5 ms·

I tried to use the Vision Pro for work, and I'm not sure if it was just my eyes or what, but looking at code inside of that thing was just...exhausting. When I

by jm20 3y ago

I tried to use the Vision Pro for work, and I'm not sure if it was just my eyes or what, but looking at code inside of that thing was just...exhausting. When I took it off, I looked at my regular monitors with a newfound love. I'd love for this thing to reach it's full potential as this 'work from a mountaintop, but really your garage' device, but I feel like until the resolution gets to the same as existing monitors (no small task, I know) it's just...not as good for the vast majority of use cases.

judge2020 3y ago
Were you using macos virtual display? Using the passthrough to look at monitors is passable but not suitable for even a few minutes of use.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  Not you you responded to but I tried both. I mean I never seriously thought the passthrough would be good enough, and it wasn't, but it was just barely legible and useful when I was trying to pair my AVP to my MBP. But I really tried to like MVD and I just couldn't do it. It wasn't clear enough and felt like an added "tax" on my mind, also I felt very limited compared to when using my external monitors.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  > not suitable for even a few minutes of use Because of lag, or why? Many people work on remote desktop all day long, and I spend my fair share of time in SSH sessions as well. It's not like it improves the experience compared to working locally, but for me it works fine so long as you're within a few hundred kilometers without much jitter. On the VR, the screen should move as you move your head because that position isn't what's being passed through, so that can't be the difference either. I don't understand (without having a device myself) how/whether this is worse than normal video streaming over LAN?
  - judge2020 3y ago
    You misunderstood, the video passthrough of your surroundings is not good enough. Using the macOS virtual display is fine, there is some noticeable streaming latency, maybe 30ms (that would be solved if it could just take DP over USB-C or Thunderbolt in) but it's suitable for long term use.
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      Not just giving a display port of some sort seems like such a mistake given that there's already the battery cord/pack and that the virtual display latency is so bad.
  - xp84 3y ago
    If i'm not mistaken, judge2020 meant that what's not suitable is looking through your AVP at your real monitor. The virtual display (glorified VNC or whatever) that you're saying is OK, I think the agree is also OK. And I'd assume that yes, it would be torture to try to view a monitor through the AVP just due to the resolution loss. It would be like poorly downscaling the 4k/5k resolution of your 27" monitor to like 1366x768 but much worse since the pixels are not even staying lined up on a level grid but resampled at slightly diagonal angles as your head moves even a couple of degrees. I am pretty sure setting up 2 more big $1000 monitors left and right would be better than "center monitor + AVP with virtual apps left and right" (and it would save about $2000 lol).
    - smaudet 3y ago
      Eh? For coding you don't need a 2k$ monitor setup, you can get by comfortably on 3-400$. It's an interesting argument but they are going to need to try a lot harder for it to be a compelling desktop replacement.
      - xp84 3y ago
        I agree with you completely myself -- I bought a 4k 27" HP Envy monitor in the $400ish range about 5 years ago, and that plus the 16" laptop on a double arm setup is a great setup for me. But I definitely 2.5x'd the numbers in case of the people I've heard of (certain deeply-observant Apple devotees) who wax poetic about how using anything but a perfect multiple pixel ratio is painful to their eyes (they believe a 27" has to be 5k and don't believe in using a scaled screen resolution). Although tbh, I should have said "$1600 monitors" in that case, as there is nearly zero competition in that resolution+size combo, so Apple's hilarious one is the only option.
- prawn 3y ago
  Is the virtual display feature as it's presented now likely to be a stopgap or fallback? A bit like emulation or Rosetta apps when Apple silicon was new, or running iPhone apps on an iPad. Those were things that seemed core when each was first introduced and then quickly disappeared for most people in most cases. I wonder if it could largely be replaced by native AVP apps or a better way for them to send out data from the Mac to the headset once there is broader software support?
testfrequency 3y ago
I had the same exact experience. It’s felt more like I was playing a simulator game of myself coding, and it was not enjoyable at all. I often wonder how people who actually work at fast paced places as engineers are claiming to be more productive with this strapped on. If I just ingested and read email and slack messages all day, or talked in zoom all day, sure (maybe), but I don’t.
- awskinda 3y ago
  I’m not extremely productive, but I have 2 use-cases I’m excited about. 1. Having more screen real estate in my small home office. I often dive into spaghetti code, and seeing more of it helps me maintain context. 2. Working in my RV. I can’t take my extra screens with me (it’s a multi-use family RV, so I’m not mounting anything. Plus, there isn’t room.), and I’m so, so excited about having more screen real estate in there. We lived/worked in it for 3 months last summer, and it was really nice coming home to more screens at the end of the trip.
  - reneherse 3y ago
    Similarly, I'm intrigued by the possibility of using it for coding whilst aboard a sailboat, where having multiple large physical screens isn't a possibility due to limited space and lack of suitable mounting surfaces. Very curious to see how tolerable the UX is in an environment that's almost always experiencing some degree of motion independent of the user.
    - randmeerkat 3y ago
      > Similarly, I'm intrigued by the possibility of using it for coding whilst aboard a sailboat, where having multiple large physical screens isn't a possibility due to limited space and lack of suitable mounting surfaces. It’s amazing to me what people will do to avoid being present in the moment. You’re on a sailboat, enjoy it, smell the ocean, feel the water on your face, breathe deeply and take it all in. If you’re just going to strap goggles on your face to blind you to the beauty around you, then why did you even get a sailboat to begin with?
iamjake648 3y ago
I returned mine today after attempting to use it for work for a few hours at a time over the last week. I felt the same eye strain with my Mac as a mirrored display. Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously. After a few days the eye strain seemed to get worse and worse, until yesterday it give me such a bad headache I decided that was enough.
- cromka 3y ago
  > Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously. This is going to be another of their socially awkward gimmicks like Memojis they will double down until they inevitably fail. I really feel like Apple actually just doesn’t feel it and every time they’re pushing their weird geeky ideas onto their users they loose a bit of coolness factor. And if kids decide Apple got too cringe, while someone else manages to use that to spin their momentum (think e.g. Nokia respawning riding the 90s sentiment wave), they may actually start to seriously struggle.
  - ApolIllo 3y ago
    Damn. My family use Memojis heavily!
    - amiantos 3y ago
      Don't worry, most people on Hacker News have no real idea how normal everyday people use tech products. This person thinks Memojis are unused, but they just lack perspective.
      - gffrd 3y ago
        100% of my social circle works outside tech, and nobody uses memojis
        jnaina 3y ago
        The world is bigger than just the US of A. Memojis are big among the teen set elsewhere.
chenxi9649 3y ago
When I don't wear contacts for a while(just normal glasses), wearing them throughout the day also makes me a bit "tired". Even though the "resolution" is basically the same. But after wearing them consecutively for a few days, it becomes like the same as glasses. I wonder if there's something similar here going on. Since we rely so heavily on vision for everything(Especially balance). Any difference to our normal perception will cause "exhaustion" of sorts. But maybe wearing it continuously for days can cause our body to adapt to it?(Which, obviously is impossible for AVPs)
- g-b-r 3y ago
  That might have to do with the eye "enlarging" a little to make space for the lenses, or maybe more likely with you learning to "lubricate" the lenses with tearing (pure conjecture, I last used lenses fifteen twenty years ago)
LegitShady 3y ago
I think its a PWM issue.
- rrdharan 3y ago
  Since I didn’t know the acronym.. “Pulse Width Modulation”: https://appleinsider.com/inside/apple-vision-pro/tips/why-apple-vision-pro-constantly-strobing-matters-to-your-health https://appleinsider.com/inside/apple-vision-pro/tips/why-ap...
cpufry 3y ago
[flagged]
g-b-r 3y ago
I haven't tried them, but I imagine that despite the high resolution, text that is badly aligned (and probably constantly imperceptibly wobbling) strains the eyes. The software should probably force text to be aligned on whole real pixels, even if that detracts a little from the realism. And the best would probably be to keep virtual screens completely fixed until you move by a certain, largish degree (as an option). Then again, maybe this has nothing to do with the straining.
- mlindner 3y ago
  > The software should probably force text to be aligned on whole real pixels, even if that detracts a little from the realism. I think that'd be difficult given that pixels are effectively "non-rectangular" given the warping from the lenses.
  - g-b-r 3y ago
    Well they might be non-rectangular, but text aligned on their borders should still be sharper than misaligned text, no?
    - astrange 3y ago
      High DPI monitor text effectively can't be misaligned, especially since Apple's text rendering always dilated characters instead of trying to fit them onto pixel grids.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  > aligned on whole real pixels Remember that you're working with two screens, not one, and they have to have coordinated projections that will also depend on the user's IPD.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Interpupillary distance fwiw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pupillary_distance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pupillary_distance
leetharris 3y ago
Same. I returned it the other night because I finally just gave up on trying to make it comfortable. My body was just rejecting it. I could make it 20-30 minutes. It's a bunch of factors. Heavy, lots of pressure on a few specific points, the dangling cable to a slippery battery which I had to leave plugged in all day, the grainy passthrough... But most of all it's just too heavy. And connection would sometimes get janky between Mac and Vision Pro. I've got high hopes for generation 2 and 3 but it needs time to cook.
frontman1988 3y ago
Who knows what will be the long term consequences of using these devices on the eye. Better to be wary
- astrange 3y ago
  There shouldn't be any as long as you're not a child. Children need to spend a lot of time outside to avoid developing myopia.
dclowd9901 3y ago
VR headsets’ resolution are still a couple orders of magnitude away from being indecipherable from normal vision, and that doesn’t even include motion.
dawnerd 3y ago
I couldn’t stand the constant glare when looking at code. Everything just felt hazy combined with the awful pass through was a downgrade. Was more productive at first since I could block the world out. Didn’t last.
WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
When you move your head around in Vision Pro, do the windows stay where you put them, or do they follow your head? If they stay where put, is this perfect, or do they jig a little bit?
- willemlaurentz 3y ago
  They really seem to be glued to the real world, not moving when I move.
  - WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
    At least one less reason for headaches. My NReal Air are nice glasses, but the fact that I can’t look away from the huge ass screen is annoying af. Eye movements can only get you so far, and the intuitive head movement does not work. Argh!
JeremyNT 3y ago
Eye stain has been a huge issue for me with earlier VR goggles. Some people seem to be suggesting the higher quality of the Vision Pro overcomes this, but I'm starting to really wonder. Would even more resolution actually solve it? Or maybe there's really no way around the discomfort for some of us.

by jm20 3y ago

judge2020 3y ago

Were you using macos virtual display? Using the passthrough to look at monitors is passable but not suitable for even a few minutes of use.

joshstrange 3y ago
Not you you responded to but I tried both. I mean I never seriously thought the passthrough would be good enough, and it wasn't, but it was just barely legible and useful when I was trying to pair my AVP to my MBP. But I really tried to like MVD and I just couldn't do it. It wasn't clear enough and felt like an added "tax" on my mind, also I felt very limited compared to when using my external monitors.
lucb1e 3y ago
> not suitable for even a few minutes of use Because of lag, or why? Many people work on remote desktop all day long, and I spend my fair share of time in SSH sessions as well. It's not like it improves the experience compared to working locally, but for me it works fine so long as you're within a few hundred kilometers without much jitter. On the VR, the screen should move as you move your head because that position isn't what's being passed through, so that can't be the difference either. I don't understand (without having a device myself) how/whether this is worse than normal video streaming over LAN?
- judge2020 3y ago
  You misunderstood, the video passthrough of your surroundings is not good enough. Using the macOS virtual display is fine, there is some noticeable streaming latency, maybe 30ms (that would be solved if it could just take DP over USB-C or Thunderbolt in) but it's suitable for long term use.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Not just giving a display port of some sort seems like such a mistake given that there's already the battery cord/pack and that the virtual display latency is so bad.
- xp84 3y ago
  If i'm not mistaken, judge2020 meant that what's not suitable is looking through your AVP at your real monitor. The virtual display (glorified VNC or whatever) that you're saying is OK, I think the agree is also OK. And I'd assume that yes, it would be torture to try to view a monitor through the AVP just due to the resolution loss. It would be like poorly downscaling the 4k/5k resolution of your 27" monitor to like 1366x768 but much worse since the pixels are not even staying lined up on a level grid but resampled at slightly diagonal angles as your head moves even a couple of degrees. I am pretty sure setting up 2 more big $1000 monitors left and right would be better than "center monitor + AVP with virtual apps left and right" (and it would save about $2000 lol).
  - smaudet 3y ago
    Eh? For coding you don't need a 2k$ monitor setup, you can get by comfortably on 3-400$. It's an interesting argument but they are going to need to try a lot harder for it to be a compelling desktop replacement.
    - xp84 3y ago
      I agree with you completely myself -- I bought a 4k 27" HP Envy monitor in the $400ish range about 5 years ago, and that plus the 16" laptop on a double arm setup is a great setup for me. But I definitely 2.5x'd the numbers in case of the people I've heard of (certain deeply-observant Apple devotees) who wax poetic about how using anything but a perfect multiple pixel ratio is painful to their eyes (they believe a 27" has to be 5k and don't believe in using a scaled screen resolution). Although tbh, I should have said "$1600 monitors" in that case, as there is nearly zero competition in that resolution+size combo, so Apple's hilarious one is the only option.
prawn 3y ago
Is the virtual display feature as it's presented now likely to be a stopgap or fallback? A bit like emulation or Rosetta apps when Apple silicon was new, or running iPhone apps on an iPad. Those were things that seemed core when each was first introduced and then quickly disappeared for most people in most cases. I wonder if it could largely be replaced by native AVP apps or a better way for them to send out data from the Mac to the headset once there is broader software support?

testfrequency 3y ago

I had the same exact experience. It’s felt more like I was playing a simulator game of myself coding, and it was not enjoyable at all. I often wonder how people who actually work at fast paced places as engineers are claiming to be more productive with this strapped on. If I just ingested and read email and slack messages all day, or talked in zoom all day, sure (maybe), but I don’t.

awskinda 3y ago
I’m not extremely productive, but I have 2 use-cases I’m excited about. 1. Having more screen real estate in my small home office. I often dive into spaghetti code, and seeing more of it helps me maintain context. 2. Working in my RV. I can’t take my extra screens with me (it’s a multi-use family RV, so I’m not mounting anything. Plus, there isn’t room.), and I’m so, so excited about having more screen real estate in there. We lived/worked in it for 3 months last summer, and it was really nice coming home to more screens at the end of the trip.
- reneherse 3y ago
  Similarly, I'm intrigued by the possibility of using it for coding whilst aboard a sailboat, where having multiple large physical screens isn't a possibility due to limited space and lack of suitable mounting surfaces. Very curious to see how tolerable the UX is in an environment that's almost always experiencing some degree of motion independent of the user.
  - randmeerkat 3y ago
    > Similarly, I'm intrigued by the possibility of using it for coding whilst aboard a sailboat, where having multiple large physical screens isn't a possibility due to limited space and lack of suitable mounting surfaces. It’s amazing to me what people will do to avoid being present in the moment. You’re on a sailboat, enjoy it, smell the ocean, feel the water on your face, breathe deeply and take it all in. If you’re just going to strap goggles on your face to blind you to the beauty around you, then why did you even get a sailboat to begin with?

iamjake648 3y ago

I returned mine today after attempting to use it for work for a few hours at a time over the last week. I felt the same eye strain with my Mac as a mirrored display. Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously. After a few days the eye strain seemed to get worse and worse, until yesterday it give me such a bad headache I decided that was enough.

cromka 3y ago
> Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously. This is going to be another of their socially awkward gimmicks like Memojis they will double down until they inevitably fail. I really feel like Apple actually just doesn’t feel it and every time they’re pushing their weird geeky ideas onto their users they loose a bit of coolness factor. And if kids decide Apple got too cringe, while someone else manages to use that to spin their momentum (think e.g. Nokia respawning riding the 90s sentiment wave), they may actually start to seriously struggle.
- ApolIllo 3y ago
  Damn. My family use Memojis heavily!
  - amiantos 3y ago
    Don't worry, most people on Hacker News have no real idea how normal everyday people use tech products. This person thinks Memojis are unused, but they just lack perspective.
    - gffrd 3y ago
      100% of my social circle works outside tech, and nobody uses memojis
      - jnaina 3y ago
        The world is bigger than just the US of A. Memojis are big among the teen set elsewhere.

chenxi9649 3y ago

When I don't wear contacts for a while(just normal glasses), wearing them throughout the day also makes me a bit "tired". Even though the "resolution" is basically the same. But after wearing them consecutively for a few days, it becomes like the same as glasses. I wonder if there's something similar here going on. Since we rely so heavily on vision for everything(Especially balance). Any difference to our normal perception will cause "exhaustion" of sorts. But maybe wearing it continuously for days can cause our body to adapt to it?(Which, obviously is impossible for AVPs)

g-b-r 3y ago
That might have to do with the eye "enlarging" a little to make space for the lenses, or maybe more likely with you learning to "lubricate" the lenses with tearing (pure conjecture, I last used lenses fifteen twenty years ago)

LegitShady 3y ago

I think its a PWM issue.

rrdharan 3y ago
Since I didn’t know the acronym.. “Pulse Width Modulation”: https://appleinsider.com/inside/apple-vision-pro/tips/why-apple-vision-pro-constantly-strobing-matters-to-your-health https://appleinsider.com/inside/apple-vision-pro/tips/why-ap...

cpufry 3y ago

[flagged]

g-b-r 3y ago

I haven't tried them, but I imagine that despite the high resolution, text that is badly aligned (and probably constantly imperceptibly wobbling) strains the eyes. The software should probably force text to be aligned on whole real pixels, even if that detracts a little from the realism. And the best would probably be to keep virtual screens completely fixed until you move by a certain, largish degree (as an option). Then again, maybe this has nothing to do with the straining.

mlindner 3y ago
> The software should probably force text to be aligned on whole real pixels, even if that detracts a little from the realism. I think that'd be difficult given that pixels are effectively "non-rectangular" given the warping from the lenses.
- g-b-r 3y ago
  Well they might be non-rectangular, but text aligned on their borders should still be sharper than misaligned text, no?
  - astrange 3y ago
    High DPI monitor text effectively can't be misaligned, especially since Apple's text rendering always dilated characters instead of trying to fit them onto pixel grids.
crooked-v 3y ago
> aligned on whole real pixels Remember that you're working with two screens, not one, and they have to have coordinated projections that will also depend on the user's IPD.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Interpupillary distance fwiw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pupillary_distance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pupillary_distance

leetharris 3y ago

Same. I returned it the other night because I finally just gave up on trying to make it comfortable. My body was just rejecting it. I could make it 20-30 minutes. It's a bunch of factors. Heavy, lots of pressure on a few specific points, the dangling cable to a slippery battery which I had to leave plugged in all day, the grainy passthrough... But most of all it's just too heavy. And connection would sometimes get janky between Mac and Vision Pro. I've got high hopes for generation 2 and 3 but it needs time to cook.

frontman1988 3y ago

Who knows what will be the long term consequences of using these devices on the eye. Better to be wary

astrange 3y ago
There shouldn't be any as long as you're not a child. Children need to spend a lot of time outside to avoid developing myopia.

dclowd9901 3y ago

VR headsets’ resolution are still a couple orders of magnitude away from being indecipherable from normal vision, and that doesn’t even include motion.

dawnerd 3y ago

I couldn’t stand the constant glare when looking at code. Everything just felt hazy combined with the awful pass through was a downgrade. Was more productive at first since I could block the world out. Didn’t last.

WesolyKubeczek 3y ago

When you move your head around in Vision Pro, do the windows stay where you put them, or do they follow your head? If they stay where put, is this perfect, or do they jig a little bit?

willemlaurentz 3y ago
They really seem to be glued to the real world, not moving when I move.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  At least one less reason for headaches. My NReal Air are nice glasses, but the fact that I can’t look away from the huge ass screen is annoying af. Eye movements can only get you so far, and the intuitive head movement does not work. Argh!

JeremyNT 3y ago

Eye stain has been a huge issue for me with earlier VR goggles. Some people seem to be suggesting the higher quality of the Vision Pro overcomes this, but I'm starting to really wonder. Would even more resolution actually solve it? Or maybe there's really no way around the discomfort for some of us.