The difference is the AR, which will eventually make it wearable in everyday life. When setting the perimeter, the Oculus already shows the surrounding using it's integrated cameras. This will be the future. I don't think the first version of Apple's AR mask will be a huge success, because it still looks too dorky. But in a few years you will see many people wearing sunglasses that double as phone screens all the time.
> The difference is the AR, which will eventually make it wearable in everyday life
In Apple's 10 minute video about this device the "AR" part came up exactly twice:
1) When the lady was interrupted by a friend to talk about sushi or something. This is literally Occulus' passthrough mode. It was a temporary "see around me" mode switch in practical usage.
2) The dad filming his kids. This was just depressing.
All the other examples had the room around them, so the "AR" part, as a glorifed skybox. The person was isolated & alone.
Like maybe Apple will figure out something that Microsoft's Hololens didn't. That's certainly possible. But they also didn't showcase any such examples, either.
Ok, I had the impression that those things are translucent, because the eyes were visible. I did not fully watch it, but I just found out that Apple is using a lentricular and OLED screen on the outside to display a 3D image of your face to make it look like the mask is transparent. This is some dystopian stuff.
I don’t think the dorky mask look will change any time soon. There’s just too much electronics to fit into the system for it to shrink down to a pair of regular glasses.
When the Apple Watch was introduced, I thought that the form factor would change after a few years. It’s almost been ten years and it doesn’t seem like Apple will be making any big form factor changes to the product.
Apple will just have to make it fashionable to wear dorky scuba masks everywhere. Maybe the price tag will be sufficient…
You may be right. Remember when they used someone with extra large hands for presenting the first iPhone in order to make it look small? Now you can get the iPhone 14 is large and very large. We may get used to this if the product is sufficiently useful.
I mean, nice ski goggles don't look uncool on the mountain, I don't see how it's impossible for people to get used to Vision goggles on people's faces.
Context is important. Ski googles look OK because they make functional sense, because everyone needs some kind of eye protection while skiing. You'd look ridiculous wearing them anywhere but at a ski resort.
It's an open question whether these will fit into their intended social contexts, whether that's the office, home, or public. If anywhere, I'd guess they wouldn't look weird in an office or on a single person at home (since there is nobody to look at them), but not in public or in a family setting.
