this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
267 points (94.4% liked)
Technology
59428 readers
3685 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I won’t argue about whether this is dystopian, but the practical reason for the face projection is that they wanted to make this not just something you wear sitting alone in your basement, like most other VR headsets. They wanted it to be usable around other people, at a workplace, with family, etc.
Interacting with someone wearing a full face blind is just weird, so they thought that making the eyes visible would help make this a bit more socially usable.
I’m not sure that’s really going to work out — seems at least as awkward as Google’s failed Glass project — but Apple’s design decision has some merit.
It's a VR headset. It's not a social experience.
But that's what Apple is trying to change. They don't call it a VR headset. They don't even use the phrase "virtual reality" because they don't want people thinking of it as a VR headset.
Their goal is to get people used to wearing a headset to do normal "real" world things. They want it to be AR, not VR. It's like getting people used to a touchscreen, or not having a headphone jack, or a big-ass notch in the screen.
Their long-term goal is likely glasses that can do the same things as this headset, but with transparent screens, so that they don't need the outer display. And then it won't be VR-first, it'll be AR-first.
Already there