Apple Vision Pro Optical Inserts pairing process and other details revealed

Sadly this confirms what I had suspected - the Vision Pro will essentially be unusable in any film festivals, exhibitions, immersive experiences etc.

It’s a big deal because I think the majority of people’s engagement with VR and immersive AR over the next ten years will be in these formats. A VR/AR immersive experience in an exhibition venue will always have the advantage of more immersive environments, by allowing users to walk around, interact with physical objects, wear haptic backpacks etc. 

sloaah said:

Sadly this confirms what I had suspected - the Vision Pro will essentially be unusable in any film festivals, exhibitions, immersive experiences etc.

It’s a big deal because I think the majority of people’s engagement with VR and immersive AR over the next ten years will be in these formats. A VR/AR immersive experience in an exhibition venue will always have the advantage of more immersive environments, by allowing users to walk around, interact with physical objects, wear haptic backpacks etc. 

It will still be used at events regardless. If you have perfect vision or you wear contacts, optical inserts aren’t even necessary. The option to wear optical inserts for people who wear glasses is a luxury we haven’t have at these types of events in the past. Thankfully it sounds like they’re working on adaptive liquid lenses for a future version of the device which adjust to your vision without the need for optical inserts.

sloaah said:

Sadly this confirms what I had suspected - the Vision Pro will essentially be unusable in any film festivals, exhibitions, immersive experiences etc.

It’s a big deal because I think the majority of people’s engagement with VR and immersive AR over the next ten years will be in these formats. A VR/AR immersive experience in an exhibition venue will always have the advantage of more immersive environments, by allowing users to walk around, interact with physical objects, wear haptic backpacks etc. 

Why would you conclude this?

If someone is setting up a XR experience where they need to wear goggles, they will have a bunch of optical inserts to match a user's prescription, and light seals to match a user's head. Apple will have this at most retail Apple Store locations by late 2024. It's just going to be the same for any other type of public serving XR application.

What is described above is an onboarding process for Optic ID, which I assume will be turned off for public-style use cases, where a lot of people are using the same set of hardware. Optic ID serves the same biometric functionality as Face ID and Touch ID. It's user identification. That's not going to be used for public applications. Heck, for public AR use cases, everyone will need to setup EyeSight, which would involved everyone having the Vision device scanning their faces.

isaiahmontoya said:

It will still be used at events regardless. If you have perfect vision or you wear contacts, optical inserts aren’t even necessary. The option to wear optical inserts for people who wear glasses is a luxury we haven’t have at these types of events in the past. Thankfully it sounds like they’re working on adaptive liquid lenses for a future version of the device which adjust to your vision without the need for optical inserts.

You underestimate the number of people who wear glasses. 74% of people have some form of vision impairment; 64% wear eyeglasses some of the time. Over half of those wear glasses all the time, and only a quarter of those wear contact lenses. 

 It means every experience will need to have dozens of custom lenses, with devices to check existing prescription of glasses. And that every headset will need to be rebooted to calibrate to the new lenses. 

 It just won’t happen. No large scale experience will use it, where you have 60-100+ people per hour partaking in the experience. 

 I say this as a VR professional with direct experience of this field.

Hmm, the cost of the Vision Pro unique prescription lenses divided by what I pay for each set of my custom contacts that I have had for years tells me that I’ll be able to use my Vision Pro for years before I might need to buy the Vision Pro optical lenses in my prescription at all.