Late last Monday afternoon, my prescription lenses for my new Apple Vision Pro arrived via UPS, and I was finally able to set up my AVP and download apps from the App Store (mostly educational and workplace stuff, because I’m not a gamer, and this is not a gaming headset). Here are some of my first impressions of the device, after using it for one week (and from the perspective of someone who plans to use it both as a productivity tool at work, and to consume media at home). Because I am a social VR blogger, I will also add some thoughts about the AVP and its potential applications to the metaverse.
But before I do that, I wanted to share with you what happened when I showed up at my local Apple Store on July 12th, 2024, to pick up Apple Vision Pro. As part of the process, they scanned my eyeglasses and fit a demonstration unit with the appropriate prescription lenses, so I could go through a one-hour walk-through with a store associate, who was monitoring what I could see in my AVP on a small iPad (see image, right). My first reaction when I was handed the demo unit at the Apple Store at Polo Park was: wow, it’s so small! It is a surprisingly compact unit. Compared to every other virtual reality headset I have worn, I find the device sits higher up on my cheeks, which takes a bit of getting used to at first (the Apple Vision Pro automatically determines the correct interpupillary distance/IPD, and will tell you if you need to adjust the headset up or down to get the best view).
There are only two buttons on the Apple Vision Pro: the first button is on the upper right, which you can use to pull up the apps/people/environments menus, and adjust how much of the environments you see (more on that below), and a second button on the upper left, which you use to start recording 3D video or to take a 3D photograph of what you see (you also double-click it to confirm any purchases you make in the device; it then scans your retinas to confirm that it’s you). That’s it: just two buttons! The rest of navigation is handled by eye gaze and hand gestures. You look at an app icon, and it subtly brightens; you then tap together your index finger and thumb, and select it to open the app. It is simple and intuitive, but I have found that my 60-year-old gaze has a tendency to wander a little bit, so I am still making some mistakes in my first week. I assume I will become a seasoned pro at navigation over time!
The Apple Vision Pro has what it calls environments, which are high-quality, 360-degree virtual spaces which can be used as a backdrop to your other activities in the headset, or if you just want to pause and take in the scenery. I personally think that they really are the hidden killer app of the AVP! In a message I shared with some of my friends in Second Life, I said:
As I’ve mentioned before, I got my first virtual reality headset (an Oculus Rift) back in 2017, and I’ve tried out numerous VR headsets since then: Valve Index, Vive Pro 2, Meta Quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, etc. In fact, I’m currently working on a project to set up a VR/AR lab for faculty, staff, and students at my university library system, for them to use in their teaching, learning, and research…
The Apple Vision Pro makes every single VR headset I have used to date feel like one of those red plastic View-Masters I used to play with as a kid in the 1960s. The “screen door” effect so evident in earlier VR headsets (where you can see individual pixels, making everything slightly blurry) is COMPLETELY, UTTERLY gone.
I sat at the lakeshore at Mount Hood, surrounded by forest, and listened to the rain fall gently onto the lake, causing tiny ripples in the water, watching the clouds gently cross the sky above the mountain.
It felt REAL.
I. WAS. THERE.
I almost started crying.
The following YouTube video created by another AVP user illustrates how these environments work, and takes you to two of them: a view high up on the Haleakalā volcano in Hawaii, and a wintertime scene in Yosemite National Park in California:
This video also illustrates how you can adjust the selected environment. As I said to some of my work colleagues when showing them the device, “See this knob on the upper right of the Apple Vision Pro? If I turn this knob clockwise all the way, I am rejecting your reality and replacing it with a different one.” Likewise, if I turn the same knob counter-clockwise all the way, the environment disappears, and I can see everything around me. If you wish, you can work away on an email or a spreadsheet while completely surrounded by the peaks of Yosemite!
At the moment there are only seven environments available in the AVP, but you have a choice of daytime or nighttime for all of them, so really, it’s 14 environments (you also have four “moods,” which superimpose a tint and some background sounds over your real environment). Last night, I re-subscribed to Disney+, and I watched the first 30 minutes of the 3D movie Wish on a large, theatre-quality screen while sitting on top of Haleakalā, under a full moon and a sky full of stars. (While the amount of 3D content in Disney+ is still small, it is still early days, and I have no doubt that more is in the pipeline over at the Disney industrial complex!)
But I got the Apple Vision Pro for more than just to watch movies and TV shows; I also plan to use it at work! All I have to do is take off my glasses and put it on, and when I stare at my MacBook Pro, it automatically asks if I want to connect! When I do, I have a large, beautiful screen hovering in midair above my MacBook Pro, which I can reposition and resize as I prefer. The screen is crystal clear, and text is sharp and very readable. I believe that I would easily be able to make the switch from my dual desktop monitors to the Apple Vision Pro!
By the way, there already is social VR in the Apple Vision Pro. There’s a promising program called InSpaze, which I have already downloaded and installed on my device, where you can meet up and interact with other AVP users (I wrote about it before on my blog here). Here’s a 15-minute YouTube video I had shared in my previous blogpost, to give you an idea of what InSpaze is all about, and how it works:
As part of the setting-up process for the Apple Vision Pro, you take off the headset and hold it in front of your face like a camera, to record yourself looking from side to side, up and down, closed-mouth and open-mouth smiling, raising your eyebrows, etc. These scans are then used to create a highly realistic-looking virtual recreation of your head, upon which I promptly slapped a pair of virtual eyeglasses to look more like me in real life! This recreation is called a Persona, and it can be used in places like Microsoft Teams—and InSpaze!
However, I chickened out before I even entered my first InSpaze room. Why? Well, as you know, I have visited a great many social VR experiences over the years, and written about them extensively on this blog. I mean, the tagline of my blog is “News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse,” right? 😉 But, in every one of them to date, I have always hidden behind an avatar of one kind or another. Even if it was an avatar that I had styled to look like me (e.g. in the Meta Quest 3), it was a highly stylized, cartoon version of me. In InSpaze, you do have the option of selecting a cartoon avatar, but it feels somehow like cheating, when you already have a highly realistic-looking Persona of your head and shoulders that you can use. In other words, I hesitated in entering my first InSpaze room because I’m not used to sharing my actual, sixty-year-old face with other people in social VR! (I’ll eventually get there; you know I wouldn’t miss the experience for the world!)
To sum up, the Apple Vision Pro feels like magic, and I am particularly impressed with how sharp, crisp, and clear the visuals are in the device. It’s so good that you can easily forget that it’s not real! This feels very much like I got an early invite to the future, and I am particularly excited about the metaverse possibilities. In my message to my Second Life friends, I also said:
F#$%ing AMAZING tech. If you live near an Apple Store, I highly recommend you pop in for a hands-on demo. Expensive as hell, but in my opinion, worth every penny.
I just had a glimpse of the future, and lemme tellya, the future is gonna be interesting! Ready Player One is coming sooner than you think (both the good parts and the bad parts, in my opinion).
But if you can just slip on a headset and BE somewhere, anywhere, like it was reality, instead of just staring at a flat screen and wishing you were somehow there inside it, inhabiting your avatar—that magic we sometimes experience in Second Life—the people and companies who (successfully) make THAT magic happen in this new world are gonna get rich. Mark my words.
This is just a first impressions blogpost, a sort of mini-review; I have no doubt that I will write more about this amazing device in the weeks to come. I will also be working with the business office at my local Apple Store, to see if I can add an Apple Vision Pro to the mix of VR/AR headsets we will be offering in the virtual reality lab project I am currently working on for my university library system. I want as many faculty, staff, and students as possible to try out the Apple Vision Pro, and get them thinking about how this technology can be used to further their teaching, learning, and research!
