Christian is a brilliant developer, that made simply the best experience for reddit that ever existed; after the ban, and when Apollo was dead, I simply stopped consuming reddit (other than an occasional kagi search that takes me there).
I hope he knows that a lot of iOS users really appreciate his work, (I even convinced one hardcore Android user to get an iPhone just for this one app, it was that good).
Like many others, I said I’d quit Reddit when they killed Apollo. I was skeptical that I’d actually follow through, but it didn’t end up being a sacrifice at all. The official app sucks so hard it isn’t fun to browse, and now that the mobile site forces you to download the app, I don’t even look at posts from search results much anymore.
Bars! My friends and I constantly talk about how good Apollo was. I've tried side loading with alt store as well, but I can't seem to keep it stable, it crashes, fails, etc.
Apollo was for users, reddit main purpose isn't for the user anymore. How would they get rid of r/all with all the 3rd party clients around? Much harder when you don't control the full experience.
You can use Apollo reborn still with your own API keys. I personally use a modded reddit app on Android or old.reddit in Firefox. Reddit is way too valuable to stop using entirely. I also use it in LLMs asking them to reference reddit if I am looking for specific suggestions.
Yeah, we did the same thing when designing our house almost ten years ago now, using a HTC Vive running https://irisvr.com/prospect/
Just like the article says: Within a second after putting on the headset you just know if things are proportioned right, or need some fine tuning. That's really valuable!
Also, when the house was actually (partially) built, it felt exactly like the simulations we knew pretty well by that point.
> Yeah, we did the same thing when designing our house almost ten years ago now, using a HTC Vive running https://irisvr.com/prospect/
Coincidentally enough, author of the submission ended up calling their thing "Prospector"
> After some intense typing with a combination of Claude and Codex over the course of a morning I had something I was pretty happy with. I named it Prospector (can’t remember why) and I’ve been really happy with it.
I can't help but think that the author asked the LLM for suggestions on the name, and Prospector/Prospect was recommended as it was so similar to an existing thing, but I might be reading too much into it.
My team uses this technology on a daily basis at my company. I run a design / build firm in the Hamptons, USA. We start all of our design projects with a 3d-first approach. Schematic design starts in 3D using Rhino3D or Revit. We use visualization plugins, like Enscape, to render the models and stream to a Quest 3 headset.
So when clients come in, and feels adventurous, we'll setup the headset, set the display height to their actual, and let them walk around their beautiful new home.
The response has been powerful. My clients are able to truly understand the scale, the proportion of rooms, ceiling heights, and the smallest details.
We're able to make real-time changes to the model (within reason) and provide instant design feedback.
I've been using this technology for years and I'm surprised it's not being adopted faster - good for us right now though!
Do you find the value of VR/AR to be in the communication of design intent to clients unfamiliar with traditional 2D representations, or do your designers leverage VR/AR during the design development process as well?
Absolutely both. Internally, we'll model something, move an element, etc., and we're able to evaluate the idea until it feels right.
For clients, I don't know any other way at this point. Showing a novice a 2D elevation does nothing for them. They will nod, make comments, and play along, but until you sketch a person into the drawing, they don't even understand that the front door is ten feet tall.
Do you believe Apple will continue to spend billions on a device that caters to niche enterprise use cases and is today selling in single digit thousands per month, if that? If so, qhat other Apple products out there suggest that enterprise is something Apple cares about enough to maintain a distinct product line? This isn't Mac Pro where 95% of the R&D and production costs are shared with half a dozen other major Mac SKUs. This isn't MacOS. It isn't iOS. It isnt even iPad OS which it was initially based on. Excepting the SoC, the hardware is entirely bespoke. It doesn't seem realistic to me that they'd continue it without a real consumer audience that the last 2.5 years proved does not exist. Hell, even the lowly Quest, that cost Meta over $100B so far, sold nearly 30M units and Meta's clearly bailing on that as it pivots to non-enclosed facial computers like glasses. The whole category is a failure outside of a few enterprise cases.
It seems like everything here can also be done with any iPhone using ARKit. Obviously the headset is better, but not $3500 better than just looking through your phone.
Just thought I’d raise this since it weirdly isn’t mentioned in the article.
I used a similar technique the last time I moved - scan the apartment using the iPhone, then I had a 3D model for measuring and planning out the space before/during the move. It’s a big help when planning out furniture etc.
And I scanned my old place before leaving so I can virtually step into it any time I want. iPhone via finder/preview handles showing 3D models in AR out of the box.
How did you actually end up doing it, like the full pipeline ? For example what app did you use to scan your apartment and orocesss it into a 3d model (which kind?) and then how do you actually do the planning (like which tools/software to plan your new space?)
And I ask for details because I have attempted something similar but wasn’t getting the best results. I was using ‘3d scanner app’ (which was good but was sold and is not recommended now), and that created pretty decent models, but like, they were still I think based on lidar and not super precise. I also wasn’t sure how to reconcile my actual floor plan with that 3d model the right way - like if the 3d model got some error built-up, the wall which I know to be 100 inches has to be that, and not 101 or 99, since for furniture planing an inch definitely matters. So I kind of got stuck here on how to actually generate some useful and as correct dimensionally as possible 3d model, into which I can later put furniture 3d models into. Thanks for any info!
Ive used various AR apps to see how products fit in physical spaces--like Ikea used to offer. I've also worked on VR projects for car interiors. With VR you really do get a sense of scale and space that you're still guessing at with AR on a phone. I really liked when people removed the VR headset they were surprised to be back in a small room.
Like you mentioned, Ive wanted to scan some spaces to remember them in the future. Last time I looked, those apps werent very easy to find or easy to use.
That's neat. Once it is built, I think a cooler use is to trace wiring and plumbing through your walls of your existing house. Your revit model may include all of this data, or at least the plan. Things change. :)
Though this is especially helpful for old homes where you have to sort of improvise ethernet wiring.
I normally just use it to consume 4k hdr media though.
It has not lived up to being a utility player device, but so far it is so good at media delivery that is sort of okay.
This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets. Make a 3D world, walk through it. What am I missing?
The most incredible tech on the planet is just a useless, Rube Goldberg machine without an application for the tech.
VR has lots of uses, but it takes someone outside the field who wouldn’t have given it a go otherwise to see another use and go “hey guys, you can do THIS too!”
When I did this for a home remodel, the big difference was that it was AR and not just VR. Being able to experience where the virtual changes line up with the real world makes a huge difference.
Definitely a useful application for this but the article isn't doing AR at all, so it is just VR. The most common VR headset according to Steam can also do the same thing (but probably not as well).
"Ah yes, how hard could it be?", he confidently asks.
> What am I missing?
So much.
> This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets
The article is describing "room scale positioning". The first consumer available headset to offer this was released in 2016.
It may feel like it's been around forever if you're not familiar with the space except as a consoomer, but exploring a 3d space at room scale has only recently come into the realm of possibility for consumer grade headsets. For much of the 80s and 90s (and 00s), it was head tracking only. Real time positioning and moving around required positioning hardware that was a magnitude more expensive - and pretty much always had very specific space limitations. Sure, it existed to some degree, but it was such inexpensive addition that using an expensive and complicated treadmill was often considered the economical choice.
In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive. Previously, they all had specific limitations like a 4 x 4 foot area or were massive tech demos that existed in a quantity of one in a university basement somewhere, running a very tailored demo, and they certainly weren't feasible in the 90s.
> Make a 3D world, walk through it.
First of all, how do you map the room? Do you set up lighthouses? Low latency positioning? To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it. Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible. Previous generations didn't have it, and it's almost a guaranteed requirement for any large scale deployment of VR - for example, exploring multiple rooms.
Second, how do you create the "3d world"? It may seem simple, but VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation, and that means that any geometry and graphics you inert of the world needs to be within the compute budget of the headset solution. The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem. Again, it may feel like we've had the technology, but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages, and the compute power to process all of that in anything approaching a consumer solution. To do what AVP is doing with the USDZ files, composing them into the real world, and even applying lighting information, previously would have required a fleet of large and expensive machines. And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.
> Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible.
And the Vision Pro was far from the first to implement it. The most popular headsets in the world all use the tech, now. It's not 2016 anymore.
> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly [...] really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
Is this a parody? The chip is a laptop-grade APU tethered to a power bank, and you're bragging about pixel-shading a <1000 tri mesh? Your mind will be blown when you discover what the Nintendo Switch can do with 10w.
Sorry but we did all that for previs for $big_space_movie. On a shoestring budget in 2011.
> In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive.
Yeah there was, you mounted some markers on your headset and attached the mocap camera on marker set.
Obviously as a consumer you needed to either use vive or oculus. (and wait for them to come out, but there were other HMDs around. but they were shit and expensive)
> VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation,
I mean yes, but rasterising two cameras isn't usually double the processing. You deffo need to be running at higher framerate all the time though. Otherwise you feel sick (ask me how I know...)
but real talk here, that demo isn't a graphics stress test. its low poly simple lighting and a skybox with a 2048x2048 texture on it. You could probably do that with a mobile phone arkit/core and those shitty little len boxes that came out in 2015.
> but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages,
I mean thats not really true. LG made a phone with a 120fps camera in it in 2006. (my timing might be hazy, but its deffo been almost twenty years.) Also the other thing is the cameras don't run at that higher resolution, well not the RGB ones anyway. but thats irrelevant here, as they arent used in this sim.
Also, I don't think the slam on the AVP is running at 90hz, I think a lot of the work is done with sensor fusion, as its way cheaper, faster and accurate. (Again I never took apart the AVP, only oculus. but logically it makes sense as higher frame rates means less usable light, slam is also rather expensive to run.)
> And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.
eh? There isn't real world lighting in this. there aren't even any pbfs its just flat textures and ambient lighting. USDZ isn't some magic new world format. its a reasonably nice scene description format.
Transparency is a first class primitive in 3d since for ever. You can even do transparent coloured particles (guess what Gaussian splats are...)
Im not sure what the polygon budget of the AVP is. but the quest 2 topped out at about 1million in unity. I expect the AVP has more, and fancier shader support too.
> To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it.
No, while you could do this, the article specifically mentions controller support for moving around. But sure, inside out tracking is not available on all VR headsets.
> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
No offense but did you look at what they exported from Fusion? Or the video demo of what they built? The only things that are not blocky are the models downloaded from IKEA. Nothing about this is impressive - AVP can render much better. Even the Meta Quest 3 can render much better.
> Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem.
Yes, but this article makes use of none of it because they are not doing AR.
reading some of the comments i was expecting something really high end and polished, but yeah, this is something you could with a headset 1/10th the cost
I was expecting an app that works like the VR version of a laser indoor measuring tool. Where you hold a piece of wooden board and the VR tells you where it should go and then another person wearing a VR helmet attaches it to a post, also at sub-mm precision. Etc.
3D walkthroughs are absolutely the OG[1] use for head mounted displays. I had an interesting experience of a realtor who had a couple of Vision pro headsets that they would let you use to tour properties they had for sale. Definitely faster and easier than driving around only to find you could quickly eliminate a choice. I am not sure what sort of workflow they used to capture the 3D space but I do know they had a Mac pro tower dedicated to running it. As another poster pointed out, if your building a house, having all of the wiring/plumbing/etc in '3D space' databases for your house would come in very handy later as you were doing work on the house. I'm cynical though about timeframes and having data and software for such a niche application work for more than 5 years much less the 10 to 20 you might live in a house.
[1] In the early 90's VRML was going to create a Snowcrash style metaverse of 3D places you could visit.
There's no Apple Store in my country, but I travel regularly for work. About a year ago I was in Sydney Australia and took the opportunity to visit one of their Apple Stores to try the Vision Pro.
Having experienced other AR/VR products I was interested to see how Apples general 'refinement' of this product area worked out.
I admit, I had low expectations; and probably for the best, because nothing could've prepared me for what I experienced.
Given this was a gen1 product, I was blown away by how seamless and 'complete' the experience was. There was a few obvious places for refinement like battery-life, weight and the screen. But the immersive experience was incredibly convincing, compelling and even relaxing. The price point clearly needs to come down, and I suspect the technology was a little ahead of its time. But I can see in 5-10 years after continuous iteration and improvement that this product will be something else.
Having experienced augmented reality glasses, I have to say that integration with the external world feels much more powerful than the VR experience ever did. AR is exhilerating, while VR is mostly bland and nauseating. I had the experience of interacting with an entity in AR while in the space I was in, it tickles your brain in a way VR somehow can't.
There are apps for displaying RevIt models on the Apple Vision Pro, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, iPhone ARKit, and Android AR [1], so if you are working with an architect it is worth asking them if they can provide in-progress models as you iterate to avoid having to reproduce them yourself.
The (many) interior designers we consulted before renovating our house used A/VR to show us what those changes could look like. The AR experience was the most surreal and useful, though.
Vision Pro: when you're done sitting in the dark on your couch looking at photos of the family who left you, you can use AR to remodel your apartment. It even has textures.
I'm really excited to see AR take off in use cases like this, given how useful it would be to give all our technicians e.g. a legacy Google Glass (not the Intelligent Eyewear thing) and direct them to a rack, overlay information about a failed component, and walk them through the repair SOP.
You walk down it. Extend your hands, see if they pass through the walls, etc. If you've never used VR before this can be hard to explain with words, but "it's like you're really there" in terms of spacial presence at least. Something about being able to turn your head and have the camera perfectly mirror that movement helps your brain with all sorts of depth cues that are harder to pick up with a flat panel.
Apple doesn’t sell the Vision Pro in Spain yet, so acquiring one would require taking a trip to France.
For Vision Pro owners: is it worth it? Do you use it often? The post does mention a very compelling use case, but it is quite narrow (how often are you remodelling your house?)
It is the greatest piece of technology I have ever owned, and I have a very hard time recommending it anyone.
It's clear that it is the future. But there's still some steps between where Apple is at with it today, and where it needs to be in order to be a mainstream product. I would look and see if you can find one used either in the local market, or via a short trip if possible.
The main problem being that I'm not about to pay the cost of a pretty nice macbook for a vr/ar headset. I'll be interested to see what price the steam frames comes in at.
Favorite tech product I have ever purchased. I use it as my main MacBook display for often 8+ hours per day. As long as you are willing to bump up the font size a bit, the programming experience is fantastic. I use it as a 21:9 display, but it can go up to 32:9. My wife and I watch movies together in the theater environment, and the in-room sharing experience is great. My face and neck were prepared from numerous past headsets, but my wife really hasn't had any comfort issues. Since this is her first headset, I think that just varies by person.
The device is so different for different people. I tried really hard to use my VP as a MacBook display but sitting up in a chair with it on for more than 15 minutes is simply too uncomfortable: too heavy.
I only use it to watch movies, ALWAYS while lying down with my head on a pillow and my feet propped up on cushions. That way I'm able to position the device so as to distribute the weight evenly on my forehead/cheekbones. The revised strap enables the weight to be precisely distributed and altered as needed if it gets uncomfortable.
So you have two, one for you and one for your wife? What is it like watching a movie next to someone, with both of you wearing headsets?
I would have been much more likely to get one when I was unmarried, but now with a family it greatly reduces my use cases since I don't watch content alone (except when doing the dishes, when I am largely focused on the real world task in front of me).
Yes, my wife took the M2 version when I upgraded to the M5. We find it pretty great, and it really is not much different from having a huge personal theater. The headsets appear to display the content in perfect sync. When sharing content with someone in the same room, it does not render a persona or avatar as it does when using FaceTime (where users appear as floating heads and hands).
I bought one and returned it within the 2 week window, well before the last day. I didn't even use it the last weekend I had it, I couldn't be bothered. When I brought it into the Apple Store to return it, the employee who processed the return seemed happy I was returning it rather than getting stuck with it, she didn't pull her punches when talking about it, which I found a bit shocking from an Apple employee. She marked down the reason for return as "not enough content", so I'm assuming that's why most people return it, but that wasn't really my issue.
While the new head strap was better than the original, it still wasn't all that comfortable to wear. Some things were super sharp, while other things always looked blurry. The window system still seemed buggy and I'd describe it as finicky. The battery doesn't last long enough to feel comfortable untethered, while it also gets in the way while being plugged into the wall. It also felt like a lot of work to actively look at what needed focus all the time. It still feels like it should be in beta, maybe even the lab. I'll be willing to try again down the road, but it's hard to tell how much attention Apple is really giving it, as we haven't seen all that much progress in the last couple years.
Not worth it. Get a Meta Quest 3 and can vibe code something similar in a few hours. I recommend WebXR that comes with the built-in browser. Easier to distribute, share, collect feedback and iterate than native. And can use A-Frame: open source framework, very accesible and that I help maintain :)
It’s a cool use case, the same thing is achievable with other VR headsets of course. I imagine you can buy a second hand Quest 2 headset for under 100 euros
I keep on hearing it’s a flop, but where I live, Switzerland, they don’t sell it. So I can’t really say.
And I am not even talking about the badly taken product decisions for such a great headset but… how can they get devs onboarded for an app ecosystem for a device that can only be bought in a handful of countries?
Clearly Apple sold it and did their best so that it fails.
It's been 2.5 years and Apple still hasn't sold out of its test run of 500k units. About 350k of those sold in year 1, about 50k sold in year two, and less than 20K so far in year 3. Workers at Apple's flagship retail stores are saying they haven't sold one in recent memories. The tables displaying them are disappearing from stores. Roadmaps for all future goggles have been shelved. It's a flop and Apple knows it.
> On top of this, the housing market is really expensive right now in many parts of the world (ours definitely included) so making good use of every square foot feels paramount.
I mean, if you already have the land, "the housing market" doesn't really matter. The construction costs are a relatively small % of housing costs in expensive markets; usually the land is the biggest factor.
Plus, when you're building, the cost of each marginal square foot is relatively small.
Watching some of the Lakers courtside games on the Vision Pro was awesome, and I’m not even a Lakers fan. If they rolled that out more broadly it would be a system seller for sports fanatics.
There were full-length NBA Lakers games in the Vision Pro headset earlier this year. I watched a few - super cool. They even had a separate announcer just for the immersive broadcast.
The experience was terrible. IN good VR, you control the POV. Those games just tossed you around to different areas without warning. It would have sucked a lot less if they either kept one view or if they gave us a way to control the view changes. Without those, I'd never watch a season of any league, just too jarring and too inconsiderate of the user. Apple used to do so much better. Now they throw cash at third parties hoping to make something happen and those third party content producers mostly suck.
It is absolutely unreal the experience watching the ~10 minute sports games on the Vision Pro. The thing is 4 grand but that’s how much the first 4K TVs were. Hope the price can drop where this becomes a more widespread experience, I am a virtual daily user of my AVP
This is a killer use case, but you should also take a peek at the Human Factors Handbook -- it's got great information about how to architect buildings like homes that will help you avoid some pitfalls I've seen in custom homes that I've been the second owner of.
It would be interesting to see someone apply the principles and techniques of Christopher Alexander to this - trying to "grow" the house virtually and seeing what it might feel like before committing to building it.
The coolest use I've seen is a research at the University of Alberta (Canada) that aims to use the Vision Pro to alleviate nystagmus[1].
This is a disease on the muscles that control the eyes' direction. It causes the eyes to twitch involuntarily. They use the Visio Pro to "twitch" the image along with the eye, so the patient doesn't feel the jitter. It enables them to read, watch movies, etc.
Another cool one is to use them to substitute the visual field test machines in ophthalmology offices. These are machines that cost U$15 000.00 dollars.
Vision Pro is dead. Apple couldn't move 500k units in 2.5 years. The Vision Pro tables are disappearing at Apple Stores. Apple's major web pages no longer advertise it. Executives won't commit to follow-up Vision Pros (or Airs, or any goggles.) Retail staff at flagship stores say they haven't sold one in ages. It's over. Apple's facial computing will move to glasses and enclosed VR goggles are dead. Apple funded and partnered Vision Pro content has slowed to a trickle. eBay prices for nearly new Vision Pros are well under 50% of retail. Supply chain experts have seen zero new component purchases since the original test run maxed at 500k units. It's over. (Same for Quest at Meta.)
Back a billion years ago a friend of mine tried to start up a company visualizing architectural plans in unreal engine (very early, like maybe unreal 1 or 2 .. he tried it in the quake engine first), years later but still a million years ago while working for a retailer I set up a demo with the early oculus rift dev kits allowing us to visualize new department store 'pad' layouts and new fixture (shelves, seating, racks) designs... using unity (the unreal vr support wasn't in yet).
I imagine at least the architectural stuff just happens now.
But this use isn't specific to the Vision Pro, or am I wrong? What prevents things like that from running on any other VR headset, like my half-broken Quest 2?
I agree. Despite the housing shortage, no more houses should ever be built. If you're late to the party and don't like getting wet in the rain, I dunno, find a cave or something.
Shame on you for suggesting someone desecrate a cave by using it for shelter. The only acceptable options are $500k houses or refrigerator boxes in the park.
Human experience is a part of conservation. Without a house, these trees would get clear cut once they are big enough to be worth anything. With a house, the homeowner will want to keep them.
(I'd say it would be sweet to plant 2x as many trees as are cut! Especially if one has the expertise to pull that off in a meaningful way... lotta big companies ran into trouble trying to do similar in carbon credit scheme contexts.)
Also if the land's protected then you're right. In California, from Muir Woods to Big Sur, more segments would be countless mansions instead of redwoods w/o hard-fought battles & generous philanthropy. But not sure we're given enough data to sideeye Christian (post author and UX extraordinaire).
Humans destroy to create shelter; this can be done responsibly, meeting the Earth & Maslow's needs.
I hope he knows that a lot of iOS users really appreciate his work, (I even convinced one hardcore Android user to get an iPhone just for this one app, it was that good).
For that, thank you Christian!
All the best to him on his future endeavors!
The new reddit, the not old.reddit, is hideous and offensive, and it's hard to believe they didn't acquire Apollo.
Good for me though, no more reddit.
Just like the article says: Within a second after putting on the headset you just know if things are proportioned right, or need some fine tuning. That's really valuable!
Also, when the house was actually (partially) built, it felt exactly like the simulations we knew pretty well by that point.
Coincidentally enough, author of the submission ended up calling their thing "Prospector"
> After some intense typing with a combination of Claude and Codex over the course of a morning I had something I was pretty happy with. I named it Prospector (can’t remember why) and I’ve been really happy with it.
I can't help but think that the author asked the LLM for suggestions on the name, and Prospector/Prospect was recommended as it was so similar to an existing thing, but I might be reading too much into it.
So when clients come in, and feels adventurous, we'll setup the headset, set the display height to their actual, and let them walk around their beautiful new home.
The response has been powerful. My clients are able to truly understand the scale, the proportion of rooms, ceiling heights, and the smallest details.
We're able to make real-time changes to the model (within reason) and provide instant design feedback.
I've been using this technology for years and I'm surprised it's not being adopted faster - good for us right now though!
For clients, I don't know any other way at this point. Showing a novice a 2D elevation does nothing for them. They will nod, make comments, and play along, but until you sketch a person into the drawing, they don't even understand that the front door is ten feet tall.
Just thought I’d raise this since it weirdly isn’t mentioned in the article.
I used a similar technique the last time I moved - scan the apartment using the iPhone, then I had a 3D model for measuring and planning out the space before/during the move. It’s a big help when planning out furniture etc.
And I scanned my old place before leaving so I can virtually step into it any time I want. iPhone via finder/preview handles showing 3D models in AR out of the box.
And I ask for details because I have attempted something similar but wasn’t getting the best results. I was using ‘3d scanner app’ (which was good but was sold and is not recommended now), and that created pretty decent models, but like, they were still I think based on lidar and not super precise. I also wasn’t sure how to reconcile my actual floor plan with that 3d model the right way - like if the 3d model got some error built-up, the wall which I know to be 100 inches has to be that, and not 101 or 99, since for furniture planing an inch definitely matters. So I kind of got stuck here on how to actually generate some useful and as correct dimensionally as possible 3d model, into which I can later put furniture 3d models into. Thanks for any info!
Like you mentioned, Ive wanted to scan some spaces to remember them in the future. Last time I looked, those apps werent very easy to find or easy to use.
Though this is especially helpful for old homes where you have to sort of improvise ethernet wiring.
I normally just use it to consume 4k hdr media though.
It has not lived up to being a utility player device, but so far it is so good at media delivery that is sort of okay.
VR has lots of uses, but it takes someone outside the field who wouldn’t have given it a go otherwise to see another use and go “hey guys, you can do THIS too!”
> What am I missing?
So much.
> This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets
The article is describing "room scale positioning". The first consumer available headset to offer this was released in 2016.
It may feel like it's been around forever if you're not familiar with the space except as a consoomer, but exploring a 3d space at room scale has only recently come into the realm of possibility for consumer grade headsets. For much of the 80s and 90s (and 00s), it was head tracking only. Real time positioning and moving around required positioning hardware that was a magnitude more expensive - and pretty much always had very specific space limitations. Sure, it existed to some degree, but it was such inexpensive addition that using an expensive and complicated treadmill was often considered the economical choice.
In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive. Previously, they all had specific limitations like a 4 x 4 foot area or were massive tech demos that existed in a quantity of one in a university basement somewhere, running a very tailored demo, and they certainly weren't feasible in the 90s.
> Make a 3D world, walk through it.
First of all, how do you map the room? Do you set up lighthouses? Low latency positioning? To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it. Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible. Previous generations didn't have it, and it's almost a guaranteed requirement for any large scale deployment of VR - for example, exploring multiple rooms.
Second, how do you create the "3d world"? It may seem simple, but VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation, and that means that any geometry and graphics you inert of the world needs to be within the compute budget of the headset solution. The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem. Again, it may feel like we've had the technology, but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages, and the compute power to process all of that in anything approaching a consumer solution. To do what AVP is doing with the USDZ files, composing them into the real world, and even applying lighting information, previously would have required a fleet of large and expensive machines. And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.
And the Vision Pro was far from the first to implement it. The most popular headsets in the world all use the tech, now. It's not 2016 anymore.
> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly [...] really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
Is this a parody? The chip is a laptop-grade APU tethered to a power bank, and you're bragging about pixel-shading a <1000 tri mesh? Your mind will be blown when you discover what the Nintendo Switch can do with 10w.
> In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive.
Yeah there was, you mounted some markers on your headset and attached the mocap camera on marker set.
Obviously as a consumer you needed to either use vive or oculus. (and wait for them to come out, but there were other HMDs around. but they were shit and expensive)
> VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation,
I mean yes, but rasterising two cameras isn't usually double the processing. You deffo need to be running at higher framerate all the time though. Otherwise you feel sick (ask me how I know...)
but real talk here, that demo isn't a graphics stress test. its low poly simple lighting and a skybox with a 2048x2048 texture on it. You could probably do that with a mobile phone arkit/core and those shitty little len boxes that came out in 2015.
> but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages,
I mean thats not really true. LG made a phone with a 120fps camera in it in 2006. (my timing might be hazy, but its deffo been almost twenty years.) Also the other thing is the cameras don't run at that higher resolution, well not the RGB ones anyway. but thats irrelevant here, as they arent used in this sim.
Also, I don't think the slam on the AVP is running at 90hz, I think a lot of the work is done with sensor fusion, as its way cheaper, faster and accurate. (Again I never took apart the AVP, only oculus. but logically it makes sense as higher frame rates means less usable light, slam is also rather expensive to run.)
> And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.
eh? There isn't real world lighting in this. there aren't even any pbfs its just flat textures and ambient lighting. USDZ isn't some magic new world format. its a reasonably nice scene description format.
Transparency is a first class primitive in 3d since for ever. You can even do transparent coloured particles (guess what Gaussian splats are...)
Im not sure what the polygon budget of the AVP is. but the quest 2 topped out at about 1million in unity. I expect the AVP has more, and fancier shader support too.
No, while you could do this, the article specifically mentions controller support for moving around. But sure, inside out tracking is not available on all VR headsets.
> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
No offense but did you look at what they exported from Fusion? Or the video demo of what they built? The only things that are not blocky are the models downloaded from IKEA. Nothing about this is impressive - AVP can render much better. Even the Meta Quest 3 can render much better.
> Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem.
Yes, but this article makes use of none of it because they are not doing AR.
[1] In the early 90's VRML was going to create a Snowcrash style metaverse of 3D places you could visit.
Having experienced other AR/VR products I was interested to see how Apples general 'refinement' of this product area worked out.
I admit, I had low expectations; and probably for the best, because nothing could've prepared me for what I experienced.
Given this was a gen1 product, I was blown away by how seamless and 'complete' the experience was. There was a few obvious places for refinement like battery-life, weight and the screen. But the immersive experience was incredibly convincing, compelling and even relaxing. The price point clearly needs to come down, and I suspect the technology was a little ahead of its time. But I can see in 5-10 years after continuous iteration and improvement that this product will be something else.
[1] https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdc...
https://kmcheung12.github.io/climb-preview/w/a6ece004
I think 3D application is massively under utilised. There is whole family of interaction the textual web cannot provide
I'm really excited to see AR take off in use cases like this, given how useful it would be to give all our technicians e.g. a legacy Google Glass (not the Intelligent Eyewear thing) and direct them to a rack, overlay information about a failed component, and walk them through the repair SOP.
An effect of the heat wave, maybe.
Often, the more effort you put into the tiniest details, textures, etc the larger the realism payoff.
I also found that immersion got better when the headset responded to the subtle head movements that we all make.
It's clear that it is the future. But there's still some steps between where Apple is at with it today, and where it needs to be in order to be a mainstream product. I would look and see if you can find one used either in the local market, or via a short trip if possible.
Exactly my opinion; I got mine on the first day it was available in 2024, yet I use it perhaps 1-2 times/month, to watch a movie.
I only use it to watch movies, ALWAYS while lying down with my head on a pillow and my feet propped up on cushions. That way I'm able to position the device so as to distribute the weight evenly on my forehead/cheekbones. The revised strap enables the weight to be precisely distributed and altered as needed if it gets uncomfortable.
I would have been much more likely to get one when I was unmarried, but now with a family it greatly reduces my use cases since I don't watch content alone (except when doing the dishes, when I am largely focused on the real world task in front of me).
It’s also a terrible experience. Pixelated. Laggy. Can’t see where the keyboard is… it’s half baked.
I can work max one hour then I give up.
While the new head strap was better than the original, it still wasn't all that comfortable to wear. Some things were super sharp, while other things always looked blurry. The window system still seemed buggy and I'd describe it as finicky. The battery doesn't last long enough to feel comfortable untethered, while it also gets in the way while being plugged into the wall. It also felt like a lot of work to actively look at what needed focus all the time. It still feels like it should be in beta, maybe even the lab. I'll be willing to try again down the road, but it's hard to tell how much attention Apple is really giving it, as we haven't seen all that much progress in the last couple years.
And I am not even talking about the badly taken product decisions for such a great headset but… how can they get devs onboarded for an app ecosystem for a device that can only be bought in a handful of countries?
Clearly Apple sold it and did their best so that it fails.
Instead, what will happen is that it will get gradually slimmer and lighter with each generation, a few hundred grams at a time.
I mean, if you already have the land, "the housing market" doesn't really matter. The construction costs are a relatively small % of housing costs in expensive markets; usually the land is the biggest factor.
Plus, when you're building, the cost of each marginal square foot is relatively small.
Mushroom or plant recognition training through navigatable and manipulable gaussian splatters of the speciments in their habitat
The coolest use I've seen is a research at the University of Alberta (Canada) that aims to use the Vision Pro to alleviate nystagmus[1].
This is a disease on the muscles that control the eyes' direction. It causes the eyes to twitch involuntarily. They use the Visio Pro to "twitch" the image along with the eye, so the patient doesn't feel the jitter. It enables them to read, watch movies, etc.
Another cool one is to use them to substitute the visual field test machines in ophthalmology offices. These are machines that cost U$15 000.00 dollars.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nystagmus
I imagine at least the architectural stuff just happens now.
(I'd say it would be sweet to plant 2x as many trees as are cut! Especially if one has the expertise to pull that off in a meaningful way... lotta big companies ran into trouble trying to do similar in carbon credit scheme contexts.)
Also if the land's protected then you're right. In California, from Muir Woods to Big Sur, more segments would be countless mansions instead of redwoods w/o hard-fought battles & generous philanthropy. But not sure we're given enough data to sideeye Christian (post author and UX extraordinaire).
Humans destroy to create shelter; this can be done responsibly, meeting the Earth & Maslow's needs.