5 ms·

> The more time passes, the less I can shake the feeling that the world would be better if we tuned out our environment less. That may or may not be true in ge

• latexr 2y ago
  > That may or may not be true in general, but air travel is one of the most oppressive environments people regularly find themselves in. What do you think is going to happen if, as the author predicts, “Apple Vision Pro will be on the face of every frequent flyer”? My prediction is that the experience would get even shittier. Since everyone would be tuned out, there’d be even less reason for the airline to care.
  • tesch1 2y ago
    My prediction is that airlines will start offering VR headsets much like they added seatback screens.
    • latexr 2y ago
      Lovely, just what we need: cheap devices with a motion-sickness-inducing laggy passthrough, poor resolution screens (when they work at all), covered in other people’s face grease.
      • tesch1 2y ago
        Solution: bring your own!
      • JoshTriplett 2y ago
        Devices owned by someone else pointing a camera at your eyes and doing eye tracking...
    • makeitdouble 2y ago
      I'd bet on them removing screens and not replacing them, potentially also getting rid of the headphone jack. Perhaps they extend the charging ports some airlines are offering, with a bit more juice than a phone's battery to let people use their device for a bit longer.
    • chasd00 2y ago
      That's a really interesting idea. Do planes have access to Starlink now? I could see a market for passengers to purchase a vr headset and decent inet connection on a flight. It would be tough to keep the headsets in good shape and clean though...
      • nordsieck 2y ago
        > Do planes have access to Starlink now? There's a number of airlines that have signed contracts, like United. I think it'll take a while for everything to be completely rolled out.
    • asciimov 2y ago
      Sounds like a lovely way to get pink eye.
  • nordsieck 2y ago
    > My prediction is that the experience would get even shittier. Since everyone would be tuned out, there’d be even less reason for the airline to care. What can the airlines do to make it worse? I suppose they could cut out soda and pretzels. And get rid of the HUD on the back of the chair. But I don't think most people care that much about that stuff, especially since a lot of chairs have power outlets on them, even in coach. IMO, the thing that people really care about is the amount of space they have access to - both width and depth. And I'm not sure how much more airlines can realistically squeeze that.
• dkdbejwi383 2y ago
  > That may or may not be true in general, but air travel is one of the most oppressive environments people regularly find themselves in. Most people don't regularly travel by plane. This is a very "1%" (as shorthand for a privileged minority of people globally, not literally exactly 1% of the population) problem.
  • DrScientist 2y ago
    1% of 300 million is still a 3 mill market size in the US alone.
  • aaomidi 2y ago
    > Most people don't regularly travel by plane. This is a very "1%" problem. Except, they do in a country like the US that has massive distances between cities.
    • tsimionescu 2y ago
      Even in the US, most people (50+% of the population) certainly doesn't regularly (say, more than once a decade) travel by plane.
      • renewiltord 2y ago
        49% in the last year according to this https://www.airlines.org/dataset/air-travelers-in-america-annual-survey/ https://www.airlines.org/dataset/air-travelers-in-america-an... Statista survey pre-pandemic says majority fly every year https://www.statista.com/statistics/316365/air-travel-frequency-us-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/316365/air-travel-freque... Americans fly quite often.
        • tsimionescu 2y ago
          Oh wow, I didn't imagine it's this many people. I stand corrected, thank you for looking up the numbers.
        • 2y ago
• goalieca 2y ago
  > most oppressive environments people regularly find themselves in. It's boring but not oppressive. It's okay to let the mind wander without completely disconnecting yourself from reality.
  • aaomidi 2y ago
    This completely depends on the person. The environment of a plane (dry humid air, loud engine humming, babies crying etc) is oppressive to a lot of people, even more so if you're neuro-atypical.
  • blargey 2y ago
    I hope you repeat that lecture to everyone wearing an eyemask trying to sleep, or wearing heaphones for their in-flight movie (god forbid they brought noise-cancelling ones!)
  • michaelt 2y ago
    The flying experience is oppressive in the sense of being a constricting, heavy-handed and overbearing environment, indifferent to your inconvenience or discomfort. Where else can you get a full body cavity search, be denied water, be delayed by several hours without so much as an apology, be nickle-and-dimed with overpriced shitty food and $5 fees for a cab to drop you off, and have your luggage smashed up, all under one roof? Of course, I'm not sure the Apple Vision Pro can do much to improve on the situation.
• Staross 2y ago
  >And it's basically not possible to escape that environment until the plane lands Ever heard of closing your eyes ?
  • Dylan16807 2y ago
    For five hours? It takes a lot of meditation practice to get up to "entire plane flight" level.
• bentcorner 2y ago
  Weirdly enough I love being on a plane (and airports). There's something psychologically freeing about them that I feel whenever I fly. I look forward to flying so much. And it's not like I'm flying first class or anything - I fly economy every time. Maybe if I flew more frequently I'd grow to dislike it (I fly maybe once a year), but honestly airports and flying are my favorite part of a trip (yes, I like them more than any possible destination). TBF I haven't flown to anywhere particularly exciting but I fail to imagine any place matching the pleasure of an airport + flight. After writing this it sounds ridiculous but I'm 100% serious - I can't quite explain why I enjoy it so much.
  • chasd00 2y ago
    I don't like flying that much but airports are an interesting place. I like people watching and just the spectacle of it all. There's some funny tweets about airports like: "The airport is a lawless place, want to get drunk at 7AM? Go right ahead. Tired? Just sleep on the floor. Chips cost $15". edit: came back to post this, i definitely get an odd feeling of liberation once i'm at an airport. I travel sometimes for work and once i get in to the airport waiting to board I feel like work and every day life ceases for a time and i'm free to do whatever. It's odd because i'm trapped in this building with hundreds if not thousands of other people waiting to get on a pressurized metal tube blasting through the sky at hundreds of miles/hr. Nothing very liberating about that but for some reason being in the airport feels that way to me.
    • bentcorner 2y ago
      > I travel sometimes for work and once i get in to the airport waiting to board I feel like work and every day life ceases for a time and i'm free to do whatever. Yes, this is very much how I feel. 0 responsibilities and there's nothing I can actually accomplish during my time there. I just sit there reading a book or something, just waiting.
    • floren 2y ago
      Can't stand airports, because from the instant you arrive, the success of your trip is now basically out of your hands but also incredibly precarious. Maybe there's some ticketing snafu and it takes an hour just to drop your checked bag (sanctimonious carry-on fliers hold your posts like you hold the seventeen bags you try to drag on the plane) Maybe security is insanely backed up or just run by incompetents, like the time at SFO where it took them 30 minutes to screen the 10 people in front of me. Then once you get past security, a whole new list of potential problems comes up: Maybe the incoming flight is delayed, possibly delayed so much you're going to miss your connection. Maybe you'll board but the plane will be broken because the airlines don't believe in preventive maintenance, and you'll have to deplane again. Maybe you'll board but due to various circumstances in airport operations you spend 3 hours sitting on the tarmac while the airplane gets increasingly hot and your toddler gets increasingly fussy.
• croes 2y ago
  In a crowded plane you don't want to sit next to someone who tuned out their environment
  • Dylan16807 2y ago
    Why not? It sounds pretty good to me.
    • croes 2y ago
      Tuned out, plays something like fruit ninja and makes a hard cut to the right … in your face
• makeitdouble 2y ago
  > people regularly find themselves in. To me this is the most intriguing part of it all. I understand tech reviewers and journalists raving about having something to do on planes, as they probably spend an awful lot of time there. Then perhaps sales people also flighting on company's dime. But regular people don't spend much time on planes, and many of them don't need it to be an entertaining or efficient time, they can just spleep if the flight is long enough (I can't imagine lugging along a luggage the size of the Vision Pro for just a 2 hour flight) In particular the plane staff won't let you tune completely out if you're awake: the whole safety sequence , take off and landing, turbulences, the in-flight meal, all the guidance for international flights, your neighbours when you've pulled the middle seat etc.
  • throw4950sh06 2y ago
    Many regular people bought tablets, expensive noise canceling headphones and other hardware with the express purpose of using it on a flight 2-6 times (1-3 round trips) a year. Of course, it gets used outside of a plane too - but that applies to VR gear just as well. If they can get the price below $1500, I'm sure many regular people will buy it even if they fly less than 10 times a year.
• RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  > And it's basically not possible to escape that environment until the plane lands You can buy a business class ticket. I will hasard that the overlap between people who can afford to buy a 3000$ VR headset and people who can fly business is pretty much total.
• skhr0680 2y ago
  > psychologically uncomfortable My brother in god, you can travel from any point of the Earth to any other point on the Earth in less than a week. At what point are modern people going to “deal with it”?
  • nordsieck 2y ago
    > My brother in god, you can travel from any point of the Earth to any other point on the Earth in less than a week. At what point are modern people going to “deal with it”? Clearly people do "deal with it" since lots of people fly all the time. But that doesn't mean that the experience can't be improved.
    • ghaff 2y ago
      But the improvement has almost nothing to do with entertainment options. It’s about space and comfort. To a lesser degree cabin service but that quite a way down the list.
• moolcool 2y ago
  > air travel is one of the most oppressive environments people regularly find themselves in How much of this would be solved by VR though? To me the unpleasantness of flying mostly comes down to physical discomfort. The seats are cramped, the air is dry, the food isn't great, the bathroom situation is uncomfortable, and you can't really walk around. VR would visually transport you somewhere else, but physically, you're still very much on a plane.
  • countvonbalzac 2y ago
    There's a reason people watch movies on planes - it's to distract you from the uncomfortable environment you're in. VR is more immersive than a 2D screen so it's more distracting.
  • threetonesun 2y ago
    As someone with generalized anxiety I hate almost every part of flying from the point at which I leave the house until I arrive, but none of what you mentioned bothers me terribly. I'd be curious to try a device like this and see if it helps. I usually just use noise cancelling headphones and play a game or watch movies, which isn't too different from removing myself into VR, but I'm also aware that sometimes completely removing my sense of my surroundings can be more unnerving.
• kccqzy 2y ago
  > Being in an extremely crowded environment with very little personal space I don't disagree with you but I can tell you don't take the NYC subway or Paris metro or the London Underground with any regularity. If you think an airplane is "extremely crowded" then you have no words to describe actual mass transit.
• ghaff 2y ago
  And then the person next to you needs to jostle you because they need to use the bathroom.