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On Monday June 5th, Apple announced their forray into the world of AR, VR, and MR… The Virtual Pro headset. Though this product was announced, in very Apple fashion, information comes slowly and trickles out from various media outlets. So after WWDC, this is a continuously updated article for the Virtual Pro headset.
Last updated June 8, 2023
Apples Vision Pro Headset – There’s so much we really don’t know.
Quick notes:
Apples Vision headset is set to release sometime next year at a price of $3500.
Currently, Apples Vision Pro is not available for sale and preorders are currently unavailable.
Apples Vision Pro VR headset will be the first VR headset to use eye tracking to effectively use your eyes as a mouse.
Specs.
The Apple Vision Pro will use a combination of dual-chip design with the historically powerful M2 chip (the same chip used in the MacBook air and the ipad pro) as well as a new cofunctioming chip called R1.
According to Apple, the R1 is designed to handle VR specific tasks allowing the M2 to run the traditional computing functions the headset may require. This coprocessing power results in an AR passthrough latency of approximately 13 milliseconds to show the outside world to your retina.
Although little information is available about the types of lenses in use, we do know they per eye resolution is higher than 4k, beating out almost every VR device on the market.
Update 6/8/2023 based on private user screenings and confirmations we now know that the Vision Pro dynamically renders resolution based on your eyes position on the screen and lowering your resolution in your peripherals for more efficient graphics rendering.
Apples Vision Pro will also include some important immersion specifications with a Light Seal to keep your immersion complete, 2 hour battery life, and built in spatial sound features.
The Vision Pro is controller free
Where the Vision Pro differs from almost all VR headsets on the market today is it’s some reliance on hand tracking for controlling the OS.
Until the headset is tested by independent reviewers, we are skeptical about how well this will work. Hand tracking on the Quest 2 and Quest pro has been around for quite some time and gotten much better with age. But when it first came out, it had a lot of bugs that usually made you glad you had controllers too.
Apple seems confident in their hand tracking, claiming the Vision Pro “provides ultraprecise input without your needing to hold any controllers, so you can accurately select elements just by looking at them.”
We will keep this section updated as reviewers and more information becomes available. We would like to see the option for controllers to be supported later for accessibility and improved support for existing VR apps and titles.
Speaking of…
What Apps will Apples VR Headset Support at launch?
update June 12, 2023: We know that a majority of apple’s iPhone apps will be able to be easily ported over to the Vision pro with approximately 400,000 supported apps at launch. With these apps being too vast to estimate, we will no longer be updating this section with additional supported apps. However, popular apps that we do not know to be ported will still be updated on this list.
At the time of writing, only first-party Apple apps are confirmed for Vision Pro.
However, Apple also announced a dedicated app store that will be launched and supported on Vision OS.
Below is an up-to-date list we will maintain as we learn more about which apps are supported by Vision Pro.
- iMessage
- Facetime
- Apple Music
- Apple Photos
- Facetime
- Apple TV
- Apple Notes
Although there are likely to be more apps announced and supported at launch, for now, we only know for sure apples native IOS and Ipad OS will have a compatibility layer that can be transitioned to Vision OS.
Will the Vision Pro have BeatSaber?
Meta, the owning company behind BeatSaber will have to support apples Vision Pro in order for the Vision Pro to support BeatSaber.
Unfortunately, Apple and Meta have famously been in a rivalry since the iOS 16 update that reduced the profitability of Facebooks ad tracking software due to privacy concerns.
Though we are mostly speculating, it’s highly unlikely Meta will bring BeatSaber to the Vision Pro and instead support it natively on their own recently announced Quest 3 set to release later in 2023.
What games will be on the Vision Pro at Launch?
Apple is positioning the Vision Pro with productivity, socialization, and connection as its primary functions. Unfortunately, no games were announced at the WWDC conference.
It’s possible the fall Apple event will include more information as developers are given more time to develop and repurpose existing iPad and iPhone AR and VR apps to support the new Virtual Pro OS. As more games are announced and confirmed to be supported you will find them in an updated list below.
What apps are we hoping for on the Virtual Pro?
Eventually, we hope Apple supports popular VR titles like VR chat, BeatSaber, Population One, and more.
For now, we can likely expect productivity apps from companies like Google, Adobe, and Microsoft with their history of supporting VR productivity apps like Excel, AR Maps, Figma, and Alcove.
Vision OS Features
Vision OS will also allow you to run multiple windows for enhanced productivity features, wireless connectivity to MacOS, and true to life passthrough.
For security, Apple is bringing over the iris scanning from their iPhone to help keep your headset safe and secure.
For socialization, the host of cameras underneath your eyes will make it possible for the headset to detect your environment and allow people in your environment to automatically pass through.
To make the social interaction a bit more natural, the device will also show a passed through image of your face underneath the headset so people in the room can have as close to true eye contact as possible through a screen.
What do you think? Did Apple release a true competitor to the VR market or will Meta continue to dominate the VR marketplace?
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