" laptops or 27" 4K displays.
  - mil22 3y ago
    s/sensor/panel/
fouc 3y ago
I guess I was assuming that based on the AVP virtual desktop native resolution of 4096 x 2304 that it would be about 86PPD in practice

by mil22 3y ago

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.
  - lttlrck 3y ago
    For me the interest here is VR making your set up hyper-portable. And even if it could I'd still want that physical set up in my workspace. Currently though it cannot match the efficiency of a single monitor with a tiling WM.
    - angra_mainyu 3y ago
      > Currently though it cannot match the efficiency of a single monitor with a tiling WM. This. More than anything else, I've found tiling to be the single most important improvement in my workflow in ages. Specifically, the Pop OS Tiling extension, which is zero-config. The closest I've found on Mac (besides some wm attempts), is Rectangle.app, though it's still a long ways off from a tiling wm.
  - quatrefoil 3y ago
    > That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what people are willing to do for screen real estate. Very, very few people. I would be surprised if it's more than a fraction of a percent of the home computing market. In fact, most people seem quite content to downgrade. They have laptops or desktops that are collecting dust while they're browsing the web on their phones while at home. My entire family does that, I'm the only outlier. I'm sure that cost and convenience are factors and there would be a larger market for zero-hassle "high-FOV" computing, but a bulky headset isn't it. As it is, the market for Apple Vision Pro is almost nonexistent - not without some killer use case that appeals to more than just hardcore geeks.
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 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. Well, that only leaves one question: Why so few monitors? More seriously, I'd be really interested to hear your system for arranging things across all that real estate and how you use it optimally. I used to have 2.5 monitors (two widescreens + a laptop off to the side) --- but after several moves, the inexorable passage of time, and my growing laziness, I now just spend my workdays hunched over a single laptop.
sporkland 3y ago
OP was saying the native apps look good but screen sharing is bad. How does this explain that?

Ericson2314 3y ago

Nice website. I got a 27" 5K UHD LG monitor at 90 PPD, so I'll never be able to use these things. So sharp I have to wear glasses not contacts.

mil22 3y ago
That's my kind of monitor. :) It's not wasted either. Foveal cone angular density is actually around 12,000 cones/deg^2, or 110 PPD, so anything up to that is achievable with perfectly corrected vision. That's a lot higher than the 60 PPD typically claimed for retina PPD, which is at an imperfect 20/20. 110 PPD is more than 3x the PPD of the AVP...
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  Good to hear! I wonder how many people kinda need glasses and don't get them, making the popular opinion of what the retina is capable of much too low.
- mac-mc 3y ago
  Has anyone done studies showing how much people notice the difference between 60 and 110 PPD photos for example? There are many people who have a hard time articulating 30 vs 60 PPD as it is with computer monitors. How much of a diminishing return is it to go beyond 60 PPD?
  - cubefox 3y ago
    I don't know about studies, but I'm pretty sure there is a large difference between very high contrast edges (worst case: text rendered without anti-aliasing) and photos or even videos, where there usually aren't any high-contrast high-frequency edges (black pixel next to white pixel). Since anti-aliasing is standard in font rendering and pretty common in computer games, I don't think very high PPD content would often be noticable.
    - Ericson2314 3y ago
      On the monitor I mentioned, this text is about 15-20 pixels tall mostly-white on mostly-black, and I can read it from ~4 feet away. (website says that is ~186 PPD)

ionwake 3y ago

i dont know why it took a week but i finally have you to confirm my suspicions based on the nebulous " its a bit out of focus i dont know" crap from every review I came across. keep it up good man.

Dave_Rosenthal 3y ago

I think we need to withhold analysis based on the 34 PPD number. In the article you can see that the rendering projection is quite distorted, with the apparent effect of using more pixels per degree for the center part. They don't account for this when calculating the 34 number. Of course a "fisheye" lens would also be "distorted" and allocate an equal number of pixels to each angle, so it's hard to tell by just eyeballing things. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual PPD number in the center, where it matters, is higher.

mil22 3y ago
I think the article merely superimposed manually distorted screenshots from the AVP onto a photo of the sensor, rather than taking a photo of the sensor while turned on, so it's not representative of the distortion, but yes, I agree, you make a good point - the pancake lens optics might be nonlinear, with higher PPD in the center. There's some interesting analysis here: https://kguttag.com/2023/06/26/apple-vision-pro-part-4-hypervision-pancake-optics-analysis/ https://kguttag.com/2023/06/26/apple-vision-pro-part-4-hyper... He concludes, by making comparison with the Meta Quest which has similar pancake optics to the AVP, and by scaling up the PPD, that the AVP's PPD could be as high as 39 PPD in the center of the image. I think most of the conclusions derived from the analysis here will still hold true if the central PPD does turn out to be as high as 39, rather than 34. It's still a very long way from 20/20 retina at 60, from foveal cone density at 110, and pales in comparison to the PPD achieved by even entry level 14" laptops or 27" 4K displays.
- mil22 3y ago
  s/sensor/panel/

fouc 3y ago

I guess I was assuming that based on the AVP virtual desktop native resolution of 4096 x 2304 that it would be about 86PPD in practice