With its brand-new Vision Pro mixed reality headset, which promises to revolutionise everything from video conversations to standard laptop use, Apple claims to have gone above and beyond everyone’s expectations. However, VR gaming presents a potential weakness for the gleaming new headset.
Apple’s Vision Pro was unveiled at the company’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in 2023. Though the event saw the launch of various devices and updates, Vision Pro stood to steal the limelight. Vision Pro is Apple’s much-awaited mixed reality headset that promises to outperform every other VR or AR headset. It provides the user with an unlimited spatial canvas and the ability to control it through hand and eye movements.
Although VR gaming was highlighted as a key feature of the Vision Pro in Apple’s WWDC 2023 showcase, fresh information obtained by Mixed suggests that various design decisions made inside the visionOS software may have a significant negative influence on the VR gaming experience.
According to recently made available Apple documentation, during VR “immersive experiences,” “the system defines an invisible zone that extends 1.5 metres from the wearer’s initial position of the head.” According to the statement’s further explanation, “if their head moves outside of that zone, the experience automatically stops and passthrough returns to help people avoid colliding with objects in their physical surroundings.”
Other prominent VR headsets, like the Meta Quest 2, have this kind of safety function built in. While it appears that regular VR apps on the Vision Pro will transition to transparent mode if you walk just a metre from your starting place, Meta’s solution allows users to establish a predetermined space around themselves for reasons of spatial safety. This switch to transparent mode stands in contrast to Apple’s “immersive experiences.”
Although the Vision Pro has many fantastic features, a one-metre limit may present difficulties for some VR applications, particularly games. When playing most games, such as evading an approaching slow-motion bullet in Superhot VR, the players definitely move their heads more than a metre.
Another VR headset that is readily used is the HP Reverb G2. As immersion is paramount when playing VR games, the Reverb G2’s mechanism, which is akin to that of the Meta Quest series, enables the players to precisely ‘draw’ the limits of their space, which is much larger than a metre. The entire game does not turn transparent if the user approaches a physical object too closely. To warn the players that they might be moving too much, they will be able to see a blueish outline of the nearby items that leak into the game.
However, it’s easy to understand how in-game immersion might be easily broken with just one metre of area to walk around before the player’s surroundings become clear. As opposed to the physical handsets used by most VR headsets, the Vision Pro uses hand gesture controls, which may prove to be a substantial obstacle for game developers looking to convert their VR titles to Apple’s device. Naturally, neither of these difficulties arises while using non-VR games, in which case the Vision Pro merely “projects” a gameplay screen in front of you.
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Reports suggest that there might be hope that Apple will give Vision Pro users the option to modify the limits of their VR gaming “safe zone” and that this is only the default setting. As per the reports, it is widely believed that this is the best VR device to date, and it would not be good for Apple if it fumbled this opportunity, especially given that the tech giant appears to be taking gaming seriously at last.
