Apple Vision Pro – Why It May Be Lousy for Watching Movies on a Plane

I&#x27;ve worn an Oculus Quest 2 on an airplane to watch 3d movies. It works fine. This article is way too deep of a dive on non-issues.<p>* Sure, you don&#x27;t get the full resolution. The apps typically put you in a virtual movie theatre and &quot;waste&quot; pixels on your environs. But people watch 720p content all the time! Would I want this to be my only media experience? No. Is it better than your tiny phone or cheap tablet on your tray table? Yes.<p>* The 6dof tracking is totally off because the cameras can&#x27;t see the fact that you&#x27;re moving and you just end up shifting wildly. You can turn it off and go back to accelerometer-based head tracking and it works fine (modulo landing and takeoff, and in those regimes you just need to reset the viewport every so often). I would recommend you turn off 6dof before you get on the plane though; it&#x27;s wild trying to do it on the plane.

In the &quot;The Talk Show&quot; Interview after WWDC [1], Mike Rockwell from Apple explained how they specifically engineered the Vision Pro to work very well for watching movies on planes. Here&#x27;s a copy from the YouTube-generated transcript:<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;daringfireball.net&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;the_talk_show_live_from_wwdc_2023" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;daringfireball.net&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;the_talk_show_live_from_w...</a><p>---<p>...all these cameras to do that and um and the other thing is interesting and you may or may not have seen it in the in the keynote because we can also do this on a plane which uh when you for those who are you know in this kind of space like that&#x27;s not an easy thing to do because planes kind of like turn and fly and move around and you know the IMU on the system how does it know what to do in that case because it doesn&#x27;t have a fixed inertial space so there&#x27;s some magic going on there but you can get that same level of stability when you use it on a plane which means that you know when you&#x27;re at 40 000 feet and you know the baby&#x27;s crying next to you and you really kind of want to be somewhere else you can be uh

I feel like you could hop in a time machine and read something similar about the first iPhone, comparing it to the existing smartphones at the time. &quot;No physical keyboard? Wow, ok Apple!&quot;.<p>Its definitely possible that the Vision Pro will be a dud, but it seems odd to assume that Apple hasn&#x27;t verified basic things about the product like &quot;is watching a movie a good experience&quot;.

&gt; In the past 25 years, many companies have introduced headsets with increasingly better displays. According to some reports, the installed base of VR headsets will be ~25 million units in 2023. Yet I have never seen anyone on an airplane or a train wear a head-mounted display.<p>Has the author seen anyone ever wear a head mounted display anywhere outside of their living room?

This same author has appeared on HN no less than 3 times for different articles about why the headset that they haven&#x27;t seen in person is going to have serious hypothetical issues. And none of those articles have been convincing, because they&#x27;ve all come across as &quot;here are some standard problems, slathered up with technical jargon, in XR: the VP will DEFINITELY SUFFER from these, even though I&#x27;ve never used it&quot;<p>Wait til the thing comes out, use it, tear it down - whatever - but provide real facts to back up your assertions.

&quot;&gt;It may shock many VR game players that want 120+ degree FOVs, but SMTPE, which sets the recommendations for movie theaters, says the optimal viewing angle for HDTV is only 30°&quot;<p>The reason VR enthusiasts want wide FOVs is not because they want to watch movies stretched to 120°. Nobody does that. They want wide FOVs because even at relatively high FOV, like the 106 of Quest Pro, the edges of the display are still easily visible and the image does not fill eye&#x27;s FOV fully. Yes, the resolution of what we can see towards the edges of our vision are much lower than what we can see in the center, but it&#x27;s about getting rid of the visible boundry that messes with immersion.

The article focuses on movie viewing but this is just as applicable to the concept of using it as a virtual workstation monitor (or several), the effective resolution of the virtual monitor is tied to how much of your field of view it covers. Even if the headset can resolve ~4K on a giant screen that fills your entire field of view, that&#x27;s not going to be comfortable or ergonomic for a workstation monitor, and as you scale it down in virtual space it drops to an effective 1440p... 1080p... 720p...<p>Especially for Apple enthusiasts who have been spoiled by &gt;200dpi laptops and &gt;450dpi phones, I think the practical resolution you get out of a &quot;4K per eye&quot; headset is going to underwhelm.

This whole blog is just a regurgitation of surface-level wikipedia knowledge. All of these issues are very well known in the industry. Asking to solve all of them, perfectly, at once, is clear indication of someone who&#x27;s never done product development.

It&#x27;s always nice to see actual numbers in a debate! (and hat tip to Thad Starner [0] and Haynes)<p>If you take nothing else away from this:<p>- Try to keep detail and gaze in the 10° to 30° range (from view center) to limit fatigue<p>- People prefer moving their head to moving their eyes, for any lengthy amount of time<p>And also this awesome chart, which I always use when moving and TV positioning: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i0.wp.com&#x2F;kguttag.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;HDTV-view-distance-chart-copy-1.png?w=776&amp;ssl=1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i0.wp.com&#x2F;kguttag.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;HDT...</a><p>[0] If he and his grad students still teach it, the GT &quot;Rapid Prototyping&quot; course is awesome. Or as the joke went, &quot;Learn just enough EE for IED assembly&quot; (just kidding, FBI! And also, steel wool + 9v battery + timer&#x2F;receiver)

I&#x27;m torn. Someone wearing a gigantic pair of VR goggles on a plane will indeed look ridiculous. Not too mention how obnoxious it looks.<p>But on the other hand, if you gave me one on the plane, I&#x27;m definitely putting it on throughout a 14h flight. Anything to let me escape the reality of flying long haul Economy.

I just want to reinforce that head worn AR or VR are so radically different user experiences that almost everything is surprisingly counter intuitive or magnitudes harder than you anticipate.<p>The fact that we keep beating the same paths either means we’re crazy or there’s actually gold at the end of this rainbow somewhere.

I worked on mechanical engineering and ID for some 3D video glasses in the mid-2000s. One of the supposed use cases was watching movies on a plane. As part of the project we tried to test out that hypothesis by having users watch something (I think it was Avatar) while in a limo driving down 280 (a fairly smooth highway in the Bay Area). One of the subjects had to pull over and vomit. Turns out he was a former fighter pilot.<p>The product found a niche as remote googles for FPV (first person video) drone pilots, but was not successful otherwise. It had a very narrow field of view and the aperture was small, so getting aligned to even see anything was challenging.<p>I still remain skeptical that movies on a plane will really work out, but I have more recently tried out some VR experiences which blew my mind and made me much more positive about the whole field. [0] [1] I&#x27;m also cautiously excited by the orders of magnitude improvements that Apple as made in resolution, field of view, and latency for passthrough.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;phi.ca&#x2F;en&#x2F;carne-y-arena&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;phi.ca&#x2F;en&#x2F;carne-y-arena&#x2F;</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;phi.ca&#x2F;en&#x2F;events&#x2F;space-explorers-the-infinite&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;phi.ca&#x2F;en&#x2F;events&#x2F;space-explorers-the-infinite&#x2F;</a>

It&#x27;s not VR though. Nearly all demos showed windows being projected into your surroundings. Cutting yourself off is a physical knob, and even then close objects will fade into your view. This is not like VR at all. This is more like looking at a screen in front of you.<p>The nausea problems are caused because your body getting different signals then your eyes. Similar like reading a book in a car. But with apple vision, everything is anchored to the outside world. So reading a book in a car with apple vision while looking straight ahead may be way less vomit inducing as reading normally. My guess is, the same goes for in flight.<p>I&#x27;m sceptical as well. But apple has a pretty good track record in sweeping into a field that consisted of 20 years of half-assery and overengineer a few key aspects they deem most important.

&gt; Steve Jobs with the iPhone 6 called 300 pixels per inch at reading distance, which works out to ~60ppd), “retinal resolution.”<p>Jobs died in 2011, the iPhone 6 came out in 2014.

The complaint that at ideal viewing angles, the resolution will only be 720p is silly.<p>720p is fine for watching movies, even if it&#x27;s not home theater perfect. But it&#x27;s absolutely fine and way better than the alternative of watching on a terrible IFE seatback (which probably gets the aspect ratio wrong)

I would argue, that as with any new product, the technology needs to be in the hands of both consumers and developers. If there is genuine value to be had, it will be found through the market as developers make stuff they think is cool, and the people vote with dollars and installs as to what they agree is cool. Apple threw a lot of stuff at the wall, providing different use cases, and those may be correct or incorrect. As usual, if people like something that an app developer made more than the Apple stuff, Apple will purchase the app developer&#x27;s tech and integrate it. This isn&#x27;t that complex a thing. Whether or not people ultimately want to strap a computer their faces is my biggest question. I have no desire to do so, but I am also not your average consumer.

Disappointed by the discussion so far. The response seems to be &quot;Trust Apple&quot;. The OP&#x27;s claims are more theoretical and apply to any headset - is there a decent rebuttal of this article? (I am not an expert, I just want good information)

We&#x27;ll still probably see a lot of these on airplanes. Especially from the type of people who want other people to know they spent $3500 on something to watch movies on an airplane with.

A big issue on other headsets is the hedsets inertial tracking when it is used on airplanes or cars. The entire envoriment is moving at high speed and the inertial measurement unit in the headset tracks movements based on acceleration and deceleration.<p>Small changes in the aircrafts speed in various axes tend to cause tracking issues.<p>I guess this could be fixed with a higher reliance on camera traking, but i think it is still a unsolved problem.

I think it’s possible that Apple has managed what is necessary (or nearly managed it), as they’re marketing this as a productivity device, which arguably wants higher resolution than a movie. I do feel like Apple not releasing real specs is somewhat worrying, but I guess we will find out soon enough. Does the SDK reveal anything about the resolution or FOV?

How are people forgetting that watching a movie on the plane works perfectly fine with any tablet and a set of wireless earphones??

semi-related, the xreal (previously nreal) air are amazing for this

I suspect they can still cram more pixels into this thing but it would have inflated the purchase price pretty noticeably.<p>Apple likes to iterate with their hardware, so I have no doubt they can get to where they need to be pretty easily if people buy and enjoy the current iteration.

It’s subjective, but if you are ok watching a movie with it in your house, which is an AVP selling point, it would work anywhere because you can use the exact virtualized environment anywhere

The main reason people don&#x27;t want to wear these on planes is because they look funny. Plus, they can mess up your hair, like my wife first noticed :)<p>Also, we need movies which are made for VR.

How compatible would wearing this be with a high quality noise canceling headset? Or does the AVP have the ability to drown out the airplane droning with noise cancelling built in?

People are going to trash the vision pro for the next couple of years. In the next 5 years or so its going to be apples best selling product to date.

I see nobody around me at concerts wearing AirPod Pro 2s, even though they are undoubtedly the best musical experience you can have without destroying your ear drums (in the adaptive transparency mode).<p>I expect that one day I’ll go to a concert and everybody will be wearing them. Hopefully with a synchronized ultra-low latency broadcast option direct from the house mix (hint hint to any Apple employees) to deal with the garbage sound at some areas in arenas.<p>Adoption of new hardware seems to always be very slow, then all at once.

I love how he bases everything on marketing images do you really believe the fov will be 16:9...

there&#x27;s going be a stigma to wearing this anywhere in public imo.<p>conspicuous consumption dialed up to 11. unless you&#x27;re in business class.

cool story, I’ll still do it<p>I’m imagining the day when my earbuds fall out at max volume and the flight attendant hears faint but loud moaning<p>and I casually confirm that I’m interested in hot tea<p>and they smile, I smile, the person seated next to me laughs in shock, and we go about our business

When will people realize this is just a v0.1 product? It&#x27;ll still produce something new and exhilarating. Shitting on new technology is a horrible new trend.