For reference, here are the per-eye screen resolutions for some VR headsets:
- Apple Vision Pro: 3660 x 3200 pixels
- Pimax 8K X: 3840 x 2160
- Pimax Crystal Light: 2880 x 2880
- HTC Vive Pro 2: 2448 x 2448
- HP Reverb G2: 2160 x 2160
- Meta Quest 3: 2064 x 2208
- Sony PS VR2: 2000 x 2040
- Pimax Crystal Super 3840 x 3840 (57 ppd, unreleased)
The VR180 3D footage gets spread to 180° (horizontal) and inside your HMD you see around 70-90° (again horizontal²) or so at a time. You can see that below 8K per-eye image resolution, you will start noticing a decrease in visual fidelity.
--
² the Pimax has around 159° horizontal FoV.
crazygringo 2 days ago [-]
It gets even more complicated when you consider what geometric format it records in.
If it records "naively" where the vertical pixel maps to the angle relative to the horizon, then you get the least amount of detail around the "equator", and you get the most at the "poles" above and below you. Which is not only totally imbalanced, but imbalanced in the worst possible way!
Back in 2017 Google introduced a new format that YouTube VR uses:
It's called an Equi-Angular Cubemap, so each pixel represents the same amount of area in a VR projection.
Unfortunately, outside of YouTube it still hasn't really taken off as far as I know, although some VR video players support it.
I wonder if Blackmagic records in it? Or more generally, in what shape does the 180° image fall on the rectangular sensor -- and so how does actual resolution vary across the VR projection?
quitit 2 days ago [-]
This outlines how Apple approaches the immersive video format to put the most pixels on the horizon line:
Wow, that is fascinating -- I had no idea, thanks. That definitely takes the cake for most bizarrely "optimized" method. But putting the horizon at a 45° angle is certainly a creative solution.
Interesting that it's such a strange transformation, even the author of that article hasn't been able to decipher it exactly. The Google EAC seems so straightforward and "neutral", I'm surprised Apple created their own format (unless Google's format requires licensing, but I don't think it does).
esperent 1 days ago [-]
> I'm surprised Apple created their own format
There's nothing surprising here, it's been Apple's style for the entire time I've been working in tech - 15 years or so - to create formats that they control and preferably which only work on Apple devices. It's a big part of why their walled garden is so strong.
> Additionally, the format is undocumented, they haven’t responded to an open question on the Apple Discussion Forums asking for more detail, and they didn’t cover it in their WWDC23 sessions
Unfortunately, this is completely normal behavior from Apple and I've run up against it far too many times.
When finally forced, by regulation or industry pressure, to answer questions, open their format up, or support other open formats, they pay lip service and drag their heels in every way possible.
CharlesW 1 days ago [-]
> There's nothing surprising here, it's been Apple's style for the entire time I've been working in tech - 15 years or so - to create formats that they control and preferably which only work on Apple devices.
Assuming no intentional bias, it's personally hard for me to imagine how anyone could be in the industry for that long and not understand Apple's contributions to formats and other standards we take for granted.
* Apple was the first major adopter and popularizer of now-de-facto standards like 3.5" floppy drives, USB, Wi-Fi, and DisplayPort, and additionally created (and gave away) DisplayPort Mini
* Apple co-developed and popularized IEEE 1394 (FireWire), USB-C, Thunderbolt, and USB 4
* Apple created the ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF), which is the basis for MPEG-4 and many other time-based and image file formats
* Apple popularized today's most popular compressed media formats, and will do the same for AV1 (with hardware decode in M3 and newer Macs today, and Apple TV soon)
* Apple dropped a proprietary OS for the BSD-based OS used across their product line, from wearables, to mobile, to HMDs, to laptops/PCs
* Apple used its open source WebKit to advance modern web standards, and are one of the few defenders against Google's near-total hegemony of web technologies
* Apple's contributions to and investments in open-source technologies like Clang/LLVM and Swift have helped all developers directly and indirectly
Using an as-yet-undocumented projection format to argue the opposite isn't super-persuasive, since Apple eats their own dog food (sometimes for years) before promoting it to an open, generalized industry standard (e.g. "QuickTime Movie" container format).
quitit 20 hours ago [-]
The thing about building an uncharitable narrative is that one can spin anything to be a nefarious deed. Literally anything, and we're seeing that here. A common aspect to this is distilling something as large as a company of many thousands of people with different views, projects and outputs into a singularly thinking entity that has evil intentions (along with an unhealthy dose of double-standards.)
It takes someone with a good deal of integrity to display a nuanced view of something, weighing both the good and bad.
Such observations aren't typically wanted in forums. Forums favour a "hive mind" mentality, because that's easy and doesn't require thought. Simply put <x> into the good or bad box. If we play the same game of distilling HN into a singular entity, then we already know what it thinks about Apple.
As for Apple's actions I don't think it deserves the polarised views that we see on HN. I've been around long enough to see how companies come in and out of favour and often the meddling efforts by competitors to sway such public opinion. Some people are just really distracted by team fandom and cheerleading, instead of looking at the more important question "what does <x> do for or against me personally?"
spookie 1 days ago [-]
To be fair they forked KHTML to make WebKit. Even if they wanted, they needed to remain open source. Same with Blink (Chromium), a lot of shared history there. But that would take way too long to explain.
withinboredom 1 days ago [-]
I don't know why you are getting downvoted. What you say is true. They originally said facetime would be an open protocol based on jabber... didn't happen. Heck, they created their own cpu (undocumented) for some reason.
hnaccount_rng 1 days ago [-]
It's a bit more complicated than that right? There is definitely a corporate component there (FaceTime is one, iMessage is another) and they have a strong tendency to attempt to .. extort? .. others to pay for their standards. But they usually use standards that are available.
If they do build something on their own, they have a reason. Most often technical. E.g. lightning is strictly better than any alternative that was available when they were introducing it (and that it didn't become the USB-C form factor is partially due to them wanting high licensing revenue). And really... you don't get why they created their own CPUs? Which hands down beat anything else out there on perf/watt and allow their systems to have incredible battery runtime on really tiny batteries?
withinboredom 1 days ago [-]
Is it that complicated? Instead of being an industry leader, they seem to just want money and sticky users. I'm not an Apple hater by any stretch, but this seems to be a fact. In other words, they could have lead the way to better calls/sms by making facetime the standard, but instead we have green bubbles. Literally, they are the reason their own competition exists. They could have made their CPU architecture available to anyone willing to pay, but instead it is exclusive and 100% non-portable.
In other words, there could be some Apple in literally every device on the planet, but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason. That is the part I don't understand. It seems like such a short-sighted play.
hnaccount_rng 1 days ago [-]
> Instead of being an industry leader, they seem to just want money and sticky users
But that's the job of a company...
> but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason.
Because they are a consumer company. They depend on a strong asymmetry between their customers and them. It would be really hard for any other company to rely on Apple as a supplier. Afaik the only relationship that exists in that way are company phones, but those are not handled by Apple directly, but rather through carriers. Apple simply doesn't have any experience in being a supplier (and probably also large aversions to becoming one from their own treatment of their supply chain).
Linus Torvald's repeatedly says something very insightful about "enterprise grade hardware", he describes it as "over-priced crap that doesn't work". Which is correct in the sense of "it doesn't comply to standards and only works in one specific combination". But that's literally where the value of "enterprise" comes from. There is someone that provides an in-depth description of a single use case and the appropriate solution and sells that. It isn't supposed to work in many scenarios. It's supposed to work in one. But for that one you have to guarantee a certain quality level and if you fail that you will have to pay for that. That is simply not how Apple operates. They are the big dog. Always. That's why they broke up with Nvidia
But my point was: They didn't introduce any format for the fun of it. There always was a reason. Nearly always a technical one. Sometimes "only" a business one (which one could argue that qualifies for "for the hack of it")
withinboredom 24 hours ago [-]
> But that's the job of a company...
By that logic, Google isn't a company despite setting industry standards.
lukevp 54 minutes ago [-]
Google primarily makes money from ads and user data. That’s their purpose. Everything else is ancillary and in service to that. Apple’s product is the physical hardware and software.
jon-wood 1 days ago [-]
Apple are a hardware company. One that's deep into software because it helps them sell that hardware, but ultimately still a hardware company. Having their software running on other company's devices doesn't help them in the goal of selling more iPhones, if anything it harms that because why buy an iPhone to be able to Facetime with the family when you can by a cheaper Android device instead?
numpad0 1 days ago [-]
It's well known Jobs policy and strategy. "One standard port, two proprietary ports" is the version I've seen, the standard port is for ingestion and export, proprietary ports are for sharing within tight knit Apple circles.
Variants of this principle is seen everywhere throughout their systems and architectural designs, thankfully backfiring often enough that Apple isn't taking over PC any time soon.
Nevermark 14 hours ago [-]
Apple would quite rightly view taking 100% of the PC industry as unnecessarily sacrificing vast profits and the margins that generate those profits.
They manage pricing to maximize industry profit share, not marketshare.
esperent 1 days ago [-]
The downvotes were expected. I've found that anytime I say something critical of Apple downvotes are sure to follow.
Even in technical threads were people are literally struggling to complete work because of Apple's attitude (my experience here mostly relates to support for 3d browser apis over the last decade) there's still a largely negative response to any perceived Apple criticism.
I'm actually pleasantly surprised that my comment here is no longer downvoted. I guess HN folks are more savvy than typical web devs.
To be honest I'm not sure I'm even criticizing Apple. I don't like it, for sure, and it makes my life harder, but it's clearly a sound business strategy that has served them well.
matsemann 2 days ago [-]
My Gopro MAX uses EAC for the 360 videos. But ironically I have to go through the hassle of converting it to equirectangular before uploading to Google Street View..
steelbrain 2 days ago [-]
Thank you for posting this! It's very helpful. Just want to add a caveat for the reader. While resolution is important, the display technology matters just as much if not more. Pimax Crystal Super, for example uses QLED tech, so its backlit and its color accuracy, contrast will not be in the same ballpark as Apple Vision Pro which uses micro-OLED panels.
A pixel, is not always a pixel. There's more to the story.
2 days ago [-]
rajnathani 2 days ago [-]
The Pixmax 12K OLED also looks really cool on their website, thanks for sharing about Pixmax (TIL).
spookie 1 days ago [-]
Take a look at the company Varjo. They make a pretty good headset.
yieldcrv 2 days ago [-]
remember when all the VR headsets were shitty and all the enthusiasts would say that resolution isnt the metric to use to judge VR headsets
clowns
andybak 1 days ago [-]
You're confusing two different things and being obnoxious about it.
dmix 2 days ago [-]
They were probably talking about games not using one like a desktop or to watch movies
consumer451 2 days ago [-]
This was also posted on one of the best niche subs, r/cinematography.
Here is that thread [0], with mostly professional takes. One interesting take-away:
> I’ve pre-ordered one. Vision Pro sales will be around 1/2M at the one year mark, and there’s a total of about 3 hours of immersive content available on the headset across every app right now.
> That’s a once in a lifetime content opportunity.
Or it could be the next 3D video, a gimmick that peaks and fades away quickly among the mass market.
If you ask me, the Vision Pro’s sales up to this point justify discontinuation. I think that Apple is only making investments in Vision Pro because they don’t really have another long play for “the next great device form factor,” and because Meta hasn’t thrown in the towel yet Apple presumably refuses to sit back while Meta dominates marketshare for a specific type of app platform.
I think that Apple and everyone else is very aware that VR/AR is more likely than not be close to the maximum user base. Meta’s been doing everything it can to make the platform stay within impulse buy territory because they know it’s not really a purchase that potential customers are going to seriously believe that they’ll spend hours and hours every day using like a traditional game console or PC graphics card. Meta has to convince you to buy a device that they must certainly know from their own telemetry that users only interact with for a handful of hours every week.
The only reason Apple is sticking with it is that it’s a long term play and they have unlimited money. Or maybe because they refuse to give up until Meta gives up. They can’t let Meta own a computing platform out of pure business ego.
consumer451 2 days ago [-]
I believe that the cinematographer who I was quoting has much more short-term practical goals.
What he might be thinking is that there are 400k to 500k people who have already spent $3500 on a device which currently has no content. If he got 10% of them to "spend" $2 on his short immersive video experience, that would cover the cost of the camera + shoot + profit, in his first successful attempt.
Fluorescence 2 days ago [-]
You could also say those stats show there is no market. How many owners are even MAU anymore? Most VR headsets collect dust after the initial wow phase passes and you run out of content.
How much are you spending on marketing to reach those users?
consumer451 2 days ago [-]
Those are entirely good points.
However, the reason that I put "spend" in scare quotes was that it might be the case the these indie immersive content creators get their content subsided, or bought outright, by either Apple or some content app maker.
source: 100% supposition by someone who has never owned a VR headset.
jfengel 1 days ago [-]
I hope he finds what he's looking for. We've been fumbling about to find a visual language that really clicks for VR storytelling. It feels like there ought to be one, and if he can find it, it can be as huge as moving pictures.
As it is right now it feels like those early days of film, which seem incredibly awkward because they didn't know how to use it to tell a story. But they were clearly casting about for something they knew was there. It just took a while to find.
Nevermark 14 hours ago [-]
Dune 1 in 3D on Vision Pro is something. For high end cinemaphotography, 3D is not a gimmick.
Market size of high end VR hardware/content does have a chicken and egg problem, regardless.
gpm 2 days ago [-]
Vision Pro, based on its name, its pricing, its marketing, the state of the OS/ecosystem at launch, and so on and so forth was never meant to "sell well". It is an early entrance and closer to a devkit than a typical apple consumer product. This was universally acknowledged (as far as anything is universally acknowledged) from the get go.
It seems like that you could have made the conclusion that it should be discontinued before it went on the market if "poor sales" justifies that for this device.
AJRF 1 days ago [-]
>> was never meant to "sell well"
Doubly crushing for Apple given it sold worse than their low expectations, they shut the production manufacturing and cut sales expectations from 800k to 400k.
lupusreal 1 days ago [-]
"Everybody" wanted the first generation of iphone despite it being grossly deficient in numerous ways (OS/ecosystem, hardware, price, etc), even compared to the extant smartphones / blackberries of it's time. People overlooked all of those deficiencies because the premise of a smartphone that was one big capacitive touch screen was extremely compelling.
With the Vision Pro, that kind of enthusiasm just isn't there. If it was going to be the next big thing, there would be a lot of hype for it even though its rough around the edges. The general public isn't rejecting the Vision Pro because it costs too much and has no apps, they're rejecting it because wearing a computer on their face isn't something they're interested in.
theshackleford 1 days ago [-]
Most people I know are in fact rejecting it due to cost, and have instead settled for a Q3. You can get a second hand car here for what they want for a Vision Pro. It’s too much even for the hardcore Apple fans I know for an unknown, hell, I’m into VR and have been for longer than I can remember now, I have the disposable income and it’s STILL to much, even for me.
lupusreal 1 days ago [-]
> Most people I know are in fact rejecting it due to cost, and have instead settled for a Q3
I don't know who you know, but I'd be very surprised if most of them have either of those..
theshackleford 23 hours ago [-]
Telling on myself but almost everyone I know plays games/works in IT. Yes, I am a man child surrounded by man children/women children I suppose.
All up at least 10 current active VR users. Usage scale ranges from “an experience 3-4 times a year” to “years of daily active usage.”
Another mate joined just recently who is not really into gaming, but got a quest because he actually wanted a big tv/projector but it’s not feasible living in shared housing. I actually told him not to, I just didn’t think he would enjoy it, and despite enjoying jt myself, I actually don’t promote it much to people I consider “normies”because I know it’s niche and I don’t think it really is for most people, but interestingly he has been really happy with it entirely for movies.
1oooqooq 1 days ago [-]
you're reading too much. pro in apple parlance only means "the most expensive of this model line".
dannyw 2 days ago [-]
There was the Newton, PDAs, and Symbian phones before the iPhone.
The technology might need another decade (or two), but I think it’s very shortsighted to think VR/AR is close to its maximum user base.
scherlock 23 hours ago [-]
There have been VR headsets since before there were PDAs. The first VR Headsets were made in the 80s by VPL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research). This no where near being a new idea, this is a forty year old idea that gets a resurgence every 5 to 10 years then everyone remembers why it never caught on the last item. It is a niche consumer peripheral, but it has a lot of applications in professions such as Architecture, Engineering, Medicine, Aerospace, and Training. But those industries can probably only support one or two small manufacturers.
curiouscavalier 2 days ago [-]
Agreed. There’s a lot of variables (and I think price is a big one). But, while slow, adoption in enterprise is showing signs that the basic concept has some legs. Even if the tech today needs some time to marinate.
That said I also don’t think we’re are a time-local maxima of users either.
lupusreal 1 days ago [-]
Back in the era of Palm Pilots and Blackberries, most people didn't have one, but the people who did have one tended to use them extensively every day. Today, most people don't have VR headsets, and most of the people who do are letting them collect dust on a shelf in their closet.
In the first case you have a type of product that is evidently very useful but isn't ready for the general public. In the second case, you have a product that early adopters can't find a routine use for.
2 days ago [-]
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
> the Vision Pro’s sales up to this point justify discontinuation
What are you basing this on though? From all accounts they’re pretty close to selling the number of units they could manufacture.
dangus 2 days ago [-]
I’m basing this on reports that it has not crossed the million unit sales number. Possibly just barely crossing the 500,000 mark right about now.
These are sales that are on par with the Nintendo Virtual Boy.
And if they can’t manufacture any more than that, they have an even bigger problem.
It’s now been a year and a half since the first model was announced and there is no sign of a second model to move the product into a more mass appeal device.
We saw critical follow-ups like the iPhone 3G and Apple Watch Series 1/2 come out as quick releases that were in retrospect very important to establishing a practical device that a regular person might consider buying. I think the fact that we haven’t seen one yet is a huge problem.
If Apple couldn’t make another leap in a calendar year it’s clear that they will never catch up to Meta. Meta is out there selling a gazillion Quest 3S bundles to your local Costco impulse buyer.
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
I suspect your expectations for sales are much loftier than Apple’s.
The million sales mark was from one single report by Kuo. Kuo himself previously said they were limited to ~900K display units which is ~450K devices and other analysts have said the same.
There is no other source saying 1M was the target that I know of that doesn’t trace back to Kuo. If they are at ~500K units then they’ve exceeded the initial sales target that Kuo himself laid out.
For your second point about a follow up, you’re comparing product announcement to product launches. The product itself only launched 10months ago. You’re expecting a second iteration within 10 months, of an entirely new product class for them ? Meanwhile other more popular Apple products often go longer between releases. Even Meta are around two years between products within a device class.
Your last point of comparing to a meta quest is misplaced too. They’re different classes of the same device category. There’s no way Apple are expecting to compete with a device a tenth of its price for total sales.
dangus 15 hours ago [-]
It really wasn't something where I was looking to follow anyone else's sales expectations, it's something where I see a consumer product from Apple selling less than 1 million units and I see a failure. (It's really not even a Mac Pro-like product that is an ecosystem and professional strategy play, it's truly just a content consumption device at its core more similar to an iPad).
You're right that the Meta Quest is a different class of the same device category. But that's the problem, isn't it? Apple made a device that is in a different class of the same device category, really far away in a price point where just aren't any customers.
That's why Apple actually needed an unusually fast follow-up device, because the first product was too close to being an overpriced barely-working tech demo, similar to the original iPhone and Apple Watch.
I think it is quite safe for us to all assume that Apple isn't releasing a Vision Pro follow-up in the next couple of months. The iPhone 3G dropped the price and outclassed the original iPhone owners so much that Steve Jobs had to write an apology letter. The Apple Watch released a new product that resolved all the gripes from the first one in 12 months. I just think as a business strategy that Apple is missing the mark here with the Vision Pro.
dagmx 10 hours ago [-]
To your last point, you’re confusing the iPhone 3G and the original iPhone. The original iPhone was the one that had a price drop after launch which included the apology response, not the iPhone 3G.
To the rest of your point, I’m sure Apple is aware that there aren’t a lot of customers at the 3500 dollar mark. They’ve said as much in interviews, but you’d have to attribute a lot of hubris to them to think they thought they’d steal market share from the Quest line.
Again, all reports say they can’t even manufacture enough right now to be more than a blip on the sales chart.
Perhaps your first paragraph bellies your confusion because you claim it’s just a consumption device, and partly that’s because apples marketing focuses on it, because it’s the easiest thing to communicate.
The 3500 price tag is exactly the starting price point of other high end XR headsets that are used in many non-consumption areas. I say starting, because they go up considerably from there (see the Varjo XR prices). That’s the space where it’s not consumption, but work. It’s the same way that a Mac Pro can be used to view Netflix the same way a MacBook Air can, and they have similar capabilities on paper but widely different markets to target.
From all accounts of working with those industries, Apple has eaten that market share. Varjo has stopped being the headset of choice for most of those cases, to the point that even NVIDIA (who were a huge Varjo customer) are doing Vision Pro courses at siggraph and made it the headset they feature for professional work ( https://resources.nvidia.com/en-us-awe-2024/omniverse-apple-... )
Basically, don’t take Apple’s consumer facing marketing as their entire sales pitch. They have completely separate paths for businesses.
None of this is to say that there aren’t areas that Apple has missed on with the headset. There clearly are several, but I don’t think sales strategy is actually one of them. Marketing is perhaps an issue though.
aprilthird2021 1 days ago [-]
But the products are not 10x different in quality and especially there is not 10x more content on the AVP than the Quest
dagmx 15 hours ago [-]
If all you care about is gaming, perhaps. But there’s a lot of areas where the Vision Pro is a better product to the point where the price difference is irrelevant. Much like professional cameras aren’t actually 10x the features of prosumer cameras, yet command a higher price because of what they enable at the high end.
Industrial and medical use, creative platforms etc,
Literally the only other headsets I can use for the lines of work I’m involved with are 4x the price of the Vision Pro (the Varjo XRs), yet by your metric wouldn’t be worthwhile.
And this is the problem with people who don’t consider usecases beyond their own.
aprilthird2021 4 hours ago [-]
> Industrial and medical use, creative platforms etc, Literally the only other headsets I can use for the lines of work I’m involved with are 4x the price of the Vision Pro (the Varjo XRs), yet by your metric wouldn’t be worthwhile
But the AVP cannot be used for any of these use cases, and as far as I know is not in serious use for professionals in such industries at scale, so why are you acting as if I was blind to the real reason people buy it? None of those are reasons people would buy it today.
Also, you seem to not be aware that the Quest series actually have a professional / industrial business sales setup and do actually make large volumes of sales for business use cases, unlike AVP (https://forwork.meta.com/quest/business-subscription/)
The reason I think you’re not counting those is because you claim equivalency of capability despite cost difference, but there’s clear areas that I know of where a Quest would not cut it.
Your link to metas business use has no relation to my argument. I’m not saying the quest can’t be used for business cases, because I myself have set up professional environments around it. But that’s why I’m confident in saying the Vision Pro allows for a level of fidelity that the Quest cannot provide for today.
dangus 15 hours ago [-]
So Apple, the company that doesn't sell an enterprise cloud computing platform and doesn't sell a business productivity suite wants to sell the Vision Pro to specialized industries?
Excuse me for being very skeptical.
I don't see a whole lot of Apple marketing material talking about the Vision Pro as a professional device. They have a grand total of one press release that highlights different uses for business. There's no landing page that says "contact sales" or anything like that you'd see for an enterprisey specialized solution.
In my mind the more plausible explanation is that Apple misjudged the pricing strategy for the Vision Pro, a device that it considers to be primarily a consumer content device.
If the Vision Pro was a $1000 product they would have potentially had a hit. But I think what's going to happen is that Apple is going to have a product like that in 2026 and when it comes out the response is going to be quite muted.
Just because Apples consumer marketing pages don’t target enterprise, doesn’t mean they don’t target enterprise as a product. See the Mac Pro webpage that also doesn’t mention enterprise contacts https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ but it’s clearly not targeted for just consumers either.
aprilthird2021 4 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry do any actual surgeons or airline techs use these apps? I would be very skeptical that it's used in any kind of sizable number (or that it's even allowed in surgery, frankly).
dagmx 3 hours ago [-]
Yes they are. Here are articles and videos for surgery use. Previously, the HoloLens was used for the surgery market and the Vision Pro has largely replaced it.
That's impressive, but it is currently not licensed for use in surgeries. The first article mentions that they can only use it through an IRB-approved study that all patients have the right to opt-out of.
But yeah, if Apple can become a medical device company, it would unlock a huge revenue stream for them. Looks like these people are optimistic, I'll take them at their word for that.
I personally don't know if Apple is willing to put the investment into the devices to make them viable as medical devices. There is a reason medical devices have huge costs, and that's largely because of the human effort involved to go multiple rounds with the FDA and other regulatory bodies to get a device approved for use in medical facilities outside of trials and studies.
dagmx 2 hours ago [-]
To note, the items used in surgery don’t all need to be medically certified for use if they’re not involved in the interaction with the person being operated on. They just need to adhere to certain standards and maintenance.
This is why you’ll often see a range of display devices in operating theatres. You’ll even see iPads or other tablets that aren’t necessarily certified for use.
Nevermark 14 hours ago [-]
As a daily user of Apple Vision Pro, I can see the value of creating a much cheaper non-pro version.
But I could also see the value of a comparably priced or even higher priced version, with ultra versions of their M chips, going all in as a Mac or MacBook upgrade in terms of user interface.
I use mine as a MacBook Pro screen upgrade. I would love to dispense with the MacBook, while retaining Mac level (as apposition to limited iOS style) applications.
tbrownaw 2 days ago [-]
> * think that Apple and everyone else is very aware that VR/AR is more likely than not be close to the maximum user base.*
Maybe for current device clunkiness and capabilities.
I expect that would change if it could do a good job of replacing desk screens, or let people spend their commute staring at a hud instead of staring at a phone.
wongarsu 1 days ago [-]
Everyone is trying to do that, but the tech just isn't there yet. We would need to double the resolution of the best VR headsets to be able to properly simulate 1920p screens at any reasonable distance.
But at the same time everyone knows that the tech will get there eventually. A lot of current VR products seem to mostly exist to position companies to be able to exploit the market once the tech gets good enough.
2 days ago [-]
dmix 2 days ago [-]
Plenty of people made tons of money off 3D. Way more than 30k
Kwpolska 1 days ago [-]
People made money off 3D thanks to 3D cinemas. 3D glasses are cheap, often disposable. VR headsets are expensive and clunky, I doubt we're going to see VR cinemas with comparable capacity.
Panoramic photography for VR is on my bucket list although I have a huge list of other projects such as having a reliable camera-to-audience system for stereograms I shoot with another other camera from that company
though my Uni has a resource center for that kind of thing and I can probably talk my way into borrowing one of the better ones.
Stereo panos can be absolutely amazing on a consumer VR headset, I've greatly enjoyed crowd scenes from Paris such as in front of the Louvre and an observation deck on the Eiffel tower.
The 3d economy more fundamentally needs some kind of photo-to-3d technology and that is going to take multiple photographs from different angles, a depth camera helps but in one shot it does not give you the pixels that are only visible on the L or the R channel in a stereogram because of obscuration.
I've got a friend who makes 3-d models using a $265 million camera
one thing we've talked about is where to get the missing pixels that aren't in any of the photographs, it's a tougher problem for him as a scientist than it is for me because he can't make stuff up.
porphyra 2 days ago [-]
"Nothing on this" is an interesting way to put it. Two 8,160 x 7,200 large sensors has various pros and cons compared to eight APS-C 24 MP sensors. If you want panoramic field of view, the latter is awesome. If you want high resolution for stereo in a particular direction, you'd want the former.
PaulHoule 2 days ago [-]
The market has shown over and over again that viewers are indifferent to stereo movies. Sure I will watch an awful Star Wars movie on my Quest just because it is in 3d but I am just about the only one.
Pano content in VR really is something new.
Apple's lack of vision with the Vision Pro is shocking as is the arrogance that somehow a $3k headset will revive interest in something people wouldn`t pay an extra $5 for at the movies.
With twice the memory and a desktop grade processor the AVP could trash the Quest 3 at immersive application but Apple is stuck on a backwards and conservative vision of mobile apps floating in the air - totally mundane sci-fi (Washuu had this in Tenchi Muyo) but a $3k headset has to do all, not just what one rich dude thinks is stylish.
If you are doing any VR or AR work you realize memory for textures is terribly short and 'more pixels' is the road to nowhere.
Terretta 2 days ago [-]
The Alicia Keys demo in AVP is not a "stereo movie" and people didn't have the opportunity to hang with their favorite celebs in what feels like reality.
Lots of as-well-made-as-able 3D "stereo" movies in Disney etc that work on AVP beautifully. None of those are the same "you are here now" sense as the Alicia Keys demo.
Agree with you on Apple's seeming reluctance to empower a new UX/UI for the AVP affordances. Having a multi-window iPad strapped to your face is less compelling. Over the past 15 years one notices how much of iOS UI was invented by the market (pull down to refresh, for instance). Perhaps they want to see what people come up with for this.
walterbell 2 days ago [-]
> Perhaps they want to see what people come up with for this.
Not going to happen without jailbreaking the locked-down VisionOS.
Apple could choose to enable for 18 months, then integrate the best use cases into the platform.
Terretta 2 days ago [-]
What would jailbreaking allow that couldn't be mocked up in AR mode instead of iPads-strapped-to-face mode?
Yes, you'd have to have your various "apps" in your same "suite" app (like Microsoft ships Word, Excel, Powerpoint, inside Office for iPadOS), but third party apps wouldn't know your new UX/UI paradigm anyway.
walterbell 2 days ago [-]
Integration with 3rd party devices, which Apple is refusing to do in the EU?
DidYaWipe 2 days ago [-]
The market hasn't really shown that. It has shown that viewers are indifferent to FAKE 3-D movies, which is what studios troweled out as fast as they could... ruining a major opportunity.
Most people have seen maybe three real 3-D movies from among: the Avatars, a Pixar movie, Hugo, The Hobbit, the Transformers one where they tore up Chicago, and... yeah, I'm hard-pressed to name another movie right now that was shot in 3-D... oh, and Drive Angry. Which no one saw.
The vast majority of movies offered in "3-D" were post-processed junk.
Nevermark 14 hours ago [-]
Dune 1 3D is fantastic. If you customize the Vision Pro’s light shield to put the screens closer & expand field of view, even better: you are essentially in the movie.
2 days ago [-]
bag_boy 2 days ago [-]
Can you tell me more about pano content? What does that mean?
wahnfrieden 2 days ago [-]
this camera is also used to create immersive environments, not only for watching "movies"
anigbrowl 2 days ago [-]
Those two products are doing totally different jobs. This is great for events, VR, and so on.
The BlackMagic design is aimed squarely at cinema use, where BM is already one of the industry standard platforms for color grading and increasingly for editing, and already highly respected for image acquisition. This matters because film distribution agreements increasingly mandate specific technologies for production to mitigate the risk of customer complaints abouts image quality.
The 3d part of the camera is somewhat relevant for the cinema release market (and VR headset users who want to watch a movie in 3d...but I think this will remain a small market because wearing a helmet/goggles to watch a movie is inherently anti-social), but even if you never plan to release in 3d it's nice to be able to acquire that way for vfx purposes. Recording ground truth 3d information during acquisition is always going to be superior and cheaper to inferring it computationally from a monocular image.
somethingsome 2 days ago [-]
Having a user stuck in the center of the scene is what kills immersion in my opinion, but at the same time I develop free navigation systems for VR :)
galago 2 days ago [-]
I have a QoocamEgo and have found it pretty disappointing even at that price point. It takes about 30 seconds to start up, chews through battery quickly, and has poor autofocus. I set focus manually by guessing and then use "sport mode" (1/120second) otherwise it will use low shutter speeds which produce motion blur handheld. Also, even though it will shoot close up items, I've found that the offset is too great for most viewing scenarios. So, I would say composing images that include subjects 3m to infinity is about the best.
I just want to say that your analysis is great. I reference it whenever the discussion comes up about the technicalities of Apples solution.
mdswanson 2 days ago [-]
Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback.
4gotunameagain 2 days ago [-]
I guess the next step here is a video encoder that is natively recording spherical videos ?
Any projection is bound to separate areas which could be compressed more efficiently together.
A native stereoscopic spherical video encoder could improve compression even more, since side by side views are quite similar in general.
Now that's an interesting problem to solve ! (and a very hard one probably)
astrange 1 days ago [-]
> A native stereoscopic spherical video encoder could improve compression even more, since side by side views are quite similar in general.
Existing video formats already support this for interlacing, although you could also let inter-prediction refer to earlier parts of the same frame and get most of the benefit.
somethingsome 2 days ago [-]
It is developed in the mpeg standard already, there is a whole group of people for that from some years ;)
somethingsome 2 days ago [-]
Hey! Nice writeup,
Just something is missing, some MPEG formats can encode this kind of video in OMAF specification.
Edit: I'll certainly read the rest of the articles!
mdswanson 2 days ago [-]
Thanks! Indeed, there are other formats (like OMAF) that describe some of this. In fact, I helped to author one a long while back called OPF.
ec109685 2 days ago [-]
Did WWDC end up filling in any additional blanks from your article?
Thanks!
mdswanson 21 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately not. I hope we learn more before WWDC25!
rramon 2 days ago [-]
I watch a decent amount amount of lower league football (soccer) and one of the main pains there are automated cameras that track the ball and move accordingly, often missing crucial moments due to latency.
A setup with a fixed VR camera and a 180 FOV could totally transform the experience, because now with a VR headset I'd be the one tracking the ball with my head movements like in a real stadium.
Many smaller local clubs suffer from low attendence due to local factors like people leaving the area, not having time or just bigger clubs playing at the same time.
This could be overcome with global audiences and live VR recordings (where you're still able to move your head) and potentially be a nice source of income for many clubs selling virtual stadium tickets.
ec109685 2 days ago [-]
The veo camera does that. Quality isn’t that great but because they buffer and capture a wide angle view of field, they can make it seem like a ball is being tracked by a moving camera.
Firstly, it’s an actual cine camera so has a lot of cine features for reviewing, output, formats that are recorded etc.
Next is the lenses, this has a wider inter pupillary distance so will feel more dimensional and natural. It also has wider coverage.
Then there’s the sensors and readout: this can capture 8K per eye, for 90fps. This is required for the Apple immersive format because it partially surrounds you and so you need 8k per eye to make sure you have good resolution coverage for the portion of the video shown on the 4k per eye display.
There’s no other commercial product that compares to this.
alberth 2 days ago [-]
Can you not get this capability with a RED camera + Canon Fisheye lense?
I’m no photographer, but it seems like it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera - when you could just use an existing high end camera like RED + new lens.
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
I feel like I already covered the answer to your question in the comment you’re replying to.
The canon fisheye lens does not have the same IPD as this lens.
Beyond that, you’d still be limited by the sensor. The highest RED sensor is 8k? This is 8k per eye. Thats double (actually slightly higher than double).
So, you could make something inferior, yes, but not the same capabilities.
zamadatix 2 days ago [-]
Moreso than the "this exact Canon lens on this exact sensor" I think the question is more "why not this Canon lens approach on normal high-end camera so you don't have to buy a 30k camera which does one specific thing". You do answer that but maybe not in a way that's directly obvious to general extension for those not versed in professional photography or videography.
Blackmagic does have e.g. a 12k non-stereo Ursa Cine but, like you hint at, whatever they can have in the non-stereo can always be better in stereo because a 2x sensor setup has 4x the sensor area as a 1/2 sensor setup. Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines the quality of the recording. When quality is what's important to a professional setting then it doesn't matter (in this market segment) there is a solution which is 20k cheaper if it's always going to be inferior by design. They don't expect to sell many of these to professionals even so it's fine it doesn't make cost sense to the average person.
The rest of everything (recording workflows and settings, IPD, framerates, editing software) can all be identical with either approach but the sensor area is sensor area and there is nothing which can be done to fix that.
labcomputer 2 days ago [-]
> Blackmagic does have e.g. a 12k non-stereo Ursa Cine
But that’s still not 16k of pixels. You don’t even need two 8k sensors to make this work. Just aim the stereo lenses at different parts of a 16k sensor. The Canon solution is simply lacking IPD and pixels.
> Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines the quality of the recording.
This is false. Going to get up on my soapbox again here:
Larger sensors actually have more noise (noise is proportional the square root of the area).
It’s easy to understand the confusion, though: Putting a larger sensor behind the same lens is the opposite of cropping… you get a larger field of view and less image detail. Thus, keeping field of view the same, a larger sensor forces you to use a lens with a longer focal length.
Now, if you re-grind the original lens to have a longer focal length, you encounter another problem: The same physical aperture divided by the new longer focal length means that you have a smaller focal ratio (the number in F/<number> gets bigger). You have a dimmer lens!
So, to keep the same focal ratio (“F-stop”), you need a lens with a larger physical aperture… That larger physical aperture is collecting more light onto your sensor!
That’s why everyone seems to think larger sensors are better. It’s the lens you are forced to use, not the sensor itself.
Since light collected is directly proportional to the area of the lens (and lens area will be proportional to sensor area, see above) and sensor noise is only proportional to sqrt(area), the signal to noise ratio goes as area/sqrt(area) = sqrt(area).
But that’s not the same thing as saying a larger sensor is better… you could have just used a lens with a larger physical aperture in the first place. You don’t need a larger sensor to do that.
fxtentacle 2 days ago [-]
As someone who has designed a customised camera with a CMOS sensor, I feel the urge to disagree: in my experience, the biggest issue for quality was that the sensor readout generates heat and that heat triggers random charges in the sensor. Using a sensor with larger pixels means the readout energy is spread over a larger area, thereby having a lower intensity. So in a way, a larger sensor works like a larger heatsink. This effect is also why astronomy photographers cool their equipment.
You're of course correct that the better lens helps. But a bigger sensor can also be better by itself.
formerly_proven 2 days ago [-]
> But that’s not the same thing as saying a larger sensor is better… you could have just used a lens with a larger physical aperture in the first place. You don’t need a larger sensor to do that.
Most optical aberrations increase with high powers of the f-number so it's highly undesirable to make ultra-fast lenses, so it quite quickly becomes cheaper to use a larger sensor with a slower f-number. Try matching a jellybean 85/2 lens on a full-frame sensor on e.g. MFT. It's going to be rather expensive. Then try matching a 85/1.4 or 85/1.2 (nowadays not uncommon) lens and you find yourself at "that's not physically possible".
Coincidentally, full-frame sensors can be made from just two stitched exposures on a regular chip stepper, so they're sort of the largest sensor size before cost explodes. Meanwhile S35/APS-C offers some real cost savings (single exposure).
PaulHoule 2 days ago [-]
It's an interesting question to compare video quality in mono vs stereo.
In stereo you really do have more visual information. It's not unusual for 10% of the pixels in a stereogram (say a close up of a person) to be unique to one channel. On top of that you have left and right eye pixels that are shared which must be equivalent to more than one mono pixel even if they aren't equivalent to two.
Although I get MPO's with two JPEGs in one file from my New 3DS, stereo content is frequently delivered in side-by-side format as one big JPEG. Stereo movies and TV frequently use side-by-side with half horizontal resolution on the assumption that stereo is feeding your eyes and brains more data although it probably doesn't match the original perceived resolution.
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
I’m not sure the Ursa Immersive is actually two sensors, though it might be. It’s based on the Ursa Cine 17k (which is shockingly close to the exact resolution needed) so it might be a single sensor as well.
Which would help with synchronized sensor readout.
There’s no brain for an 8k sensor where you could have more than one for the cost of this. So you’d have to at the very least compromise on resolution.
You’d also have to construct a multi camera rig which adds to both cost and size/weight/difficulty. So you’d compromise on the ergonomics of it.
Then you’d have to add the lenses. These have them integrated. Finding comparable lenses would set you over your comparable budget.
Okay, then let’s talk storage. This has 8TB on board. Getting an equivalent for the RED would also set you over the budget.
Finally, connectivity. The only REDs that you could maybe bring under budget need additions to add connectivity. So you’re compromising there.
And at the end of the day, 30K for a camera of this caliber is insanely cheap. I think everyone getting caught up on the cost has only dealt with prosumer stuff at best. Anyone at the professional level has been awed by black magic’s ability to bring this and the Ursa Cine 17k at the price point that they have.
Besides, the cost for everything else will far outpace the camera. The camera is the one thing you don’t want to skimp on. You have a bad camera day, you ruin everything else and waste more money than you’d have saved.
I’ll reiterate: 30k is an absolute bargain for this or the 17k.
kalleboo 2 days ago [-]
> it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera
These are cameras that productions rent by the day for a specific shoot, not something they buy outright. Similar to high-end cine cameras, slow motion cameras, underwater cameras, etc.
tobyjsullivan 2 days ago [-]
> it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera
I don't think hobbyists are the target market. Isn't that price in-line with any studio-quality camera? (I have no idea if this qualifies as a studio-quality camera, but I can imagine at least a few studios would be willing to try it out).
aeturnum 2 days ago [-]
Also, the most common scenario for this camera (and most pro-level production cameras) is that they are rented per-job. Eventually it would makes sense to buy one if you have enough work for that camera, but most people and productions start with rentals.
haldean 2 days ago [-]
There are quite a few cine cameras that are more than 10x this amount, and there are a few that are 100x. For example, there are Panavision cameras that you can only rent direct from Panavision that require that you have half a million dollars of insurance coverage to rent. There are ARRIs that you can buy from B&H that are $100k. $30k is definitely in the range of something that individual DPs/operators could own, although it’s getting into rental territory for lots of people.
wodenokoto 2 days ago [-]
TV studio cameras can apparently reach nearly 10x this.
Pro equipment can reach prices that seem unbelievable to prosumers.
I think how you couldn't really zoom a video in the 1970s short of printing it to film and doing optical tricks. By 1980 you started to see frame buffer effects in commercial TV and you could have zoomed but didn't have enough pixels to do much.
In the digital age zooming video is completely routine and if you've got a picture with absurd megapixels you can do it in a big way.
ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago [-]
I remember a story about the Phantom Flex[0] High-Speed camera.
It's an awesome camera, but note the absence of a price, on the Web site. I think it retails for around $80K.
A cinema camera is $50 to $100k (Sony Venice or ARRI ALEXA 35). That cinema camera is much better to use for a film crew and puts out a higher quality.
WITHOUT the cost of additional lenses. Then you add in sets, lighting, generators, cast, etc.
All of this is fractions compared to maybe millions of dollars for marketing.
And if you are a small film crew, you rent.
BizarroLand 2 days ago [-]
By "small" they mean, "Total cost of production for a feature length movie coming in under a few million dollars"
Outright purchasing a camera and equipment vs renting them for a shoot is a waste of money unless you're a production company that is going to use the equipment over and over again until it falls apart, and even then if you rent it it is on the rental company to handle maintenance and providing replacements in case of equipment breakdown, so it can still be a good deal for you.
Analemma_ 2 days ago [-]
Very few movie shoots actually own the camera they use. It's standard in the industry to rent a camera from a vendor for the duration of filming, which makes the MSRP of the camera, if not totally irrelevant, then a pretty minor detail.
GeekyBear 2 days ago [-]
> it seems like it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera
For mass market consumers, you can already shoot in Apple's spatial video format with an iPhone.
kridsdale1 2 days ago [-]
I have the $5000 Canon 8k setup, and I have filmed with the Vision Pro and iPhone 16 Pro. The latter two produce content that is nearly unwatchable. Extremely noisy/filtered and the iPhones IPD basically doesn’t exist.
GeekyBear 2 days ago [-]
> nearly unwatchable
Reviews in the tech press do not agree.
> Apple iPhone Spatial Video Looks Amazing on Vision Pro
It's good enough for personal use, but absolutely not good enough for professional use, especially in low-light scenarios.
Source: own an AVP and an iPhone 15 Pro
JKCalhoun 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, I think initially most will be going to "customers" in the San Fernando valley.
rowanG077 2 days ago [-]
Is this a serious question? a RED camera does not have stereovision and has no other way to retain depth information.
zamadatix 2 days ago [-]
"Is this a serious question" is hard to take as anything but an insult. Any actual trolling or the like will naturally sink on HN without the risk of attacking genuinely curious questions.
With the example Canon lens approach alberth had linked the device does not need to natively support stereo. The downsides, and why one might still spend 30k on an alternative, is said lens approach effectively halves the sensor area and the optics system won't be quite as well designed as a natively optimized one. Also the device is aimed to match the AVP precisely e.g. 90 FPS at full ~59 MP resolution.
I doubt they expect to sell many units but the units they do sell are for top professionals looking for the absolute best stereo quality they could get for the AVP, not for prosumers or average productions which would be fine with the slight quality and workflow bump to save 20k.
ceejayoz 2 days ago [-]
> "Is this a serious question" is hard to take as anything but an insult.
So is "I, as a non-photographer, openly question the utility of this pro-photographer tool to pro-photographers", though.
spiderice 2 days ago [-]
Hard disagree. A person who is ignorant in a certain subject is allowed to ask questions about that subject in order to learn.
> Can you not get this capability with...
Can be interpreted as "this is pointless.. you can do this other thing for way cheaper" OR "help me understand why this exists because I don't understand it". GP is _clearly_ in the latter camp and saying "as a non-photographer" to make that clear.
Since we're already quoting HN guidelines
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith
zamadatix 2 days ago [-]
Hmm, I have no trouble finding "Can you not... I'm no photographer but it seems like it'd be tough" type questions as genuine curiosity about an expert field instead. It's certainly possible to interpret it as an insult if one likes, that's often an easy task, but it definitely feels like it's not the only way to interpret the question.
rowanG077 2 days ago [-]
Even after they were told it has a ton of value add. It indeed irked me the wrong way and that's why I took that tone.
amarshall 2 days ago [-]
Both the V-Raptor & Komodo have an RF mount and thus can accept the Canon Dual Fisheye lens. The resolution is a lot lower, and neither sensor is well-matched to the lens’s image circle.
The whole point of the Canon Dual Fisheye lens is to record stereoscopic video on a “standard” single sensor camera.
PaulHoule 2 days ago [-]
Lenny Lipton, who developed the RealD system used in theaters today worked on the end-to-end problem of stereo movies in the 1970 used a pair of 8mm cameras hinged together, there were similar rigs used in the 1950s.
Today I adjust stereograms so that most objects are close to the paper or screen by sliding them horizontally, but I think Lipton is right that it is better to make the cameras converge though all my stereo cameras are parallel.
brabel 2 days ago [-]
In the late 90's I think, there was a movie where a neural device was created that allowed anyone to "record" their brain activity so that it could be replayed later by anyone with a device for that. But it became like a drug as people got addicted to it and couldn't stop living the virtual experiences of others (this was a long time ago so I hope I remember the story correctly)! Some people wanted to experience murdering someone, or having sex with a famous person... cool stuff :D Anyone knows which movie was that?
Which, amusingly, required development of a customized camera to film:
> The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot, required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation.[5] A full year was spent building a specialized camera that could reproduce the effect of looking through someone else's eyes.[5] Bigelow revealed that it was essentially "a stripped-down Arri that weighed much less than the smallest EYMO and yet it would take all the prime lenses.
It's an unfairly forgotten film. Much like Blade Runner, it suffers from a clunky plot but has quite smart world building.
parasubvert 2 days ago [-]
Film geeks still talk about Strange Days. It has a cult following.
brabel 2 days ago [-]
Thanks so much, I had tried in vain to find this movie before, but it's truly forgotten! I loved it at the time, it made a serious impression on 17yo me, will see if I can get to watch it again after so many years.
wrboyce 2 days ago [-]
Out of curiosity I pasted your comment into ChatGPT and asked it which movie you were referring to and it got it correct.
I find GPT quite useful for those “tip of your tongue” type queries, and have used it to name movies and actors quite a few times.
brabel 2 days ago [-]
Ha, I don't know why it didn't occur to me to ask AI :D. Will remember that next time.
nickzelei 2 days ago [-]
Wow what a loop close. I’ve also been wondering randomly about this movie with no idea what it was called. I remember this film and it left an impression on me. I’ll even bring it up to people from time to time. Didn’t occur to me for some reason to have a GPT try and guess it.
What’s funny is that there are others out there that are thinking the same thing regarding that film.
Cheers!
ntxy 2 days ago [-]
In Neuromancer(1984) it's called Simstim. I think Strange Days got it from there.
Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977) also by Gibson already had this.
Does anybody know even earlier instances?
wordpad25 2 days ago [-]
cyberpunk on Netflix did it most recently
kridsdale1 2 days ago [-]
Yes it’s called “brain dance” in the Cyberpunk 2077 lore which that show is based on.
That's a movie I haven't thought about in awhile. Decent flick.
I saved a newspaper clipping from a local theater showing "BRIANSTORM". My father's name is Brian. 7 y/o me thought the misspelling in the ad was hilarious.
flippyhead 2 days ago [-]
No, you are all wrong. I had this idea first!! When I was 8.
2 days ago [-]
baoluofu 2 days ago [-]
Could be Brainstorm (1983) perhaps?
Also, see the last episode of season one of Black Mirror.
And "brain dances" in Cyberpunk 2077.
mapt 2 days ago [-]
You mean every other plot involving brain computer interfaces since the 1950's?
As others are pointing out, it was Strange Days... even though it may seem like a common plot, that movie is pretty unique IMHO in how far it takes the concept.
is underrated, the visual depiction of the lab is like Crichton's Looker. In my mind Research Triangle Park is as cool as it is this movie, in real life it falls short only a little.
snowwrestler 2 days ago [-]
I don’t think this is the movie you’re referring to, but Until the End of the World has a similar device to record images from the brain. At first it is used to help a blind woman see. But later people start using it to record their dreams and then watch them—which becomes addictive.
rvnx 2 days ago [-]
We will probably go through:
Thoughts -> (electric signal) -> LLM decoding and calling a generative model -> (electric signal) -> Brain
jtmetcalfe 2 days ago [-]
It's either STRANGE DAYS or EXISTENZ - maybe BRAINSTORM but that was early 80s
2 days ago [-]
foobarian 2 days ago [-]
Strange Days. Tom Sizemoore's best. "The issue's not whether you're paranoid, Lenny, I mean look at this shit, the issue is whether you're paranoid enough."
I research live-action anime[0] and this looks really cool, especially if there's fine-grained control over each sensor and especially if you can change the lenses (in a supported or unsupported manner).
Anime has the advantage of being drawn frame-by-frame, thus able to "change" lenses, cameras, etc mid action-packed shots. Using this may allow for shooting two different setups at once, achieving a similar effect.
Not sure why but during the HTC Evo and Nintendo coming out with the 3DS having the screen be 3d (Stereoscopic since you can use it without lenses) didn't take off.
The 3DS was fun but it was gimmicky, and it wasn't great.
I would love to have a 3d tv that works without glasses even if it was a limited depth thing (like multiple screens on top of each other to create real depth within a confined space) but I think the technology of the 3DS screen wouldn't scale to larger screens.
jazzyjackson 2 days ago [-]
> like multiple screens on top of each other to create real depth within a confined space
iirc this is effectively what looking glass displays do [0], or at least the early prototypes I saw, split a projected beam across 16 or so panes of glass. I've only seen the little one in real life but it was pretty enchanting. They go up to 32" and 64", something like 20,000 dollars tho [1] I don't know if they've actually made any sales of the larger formats
I was recently googling for whether these displays supported Apple Spatial Video and the answer was yes after some 3rd party conversion and playing media back straight from the iPhone it was recorded on, sounded annoying but feasible [2]
What is wild is that I saw a flat screen lenticular Canon display playing some custom DOOM clone in about 1998 at a video game developers event. It must have been at least 17" 4:3. It always seems it was something that accidentally fell back through time because it was so far ahead of its time. I remember feeling like a caveman because I put my head around the back like I was looking for the magic of how it worked.
astrange 1 days ago [-]
The New 3DS was quite good, but being a relatively cheap Nintendo portable with backwards compatibility concerns it was pretty low resolution.
kallistisoft 1 days ago [-]
I was big fan of my HTC Evo, I found the 3D images to be immensely helpful when taking documentation photographs. I could take just two images and get all of the info I needed to capture vs taking ~8 from multiple angles and having to mentally envision the relative dimensions of the space afterwards.
kalleboo 2 days ago [-]
I had a SHARP Aquos Phone SH-12C with a 3D camera and lenticular display and some of the photos I took with that phone are some of my most treasured photos since the 3D aspect really brings you back to where you were.
But back then everyone just said "3D is a gimmick I hate it I just want an normal TV" and the fad died.
The iPhone recently added support for actually shooting spatial photos in addition to videos so I need to try that out.
jazzyjackson 2 days ago [-]
Nice. There was also the RED Hydrogen phone which may have been the same display, it was a flop but IMO they were just early on the whole 'charging $1200 for a smartphone' thing. Its legacy is now just the prop smartphones announced by the villain in "Don't Look Up"
I think it would be totally possible for an iphone to come out with two camera bumps - on either end of the phone to maximize 3d depth. And then when you fold the phone, it becomes a 360 cam....?
JKCalhoun 2 days ago [-]
I have about three Fujifilm FinePix digital 3D cameras. Fun to play with if you like stereo photography (although consumer-level quality images, but still decent).
1oooqooq 1 days ago [-]
tried all those. the fire phone 3d with the 4 ir cameras was the only decent implementation... sadly completely ruined by the dystopian amazon android running on it.
jsiepkes 1 days ago [-]
Meanwhile I still can't even buy the Vision Pro itself in the Netherlands.
Sure, I could get one from Germany. However I did that with a Google Pixel 6 Pro and that turned out to be hell when I needed to claim warranty on it. Which required an address in Germany. So I'm not really inclined to go down that road again.
OliverGuy 2 days ago [-]
8TB for 2hrs of footage is crazy even compared to other high end cinema camera, going to be an interesting work flow for anyone editing this as thats not a a trivial amount of data even by today's standards
michaelt 2 days ago [-]
> going to be an interesting work flow for anyone editing this
We've had techniques for editing videos on underpowered PCs since the 1990s. Possibly earlier.
You use something called a "proxy workflow": For each 8K source video, generate a 480p "proxy" with the same frame timing but a much more manageable amount of data. You edit the entire film using the 480p videos. Then once you're happy you "render" the video - which swaps the high quality sources back in and produces an output file. The final render might take all weekend for an hour-long video - but you've only got to do it once.
smitelli 2 days ago [-]
They did that with film too. The editors sliced up a copy of the developed film, called a “workprint,” spliced it all back together, and produced a list of numerical edit points as they went along.
Then a person called the negative cutter would go through the list, duplicate the editing decisions on a high-quality negative without the generational loss, and that would go on to become the final print.
That’s why sometimes you’ll see a deleted scene from a movie whose picture quality looks quite poor. That was most likely taken from the workprint, and never went through negative cutting or any finishing.
ethagknight 2 days ago [-]
Great input on the low quality deleted scene, never made sense to me!
whycome 2 days ago [-]
same. I always wondered if the proper hq film for some of those scenes is stored away somewhere.
diggan 2 days ago [-]
> is crazy even compared to other high end cinema camera
Is it really? I haven't touched "high end cinema cameras" but if my consumer camera can generate ~1TB/hour and it's a "normal" consumer camera, I'd easily expect 4x that in high end cinema gear for 3D video (multiple videos stitched into one essentially)
But again, haven't used any of those or looked it up, so what do I know. It doesn't sound outlandish to me though.
michaelt 2 days ago [-]
> if my consumer camera can generate ~1TB/hour and it's a "normal" consumer camera
If your consumer camera generates 1TB/hour then you're generating data as fast as a Red Komodo [1] recording at 6K "VFX, Extreme Detail Scenes"
Consumer quality? A high-end iphone can record 4K 60FPS video and an hour's footage takes up 24 gigabytes.
And you're watching 4K 60fps video on Netflix? Youtube? Maybe 12 gigabytes an hour.
> A high-end iphone can record 4K 60FPS video and an hour's footage takes up 24 gigabytes.
According to https://support.apple.com/en-us/109041 4k60 recording in ProRes needs 220 MB/s storage, so an hour would be ~792 GB. Sure, you can choose to throw away most of that data with more lossy compression, but the barely-acceptable bitrates used by streaming services are not at all the right point of comparison here.
formerly_proven 2 days ago [-]
Raw 8K video at 60 fps out of something like a Nikon Z8 is around 1.5 TB/hour, 400-500 MB/s.
Of course most people wouldn't shoot at 60 fps for historical reasons, and raw video codecs are intra-only so data rate scales linearly with fps. They're just relatively heavily lossily compressed raw images in a box, basically.
diggan 2 days ago [-]
Fair, maybe "prosumer" is more fitting, was thinking of the Pocket Cinema 6K (also from Blackmagic). Not exactly "high end cinema camera" so I still think the data rate doesn't sound out of the world.
perfmode 2 days ago [-]
Seems like Synology NAS with 10Gbit Ethernet is the way to go, based on the research I’ve done so far.
Does anyone have better ideas?
dijit 2 days ago [-]
Thunderbolt external raid is better, for a solo video editor.
I've been curious on the real-world throughput of a directly attached Thunderbolt RAID vs a 10GB (single or bonded) Synology NAS. It's annoying to have to go to my desk to connect to the USB-C Drobo, and I have to jump ship sooner or later.
kridsdale1 2 days ago [-]
I have gone down this path myself for doing 8k editing. TB3 attached SSDs IO to my Mac at about 3GB/s. The ones on my server connected over 10GB fiber Ethernet actually only reach about 800MB/s and I suspect that that macOS networking stack is just not at all optimized for 10G.
MobiusHorizons 2 days ago [-]
10GBit networking is really only 1.25GBytes per second, so 800MBytes/s isn't saturating the link, but is 64% of the way there. TB3 has a theoretical throughput of 40GByte/s so 3GByte/s => 24GBit/s is 60%. Realistically both are lower to the theretical link performance than I would have guessed, so there may be some bottlenecks involved beyond just computational overhead, but it makes sense TB3 was going to win assuming the storage had the bandwidth.
jkestner 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah, was going to say, I'd take 800MB/s. I get a mere 180MB/s on this Drobo 5C (filled with 7200rpm HDDs) — theoretical max is 625MB/s.
mycall 2 days ago [-]
OCuLink or CameraLink also come to mind.
sofixa 2 days ago [-]
10Gbit would be the bare minimum, 8TB at 10Gbit would take 1h46mins. Assuming the disks aren't bottlenecked, which means SSDs.
sroussey 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, you would want a Thunderbolt 5 external RAID device.
kridsdale1 2 days ago [-]
That’s some serious 2025 level disk tech. I want it.
threeseed 2 days ago [-]
Synology wouldn't work well here.
To prevent causing issues upstream you would want to write to a fast NVME SSD first before backing up to a HDD array. Unfortunately, it doesn't support this use case as the NAS is designed for movie streaming, offices, security cameras etc.
diggan 2 days ago [-]
Well, the bottleneck is probably getting that off the camera somehow, rather than how to get it elsewhere once off the camera.
sharpshadow 2 days ago [-]
Technically it’s also two cameras in one and would allow for various option if it would be programmable. Like taking video and stills at the same time. Normal fps and slow mo. With attachments one could record two different angles. Macro attachment. Record 8k while streaming HD.
But they never offer you a programmable camera system.
kazinator 1 days ago [-]
The lenses are too close together for serious 3D. Like say you want to stereoscopically shoot a cityscape from a highrise building. A couple of inches of separation won't do anything; you need the cameras a few feet apart.
What's the point of integrating two cameras into one unit, when you can just capture with two cameras. It's a software problem.
Tepix 24 hours ago [-]
You eyes provide decent 3d, don't they?
kazinator 19 hours ago [-]
Yes, over small scales and distances.
Say you want a stereogram that shows you Manhattan or the Grand Canyon as if it were a model laid out on a table before you. A human-like stereoscopic shot of those places will not produce the depth.
(Maybe something can be computed, but that's a separate discussion.)
empiricus 4 hours ago [-]
Just use 2 normal cameras with 1 meter separation. There are some videos on deovr/quest with this kind stereo effect; for example clouds filmed from a airplane, they look like toy 3d clouds.
What I find interesting is that there appears to be no way to view the live video on a set of goggles for the camera operator, or the director. At least, it's not mentioned in the link above.
Also, it seems like Apple must have contributed to Blackmagic's investment in this product, right? There are ~300k Vision Pros, so maybe Blackmagic will sell a couple hundred of these units? Without Apple's involvement, how could they have justified the investment in hardware and the new version of Resolve?
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
Regarding the nicheness of it all:
My background was in film where I also worked on stereo for certain big projects. I know some anti-Apple folk will criticize my comments below so I want to be clear I’m talking about 3D video specifically.
I think it’s a bet on the future. Even though Apple aren’t high volume, they’ve dramatically shifted the professional stereo video landscape more than anything else in the last decade.
This is everything from bringing full resolution stereo videos for home viewing , to making a seemingly standardized format for 180 videos. Even if the latter is just restricted to their platform.
If I was BMD, I’d be seeing how everyone else is now following Apple in this specific area. Even though Meta were first, they’re undeniably also following Apple in some key areas. Same with Android XR. You can just look at their software releases/announcements over the last year as evidence.
If DaVinci can output to a range of formats, then it reduces the issue of it being apple specific. It’s a bet that they’ll be effectively the only professional game in town when all the brands (Apple, meta, Google) want to start driving content.
Beyond that, I don’t think the outlay for hardware is that high. It’s largely based off the Cine 17k, so most of the investment is amortized there.
Also even beyond the VR space, there’s the market for immersive experiences like projection events, the Vegas sphere, theme parks etc…
neom 2 days ago [-]
You also benefit from people who are bleeding edge either staying in, or entering, the backmagic ecosystem. I read through the comments and most people are focused on the cameras. I know the blackmagic folks from back in the day, been to their lab etc, if you know them they're all about "the blackmagic look" and their thought (at least in the start) is they just need people to fall in love with the profile of their imaging, and they will be stuck in the ecosystem. Anyone I know who shoots BM is obsessed with their IQ.
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
Yeah the black magic folks have such a great perspective on workflow and ecosystem.
Their color science too is very nice and I think they’re making good moves with the 17k.
makeitdouble 2 days ago [-]
> I think it’s a bet on the future. Even though Apple aren’t high volume, they’ve dramatically shifted the professional stereo video landscape more than anything else in the last decade.
> This is everything from bringing full resolution stereo videos for home viewing , to making a seemingly standardized format for 180 videos. Even if the latter is just restricted to their platform.
I'd assume Porn already achieved all of the above. The format seem to have mostly settled, and the volume produced are relevant.
Apple might succeed in the "not first but best" approach, but do they have that much of an impact on the landscape right now ? In particular while this camera is marketed toward AVP movies, Apple being an early partner and probably footing the bill for most of it, is a weaker signal than BlackMagic doing it on its own as a forward investment.
leshenka 2 days ago [-]
But they refer to it in a tweet that is linked from the article
which seems to be more in line what the article talks about
wahnfrieden 2 days ago [-]
That's the wrong page, wrong product
2 days ago [-]
capnrefsmmat 2 days ago [-]
That's the page for their normal, non-3D, non-VR cinema camera.
TheAceOfHearts 2 days ago [-]
Is anyone making movies specifically for the Vision Pro? Apple could certainly afford to sponsor a few films to bolster their catalogue. Although for a creative the tiny potential audience makes it seem very unappealing.
Then again... Maybe if AVP owners represent an audience that you'd like to target it wouldn't be a bad decision. Everyone that owns one will probably be starved for special content and I'd imagine they'd be willing to buy something specifically made for their niche platform.
tlyleung 2 days ago [-]
Apple has commissioned Submerged, the first scripted short film captured in Apple Immersive Video
I'd argue that (similarly to 3D captured footage) you can just record both formats in the same time so you can still target the big audience. Wouldn't wonder if we're going to see few Apple TV exclusives which are in "normal" 4K and also offer Immersive View for Vision Pro owners.
threeseed 2 days ago [-]
Apple looks to be getting out of the feature movie business in general and focusing on TV where it is seeing a lot more success.
But based on the Vision Pro demo I would expect to see them prioritise non-fiction content e.g. Planet Earth style movies, concerts, athlete profiles etc.
XzAeRosho 2 days ago [-]
I think the answer it's in the Blackmagic website:
>the world’s first advanced cinema camera designed to shoot for Apple Immersive Video
I think they are tapping early into an emerging "new" video format.
klabb3 2 days ago [-]
3D TV back at it again.
kiernan 1 days ago [-]
Which formats or types of devices would give you the best ability to attempt to future-proof the capture of (relatively low short-term value) home videos of random family moments?
freedomben 2 days ago [-]
Cool! Though I sincerely hope it's not using some Apple proprietary format that won't work with non-Apple devices.
strogonoff 2 days ago [-]
Given Blackmagic is a brand well-known for using their own proprietary format, for actually selling cameras boasting CinemaDNG support that they after the fact quietly disable in favour of BRAW, they are hardly a good choice for someone who cares about interoperability and open standards.
tecleandor 2 days ago [-]
What I see from the PR [0] is that it's using a new BRAW version ('The new Blackmagic RAW Immersive file format...)'. So it's as open as BRAW, that is, not much. But at least (I guess/hope...) you should be able to export each "eye" separately in a different format.
Converting to the "Apple Vision Pro" format is the last step on the pipeline, after editing.
CinemaDNG is an open standard. I am using a camera with CinemaDNG support. It came out around the time BM did the bait-and-switch. Another model came out a couple years later, also with CinemaDNG support. It shows that BM is using RED as an excuse to lock people in.
vanchor3 2 days ago [-]
RED has a patent on compressed RAW. Apple tried to invalidate it but failed, so anyone who wants to use the concept of compressed RAW has to license it from RED.
strogonoff 2 days ago [-]
Raw is not an acronym.
CinemaDNG is not a compressed format. It is a directory with DNG files. DNG is an open raw photo format. Both DNG and CinemaDNG predate REDCODE.
My camera records 4K 12-bit CinemaDNG with no compression and is in the same price segment.
If BM, given options they had (which also include things like “pay RED” or “recall products”), chose to silently remove the support for CinemaDNG in cameras that they sold advertising CinemaDNG support, I doubt blaming RED is anything but a PR tactic.
tom1337 2 days ago [-]
Unfortunately the Immersive Video seems to be a proprietary format. Also if I understood correctly you can't even edit this format right now cause DaVinci Resolve is missing an update for that...
I've seen people edit 180 videos in Resolve for quite some time. I don't find any details on the various formats it can output, but surely at least one of them will be editable if you have the camera today.
The article you linked mentions it uses BRAW which is indeed supported in Resolve today already.
gardaani 2 days ago [-]
Which open format can handle this kind of video? The Cineform video codec can store stereo video, but I don't know if it would be suitable for this.
fastball 2 days ago [-]
Does that matter? If it is a lossless format, you can always convert it to another one after capture.
ada1981 2 days ago [-]
The coolest part about AVP is being able to look around in an immersive environment; this seems like it’s only going to give you 3D but not immersive correct?
You’ll turn your head and the image will just stay fixed in 3D in front of you?
2 days ago [-]
marxisttemp 2 days ago [-]
No, this is for 180VR immersive video. There are already plenty of stereoscopic, non-immersive cameras.
sbochins 1 days ago [-]
Seems like a strange thing to be building around. Lots of money has gotten into VR and it has been around for a while now. It has never gotten out of the geek niche and likely won’t. It’s the only way I play games nowadays and wish it would gain wider traction. But, I’m very pessimistic about normies buying these headsets and watching these VR videos.
omoikane 2 days ago [-]
Will this one have a global shutter or a rolling shutter? The tech specs doesn't seem to say either way.
knifie_spoonie 1 days ago [-]
Definitely a rolling shutter. I think no word on the readout speed yet, but I've seen 12ms quoted for the 12K LF sensor.
jcarrano 2 days ago [-]
If the spacing between the lenses is equal to average human eyes, then that thing is huge!
kridsdale1 2 days ago [-]
In the behind the scenes video for Apple’s “Submerged” film, the camera looks about the size of carry on luggage.
throwaway48476 2 days ago [-]
How many vision pros did they sell and how many people are still using them?
tatrajim 2 days ago [-]
Perhaps around 400K sold? Production to date is said to be limited by Sony. The AVP is very much alive, especially with the recent system software update allowing ultrawide viewing of mac screens. See the reddit group /r/visionpro for lively discussion of the latest developments.
martin_a 2 days ago [-]
I thought that product was discontinued completely?!? I think new models were said to take at least until early 2026, not sure I'd invest in this without proper playback devices on the market...
tatrajim 2 days ago [-]
No, it's still rolling out globally, and has a growing group of owners, particularly using AVP for productivity applications after the recent system software update allowing ultrawide screen sharing of mac screens. See /r/visionpro on reddit for developer chatter and the latest developments.
deadbabe 1 days ago [-]
Maybe this is a dumb question but why can’t you just record video with two iPhones evenly spaced with some kind of jig and synchronized the video output to get something usable for a 3D video?
But of course the quality is probably a lot lower than with this camera
dylan604 2 days ago [-]
"There is an included 8TB Blackmagic Media Module that is able to store approximately two hours of 8K stereoscopic video recorded in Blackmagic RAW, and Cloud Store is supported for fast media uploads and synchronization."
Um, okay, what is supported and what is achievable are two entirely different things. Even with the fattest of pipes, uploading media content to the cloud is only considered fast if you're a turtle or a snail. Even with 12Gbps connection it takes 10-12 minutes to transfer 250GB files.
VanTheBrand 2 days ago [-]
Cloudstore is actually a on-set NAS product. So it grabs the footage as you are shooting it locally for on-set network playback and syncs to a remote cloud in the background.
Great name actually. Stores it on the way to the cloud, then stores it in the cloud.
chakintosh 2 days ago [-]
Now you can watch MKBHD getting caught speeding in 3D while reviewing this camera
backspace_ 2 days ago [-]
Careful, people here might look down on that kind of joke!
oflannabhra 2 days ago [-]
I'm guessing there is a lot of negativity towards the Vision Pro here, lots of it deserved. However, the immersive video aspect is the one thing Vision Pro delivers that I think is truly unique and new. I'm not sure that is enough to support a $3500 hardware product, but I encourage anyone to try the demo and utilize the immersive video. It was an otherworldly experience for me, and news like this is very exciting as it will allow more content to be available.
2 days ago [-]
sigmoid10 2 days ago [-]
"Immersive video" is literally just high-resolution, wide-fov, 3d passthrough videos. As usual, Apple is selling a common feature of e.g. the Quest 3 under a different name and for a much higher price. You can get the same experience without having to shell out several grand.
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
Your comment is incorrect in many ways. Based on your comment, I don’t believe you’ve actually tried it?
Firstly, it is not passthrough video.
Secondly, you cannot currently have the same experience on the quest. You can have lower quality versions of it, but immersive video is 8k per eye at 90fps.
There has literally never been cameras available to consumers to capture that till this specific camera. Unless you did professional custom camera rigs.
As someone who owns both a Quest and a Vision Pro, and has worked in stereo for a large portion of my career, the two experiences are not remotely comparable when it comes to video today. The quest excels in other areas, but this is one where Meta have very weak coverage on.
oflannabhra 2 days ago [-]
Yes, I have tried both and AVP is a leap ahead.
paxys 2 days ago [-]
What filmmaker is going to put in all this effort and spend $30K to shoot videos for a single platform that no one uses? At the very least they need to ditch the proprietary format and support Quest and other headsets.
dialup_sounds 2 days ago [-]
Filmmakers have already been using it to produce the existing immersive video content, so that's kind of a silly question. But it works for VR180, too, if that's your cup o tea.
Moreover, it's not really a proprietary format and you can already play them officially on Quest.
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
You are mistaken in your last point. The Quest doesn’t play the Apple Immersive video formats, only their MV-HEVC stereo format.
Nobody has been able to extract Apples immersive videos yet and I’m not convinced the Quest has the decoding power for it.
You're right. I was thinking of spatial video on the Quest. Immersive video is different, but I guess my point is that it's not mystery meat either. The barrier is as you said the performance required to push the pixels, not the format per se.
hu3 2 days ago [-]
So title is misleading. It shoots videos for other platforms as well.
diggan 2 days ago [-]
I dunno, Blackmagic clearly collaborates with Apple, and probably would have made this camera regardless of Apple Vision Pro or not, but once the two marketing departments came together, they decide to launch it with Apple Vision Pro filming in mind.
That's not to say it cannot be used for other things. Blackmagic frequently market all their cameras for prosumer/professional film-making, but you can use the cameras for so much more than just recording films, although the marketing is geared towards film-markers. Doesn't make it misleading.
dialup_sounds 2 days ago [-]
They're just echoing Black Magic's own pitch that it's "designed for" Apple's platform and format, and that's evidently true given the specs and features. I don't think of that as misleading.
MobiusHorizons 2 days ago [-]
My take is "designed for Immersive Video" in the sense that Apple's format has very high specifications, and most other HMDs do not demand 8k per eye or 90fps. This camera meets the minimum specification for the Immersive Video format, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't also be able to render the output to other formats.
lm28469 2 days ago [-]
$30k is not particularly expensive for a cinema camera
Andrex 2 days ago [-]
And the tech would be enough to make a 2012-era James Cameron drool.
Sometimes tech is amazing.
dylan604 2 days ago [-]
It is rather expensive for BMD though. It's not like this is the full set of panels for Resolve with that price tag.
Is it though? Two URSA Cine would run about the same cost, and this camera effectively are two URSA Cines put into one.
dylan604 2 days ago [-]
Yes. Because it's twice the cost of the URSA Cine.
The equivalent to the Cine from other makers starts at the $30k and goes up depending on what options you want. Except, at those prices, you're only getting 4K. Red, Arri, Sony, etc won't even get out of bed for anything less than $30k.
That's just BMD's DNA to give the customer so much bang for their buck. Every thing they offer is so much lower MSRPs than competitors. I remember when they first released Resolve for Mac, for free after BMD acquired DaVinci. Of course it couldn't do much without a $20k MacPro build, but the software was free. This was running right next to the $50k Resolve Linux build, so naturally it was jaw dropping.
ryandamm 2 days ago [-]
Red has two cameras that cost less than $10k.
KeplerBoy 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, the $30k is a drop in the bucket of the many millions you need for a modern production. The real cost will be the editing to make sure it's actually a good experience.
echoangle 2 days ago [-]
Don’t filmmakers rent cameras for a few days/weeks?
smitelli 2 days ago [-]
Yes, and in some cases you can casually chat up the people at the rental house and find out what other (potentially high profile) productions the equipment was used on.
Of the 13 3D movies released this year only four are native 3D, and those are all fully CGI animation, so none of them used 3D cameras. Avatar 2 (2022) was the last movie to use 3D cameras for live action shots and Avatar 3 is the only upcoming movie known to be using them. It's beyond niche at this point unless your name is James Cameron.
rpmisms 2 days ago [-]
Well of course, movies are composited so heavily these days that you can simply toss another step in the pipeline and have a 3d conversion. It's amazingly easy now.
fidotron 2 days ago [-]
Felix and Paul studios built their own “cameras” for stereoscopic 3D back before even the Oculus dev kits were widely available. There is an ecosystem of similar studios that did this, and that is where the better stuff on the Meta Quests comes from.
If you pay attention in their work you can see how they try to hide the hard drive array that was required, and sometimes also the accountant holding on to it so that it doesn’t get swept away.
dylan604 2 days ago [-]
I was at a studio in that ecosystem you describe. In the early days of live action VR, we were building our own rigs. We experimented with different camera bodies, lenses, and configurations. Camera configurations changed when the software could create 3D by using data from all of the cameras. It was a lot of fun just from raw R&D and having someone paying to rent all of the various camera gear to essentially play and create things. At least until the fad was recognized for what it was, and the funding dried up
mycall 2 days ago [-]
Are you implying the Vison Pro ecosystem is dead and Apple will abandon it? Sometimes the supporting hardware takes time to manifest itself.
n144q 2 days ago [-]
takes time -- how long are we talking about here?
Vision Pro has been released for near a year now. I don't think it got the traction that's anywhere close to the hype when it was first announced. Not even among VR enthusiasts, let alone the mass consumer market.
There is an Apple Store near where I live. When I walk by it, 9 out of 10 times there is nobody around the Vision Pro booth, when many people are playing with iPhones and iPads.
GeekyBear 2 days ago [-]
> Vision Pro has been released for near a year now. I don't think it got the traction that's anywhere close to the hype when it was first announced.
In the first year, they were constrained by the number of displays Sony could produce.
> Sony, the supplier of Vision Pro's ultra high resolution OLED microdisplays, can't manufacture more than 900,000 displays per year. Apple needs two displays per headset, so this bottleneck would impose severe limitations on how many Vision Pros can be produced.
As far as I've seen, their sales were in line with the number of units they could be expected to build, at least until Sony is able to ramp up production.
> 2024 Apple Vision Pro Shipments Estimated Between 500–600 Thousand Units, Micro OLED Key to Cost and Volume
The Vision Pro also doesn't exist in a vacuum - Meta have spent much longer trying to make this work, with hardware that's literally an order of magnitude more affordable, and are still struggling to find any mainstream adoption.
atrus 2 days ago [-]
Honestly, I'd say that the vision pro is going to get less traction with VR enthusiasts because it's not that much better in some respects, and much worse in many others. The vision pro is much more suited to people who haven't used any VR before.
wrboyce 2 days ago [-]
Have you used an AVP? I am surprised at your claims.
My friend has one and I’ve got a Quest 2 and I was absolutely blown away by the AVP, significantly better VR experience in my opinion.
numpad0 2 days ago [-]
Then why haven't you switched - I mean, how would you replace your existing VR use cases with Vision Pro as an upgrade, not mere same ballpark alternative with workarounds, set aside its upfront price?
parasubvert 2 days ago [-]
Cost aside, the main reason to keep using a Quest 3 or PSVR2 are controller support and PCVR support. And exclusive games.
Vision Pro supporting PSVR2 controllers will help a lot.
The final piece is getting something like ALVR or Virtual Desktop to support PCVR without requiring fiddling.
wrboyce 2 days ago [-]
Bit of a weird “gotcha” this to be honest, but I don’t use my Quest all that often and the AVP is too expensive for my taste.
theshackleford 1 days ago [-]
The AVP can’t meet most of what I use VR for, and is incredibly expensive in my country to boot, so by default the Q3 wins.
The Q2 has horrible lenses that induce a terrible experience. I had mine for all of a week before I sold it and decided to wait another gen. The Q3 with better lenses is a significantly better product than Q2.
wrboyce 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, the same friend has a Q3 too which I tried after the AVP and it was noticeably better than my Q2 (and pound for pound, held its own well against the AVP).
I’ve not had any issues with my Q2 though, I can play for quite extended amounts of time and it tends to be my arms and legs that stop me playing!
parasubvert 2 days ago [-]
This isn't true.
It's more that the Vision Pro deliberately prioritized certain things that Meta or Vive or Valve or Sony have not: geometrically stable pass through, wide library of popular 3D movies via AppleTV and Disney+, high resolution immersive environments, seamless keyboard/mouse/trackpad migration between PC and native apps, strong iOS/iPadOS ecosystem integration, high fps / low latency wireless ultra-wide virtual displays for the Mac, etc.
In some ways it focuses on what the Oculus Go was trying to do but was underpowered to really do it. It's meant to replace other iOS devices for general productivity and entertainment, and to complement a Mac.
It's not focused on VR gaming though it can do that.
I have a Oculus Rift dev kit, Ovulus Go, Quest , Quest 2, Valve Index, PSVR2. The AVP is much better of an experience on almost every level but three: too much motion blur when moving your head (this isn't bad when watching high fps video), lack of controller support, not so great hand tracking (which the Quest had to do well due to lack of eye tracking). The controller support should be fixed with the Sony PSVR2 partnership. Motion blur and hand tracking I suspect will be software fixed as they evolve to prioritize active fitness with the AVP.
rowanG077 2 days ago [-]
The vision pro has not been released. All you can buy is a dev kit.
2 days ago [-]
jl6 2 days ago [-]
At the current price point, the AVP is destined to achieve a market position similar to LaserDisc.
jsheard 2 days ago [-]
It's obviously going to get cheaper, but rumor is the second generation will only get the price down to about $2000 which is still well above the "lol nope" threshold for most people. Third times the charm?
“VR will become something everyone wants before it becomes something everyone can afford” Palmer Luckey
People that bought Vision Pro at $3,500 they are not using it all that much. A lower price will just result in more headsets gathering dust.
VR has no product-market fit except for a couple of game niches. Far from the “next computing platform” that justified investment of tens of billions of dollars a year.
Headsets and platforms need fundamental rethinking before optimizing for price.
parasubvert 2 days ago [-]
This is false.
People that bought Vision Pro are often using it for multiple hours a day. I am sure some collect dust, but many are heavily used.
The Meta Quest is outselling the Xbox series. VR clearly has product market fit, but it doesn't yet have iPhone or iPad levels of market fit.
dmarcos 1 days ago [-]
You have data to back up your claim that “Vision Pro owners are using it often multiple hours a day? That’s a shrinking tiny fraction of AVP buyers based on my experience. I’ve been in the industry for a decade. I have an AVP, know many other owners and devs with published apps. I’m myself the dev of moonrider: most popular WebXR application so see the industry numbers.
Also sales /= usage and retention. Engagement is what you need to grow a platform.
Your numbers about XBox sales might be true for a brief period of time between Quest2 and Quest3 releases. Still what matters is engagement and retention.
As mentioned only product-market (albeit niche) fit for VR has been some games subgenres. Can you point to any other applications with significant numbers?
parasubvert 1 days ago [-]
> You have data to back up your claim that “Vision Pro owners are using it often multiple hours a day? That’s a shrinking tiny fraction of AVP buyers based on my experience. I’ve been in the industry for a decade. I have an AVP, know many other owners and devs with published apps. I’m myself the dev of moonrider: most popular WebXR application so see the industry numbers.
I have no more data than you do when you say a "shrinking tiny fraction" of AVP buyers. I've been in the industry for 30 years. We both have our anecdata.
dmarcos 24 hours ago [-]
Do you currently have any published content on any platform? Burden of proof is on the one making a claim. One of the signs of product-market fit is word of mouth organic growth. I’m a dev with published content and know a plethora of other devs. None seeing significant growth or improved retention. If you’re right the evidence is really hidden. Any forum or community where I can talk to the users that are using AVP a ton?
kridsdale1 2 days ago [-]
And maybe it just… won’t. We shouldn’t use that as the stick.
Sometimes it’s ok to make Lamborghini and it’s not a failure to say it has less owners than the Corolla.
dmarcos 1 days ago [-]
Making a niche product is fine but that’s not the “next computing platform” that justifies $16B/year investment by Meta alone.
jl6 2 days ago [-]
Hopefully, but I don't think it's obvious. We don't seem to be currently in an era of plummeting hardware prices.
MetaWhirledPeas 2 days ago [-]
You also have the Meta Quest 3 trucking along. That one is desperate for higher-quality 3D videos.
rchaud 2 days ago [-]
Most of the world is facing affordability problems. A $3500 helmet is not top of mind for anyone. Apple isn't going throw money at this for much longer I feel. Immersive videos are not a selling point when considering the tradeoffs of using a headset.
sneak 2 days ago [-]
I feel like people forget that hardware takes 3-4 years to bring to market.
This is so that people can begin making content for the Apple AR headset that comes out 3 years from now, not the $3500 devkit.
philmcc 2 days ago [-]
Thank you for having one of the few reasonable takes on the Vision Pro.
People also forget how bleak the iPad app market was for the first year or so. They also forget that VR has existed for the quest for the better part of 12 years and there are .... 4? 5? very good apps.
Even now there's nothing -incredibly- compelling for the Quest. I'm not a hater, I've owned 5 of them starting at DK1.
rchaud 2 days ago [-]
The iPad cost 14% of what AVP does, so comparisons to it are largely meaningless. iPads took off because a huge population of grandparents and kids had a use case
for it....Netflix, Youtube and Newspapers on a device that's less complicated and cheaper than a full computer.
No such equivalent exists for AVP, it's a new type of device for pretty much everybody.
rchaud 2 days ago [-]
If it was a dev kit, they could have simply kept it under wraps and provided beta access to gauge developer interest, instead of the usual overwrought keynote.
Who builds half a million units of a dev kit?
Some stuff you can just tell is going to flop. This is one of them. Apple still doesn't get that people dont want to put on highly conspicuous headsets to watch a movie or play a game, they're fine using a phone or tablet for that.
Zuckerberg still
pretends like he didnt spend 2 years and untold billions trying to will Horizon Worlds into relevance. Similarly, nobody talks about immersive video on AVP as some kind of gamechanger, not even the usual Apple consumer strategy whisperers like Daring Fireball.
parasubvert 2 days ago [-]
Almost everyone that has experienced AVP immersive video has absolutely described it as a game changer.
rchaud 1 days ago [-]
And yet it sits unsold on store shelves. A "gamechanger" in Apple-ese means tens of millions of units shifted. Apple is in the business of selling Big Macs, not wagyu steaks.
Apple is not Sony, who were happy to keep investing in their ecosystem even if people didn't buy it (Betamax, MiniDisc, GPS addon for the PSP).
parasubvert 1 days ago [-]
"And yet it sits unsold on store shelves. "
Citation needed. The AVP is priced for supply constraints.
'A "gamechanger" in Apple-ese means tens of millions of units shifted'
Not at all. That may be an external party's definition of success. It is not Apple's.
"Apple is in the business of selling Big Macs, not wagyu steaks."
I can't even begin to describe how wrong this statement is, even based on a cursory glance of their current product line.
sneak 2 days ago [-]
No, there’s no way to keep a devkit like that under wraps.
This is a 5-10 year strategy, not a 1-2 year one.
rchaud 2 days ago [-]
We're several years into that process already then. Apple researched this space for years and their first released product was a giant flop with no developer interest. Apple famously doesn't release anything until they "get it right". So the sound of crickets after an Apple event is already a warning sign.
The closer you get to that 5-10 years, the more these types of capital intensive projects start looking non-viable (think Apple EV) compared to cash cows like the App Store and iCloud.
parasubvert 2 days ago [-]
How is the AVP a giant flop? They're largely supply constrained by Sony. The plan was to sell a few hundred thousand units. Which they have.
sroussey 2 days ago [-]
The original Mac was $17000 in today’s dollars and people said the same thing.
knifie_spoonie 1 days ago [-]
Did you accidentally type an extra 1 there? The original Macintosh launched at $2.5K which is a bit over $7K in today's dollars.
sroussey 36 minutes ago [-]
Accidental 1 in front. I really should type comments in my phone…
rchaud 1 days ago [-]
The original Mac had the benefit of being a computer, a pre-existing product category that people were familiar with, and already purchasing in growing numbers.
almostgotcaught 2 days ago [-]
> What filmmaker is going to put in all this effort and spend $30K to shoot videos
Pornographers
makestuff 2 days ago [-]
Yeah there needs to be a common format for all of the headsets to adopt or at least apple needs to provide an easy way to convert into their format (maybe they already do in final cut pro).
IMO vision pro is like the first iPhone/iPad and in a few years if they keep refining it there will be a larger adoption.
I think the main thing is that it should support full mac os apps without tethering to an external macbook/mac mini. They need to move the compute out of the headset itself and into the battery module. Apple probably would never do this, but imagine if you bought a mac mini sized compute module that could go on an external display or connect to a vision pro device. If the compute was separate the headset would be significantly lighter and more comfortable.
2 days ago [-]
backspace_ 2 days ago [-]
MKBHD will probably race over to buy or cover that piece of equipment. Hopefully no tickets for speeding will occur.
2 days ago [-]
2 days ago [-]
ulfw 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
makeitdouble 2 days ago [-]
It's just a camera. Nothing stops filmmakers to publish the results for any VR platforms they want.
pythonaut_16 2 days ago [-]
Thank you for your insightful comment. You’ve clearly thought about this more than the business who decided to make the camera, and your logic is impeccable.
pythonaut_16 2 days ago [-]
For what it's worth my criticism was aimed at the lack of substance in the parent reply rather than the skepticism around the product.
Rendered at 20:42:46 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
--
² the Pimax has around 159° horizontal FoV.
If it records "naively" where the vertical pixel maps to the angle relative to the horizon, then you get the least amount of detail around the "equator", and you get the most at the "poles" above and below you. Which is not only totally imbalanced, but imbalanced in the worst possible way!
Back in 2017 Google introduced a new format that YouTube VR uses:
https://blog.google/products/google-ar-vr/bringing-pixels-fr...
It's called an Equi-Angular Cubemap, so each pixel represents the same amount of area in a VR projection.
Unfortunately, outside of YouTube it still hasn't really taken off as far as I know, although some VR video players support it.
I wonder if Blackmagic records in it? Or more generally, in what shape does the 180° image fall on the rectangular sensor -- and so how does actual resolution vary across the VR projection?
https://blog.mikeswanson.com/apples-mysterious-fisheye-proje...
Interesting that it's such a strange transformation, even the author of that article hasn't been able to decipher it exactly. The Google EAC seems so straightforward and "neutral", I'm surprised Apple created their own format (unless Google's format requires licensing, but I don't think it does).
There's nothing surprising here, it's been Apple's style for the entire time I've been working in tech - 15 years or so - to create formats that they control and preferably which only work on Apple devices. It's a big part of why their walled garden is so strong.
> Additionally, the format is undocumented, they haven’t responded to an open question on the Apple Discussion Forums asking for more detail, and they didn’t cover it in their WWDC23 sessions
Unfortunately, this is completely normal behavior from Apple and I've run up against it far too many times.
When finally forced, by regulation or industry pressure, to answer questions, open their format up, or support other open formats, they pay lip service and drag their heels in every way possible.
Assuming no intentional bias, it's personally hard for me to imagine how anyone could be in the industry for that long and not understand Apple's contributions to formats and other standards we take for granted.
* Apple was the first major adopter and popularizer of now-de-facto standards like 3.5" floppy drives, USB, Wi-Fi, and DisplayPort, and additionally created (and gave away) DisplayPort Mini
* Apple co-developed and popularized IEEE 1394 (FireWire), USB-C, Thunderbolt, and USB 4
* Apple created the ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF), which is the basis for MPEG-4 and many other time-based and image file formats
* Apple popularized today's most popular compressed media formats, and will do the same for AV1 (with hardware decode in M3 and newer Macs today, and Apple TV soon)
* Apple dropped a proprietary OS for the BSD-based OS used across their product line, from wearables, to mobile, to HMDs, to laptops/PCs
* Apple used its open source WebKit to advance modern web standards, and are one of the few defenders against Google's near-total hegemony of web technologies
* Apple's contributions to and investments in open-source technologies like Clang/LLVM and Swift have helped all developers directly and indirectly
Using an as-yet-undocumented projection format to argue the opposite isn't super-persuasive, since Apple eats their own dog food (sometimes for years) before promoting it to an open, generalized industry standard (e.g. "QuickTime Movie" container format).
It takes someone with a good deal of integrity to display a nuanced view of something, weighing both the good and bad.
Such observations aren't typically wanted in forums. Forums favour a "hive mind" mentality, because that's easy and doesn't require thought. Simply put <x> into the good or bad box. If we play the same game of distilling HN into a singular entity, then we already know what it thinks about Apple.
As for Apple's actions I don't think it deserves the polarised views that we see on HN. I've been around long enough to see how companies come in and out of favour and often the meddling efforts by competitors to sway such public opinion. Some people are just really distracted by team fandom and cheerleading, instead of looking at the more important question "what does <x> do for or against me personally?"
If they do build something on their own, they have a reason. Most often technical. E.g. lightning is strictly better than any alternative that was available when they were introducing it (and that it didn't become the USB-C form factor is partially due to them wanting high licensing revenue). And really... you don't get why they created their own CPUs? Which hands down beat anything else out there on perf/watt and allow their systems to have incredible battery runtime on really tiny batteries?
In other words, there could be some Apple in literally every device on the planet, but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason. That is the part I don't understand. It seems like such a short-sighted play.
But that's the job of a company...
> but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason.
Because they are a consumer company. They depend on a strong asymmetry between their customers and them. It would be really hard for any other company to rely on Apple as a supplier. Afaik the only relationship that exists in that way are company phones, but those are not handled by Apple directly, but rather through carriers. Apple simply doesn't have any experience in being a supplier (and probably also large aversions to becoming one from their own treatment of their supply chain).
Linus Torvald's repeatedly says something very insightful about "enterprise grade hardware", he describes it as "over-priced crap that doesn't work". Which is correct in the sense of "it doesn't comply to standards and only works in one specific combination". But that's literally where the value of "enterprise" comes from. There is someone that provides an in-depth description of a single use case and the appropriate solution and sells that. It isn't supposed to work in many scenarios. It's supposed to work in one. But for that one you have to guarantee a certain quality level and if you fail that you will have to pay for that. That is simply not how Apple operates. They are the big dog. Always. That's why they broke up with Nvidia
But my point was: They didn't introduce any format for the fun of it. There always was a reason. Nearly always a technical one. Sometimes "only" a business one (which one could argue that qualifies for "for the hack of it")
By that logic, Google isn't a company despite setting industry standards.
Variants of this principle is seen everywhere throughout their systems and architectural designs, thankfully backfiring often enough that Apple isn't taking over PC any time soon.
They manage pricing to maximize industry profit share, not marketshare.
Even in technical threads were people are literally struggling to complete work because of Apple's attitude (my experience here mostly relates to support for 3d browser apis over the last decade) there's still a largely negative response to any perceived Apple criticism.
I'm actually pleasantly surprised that my comment here is no longer downvoted. I guess HN folks are more savvy than typical web devs.
To be honest I'm not sure I'm even criticizing Apple. I don't like it, for sure, and it makes my life harder, but it's clearly a sound business strategy that has served them well.
A pixel, is not always a pixel. There's more to the story.
clowns
Here is that thread [0], with mostly professional takes. One interesting take-away:
> I’ve pre-ordered one. Vision Pro sales will be around 1/2M at the one year mark, and there’s a total of about 3 hours of immersive content available on the headset across every app right now.
> That’s a once in a lifetime content opportunity.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/cinematography/comments/1hhvwfv/bla...
If you ask me, the Vision Pro’s sales up to this point justify discontinuation. I think that Apple is only making investments in Vision Pro because they don’t really have another long play for “the next great device form factor,” and because Meta hasn’t thrown in the towel yet Apple presumably refuses to sit back while Meta dominates marketshare for a specific type of app platform.
I think that Apple and everyone else is very aware that VR/AR is more likely than not be close to the maximum user base. Meta’s been doing everything it can to make the platform stay within impulse buy territory because they know it’s not really a purchase that potential customers are going to seriously believe that they’ll spend hours and hours every day using like a traditional game console or PC graphics card. Meta has to convince you to buy a device that they must certainly know from their own telemetry that users only interact with for a handful of hours every week.
The only reason Apple is sticking with it is that it’s a long term play and they have unlimited money. Or maybe because they refuse to give up until Meta gives up. They can’t let Meta own a computing platform out of pure business ego.
What he might be thinking is that there are 400k to 500k people who have already spent $3500 on a device which currently has no content. If he got 10% of them to "spend" $2 on his short immersive video experience, that would cover the cost of the camera + shoot + profit, in his first successful attempt.
How much are you spending on marketing to reach those users?
However, the reason that I put "spend" in scare quotes was that it might be the case the these indie immersive content creators get their content subsided, or bought outright, by either Apple or some content app maker.
source: 100% supposition by someone who has never owned a VR headset.
As it is right now it feels like those early days of film, which seem incredibly awkward because they didn't know how to use it to tell a story. But they were clearly casting about for something they knew was there. It just took a while to find.
Market size of high end VR hardware/content does have a chicken and egg problem, regardless.
It seems like that you could have made the conclusion that it should be discontinued before it went on the market if "poor sales" justifies that for this device.
Doubly crushing for Apple given it sold worse than their low expectations, they shut the production manufacturing and cut sales expectations from 800k to 400k.
With the Vision Pro, that kind of enthusiasm just isn't there. If it was going to be the next big thing, there would be a lot of hype for it even though its rough around the edges. The general public isn't rejecting the Vision Pro because it costs too much and has no apps, they're rejecting it because wearing a computer on their face isn't something they're interested in.
I don't know who you know, but I'd be very surprised if most of them have either of those..
All up at least 10 current active VR users. Usage scale ranges from “an experience 3-4 times a year” to “years of daily active usage.”
Another mate joined just recently who is not really into gaming, but got a quest because he actually wanted a big tv/projector but it’s not feasible living in shared housing. I actually told him not to, I just didn’t think he would enjoy it, and despite enjoying jt myself, I actually don’t promote it much to people I consider “normies”because I know it’s niche and I don’t think it really is for most people, but interestingly he has been really happy with it entirely for movies.
The technology might need another decade (or two), but I think it’s very shortsighted to think VR/AR is close to its maximum user base.
That said I also don’t think we’re are a time-local maxima of users either.
In the first case you have a type of product that is evidently very useful but isn't ready for the general public. In the second case, you have a product that early adopters can't find a routine use for.
What are you basing this on though? From all accounts they’re pretty close to selling the number of units they could manufacture.
These are sales that are on par with the Nintendo Virtual Boy.
And if they can’t manufacture any more than that, they have an even bigger problem.
It’s now been a year and a half since the first model was announced and there is no sign of a second model to move the product into a more mass appeal device.
We saw critical follow-ups like the iPhone 3G and Apple Watch Series 1/2 come out as quick releases that were in retrospect very important to establishing a practical device that a regular person might consider buying. I think the fact that we haven’t seen one yet is a huge problem.
If Apple couldn’t make another leap in a calendar year it’s clear that they will never catch up to Meta. Meta is out there selling a gazillion Quest 3S bundles to your local Costco impulse buyer.
The million sales mark was from one single report by Kuo. Kuo himself previously said they were limited to ~900K display units which is ~450K devices and other analysts have said the same.
There is no other source saying 1M was the target that I know of that doesn’t trace back to Kuo. If they are at ~500K units then they’ve exceeded the initial sales target that Kuo himself laid out.
For your second point about a follow up, you’re comparing product announcement to product launches. The product itself only launched 10months ago. You’re expecting a second iteration within 10 months, of an entirely new product class for them ? Meanwhile other more popular Apple products often go longer between releases. Even Meta are around two years between products within a device class.
Your last point of comparing to a meta quest is misplaced too. They’re different classes of the same device category. There’s no way Apple are expecting to compete with a device a tenth of its price for total sales.
You're right that the Meta Quest is a different class of the same device category. But that's the problem, isn't it? Apple made a device that is in a different class of the same device category, really far away in a price point where just aren't any customers.
That's why Apple actually needed an unusually fast follow-up device, because the first product was too close to being an overpriced barely-working tech demo, similar to the original iPhone and Apple Watch.
I think it is quite safe for us to all assume that Apple isn't releasing a Vision Pro follow-up in the next couple of months. The iPhone 3G dropped the price and outclassed the original iPhone owners so much that Steve Jobs had to write an apology letter. The Apple Watch released a new product that resolved all the gripes from the first one in 12 months. I just think as a business strategy that Apple is missing the mark here with the Vision Pro.
To the rest of your point, I’m sure Apple is aware that there aren’t a lot of customers at the 3500 dollar mark. They’ve said as much in interviews, but you’d have to attribute a lot of hubris to them to think they thought they’d steal market share from the Quest line.
Again, all reports say they can’t even manufacture enough right now to be more than a blip on the sales chart.
Perhaps your first paragraph bellies your confusion because you claim it’s just a consumption device, and partly that’s because apples marketing focuses on it, because it’s the easiest thing to communicate.
The 3500 price tag is exactly the starting price point of other high end XR headsets that are used in many non-consumption areas. I say starting, because they go up considerably from there (see the Varjo XR prices). That’s the space where it’s not consumption, but work. It’s the same way that a Mac Pro can be used to view Netflix the same way a MacBook Air can, and they have similar capabilities on paper but widely different markets to target.
From all accounts of working with those industries, Apple has eaten that market share. Varjo has stopped being the headset of choice for most of those cases, to the point that even NVIDIA (who were a huge Varjo customer) are doing Vision Pro courses at siggraph and made it the headset they feature for professional work ( https://resources.nvidia.com/en-us-awe-2024/omniverse-apple-... )
Basically, don’t take Apple’s consumer facing marketing as their entire sales pitch. They have completely separate paths for businesses.
None of this is to say that there aren’t areas that Apple has missed on with the headset. There clearly are several, but I don’t think sales strategy is actually one of them. Marketing is perhaps an issue though.
Industrial and medical use, creative platforms etc, Literally the only other headsets I can use for the lines of work I’m involved with are 4x the price of the Vision Pro (the Varjo XRs), yet by your metric wouldn’t be worthwhile.
And this is the problem with people who don’t consider usecases beyond their own.
But the AVP cannot be used for any of these use cases, and as far as I know is not in serious use for professionals in such industries at scale, so why are you acting as if I was blind to the real reason people buy it? None of those are reasons people would buy it today.
Also, you seem to not be aware that the Quest series actually have a professional / industrial business sales setup and do actually make large volumes of sales for business use cases, unlike AVP (https://forwork.meta.com/quest/business-subscription/)
The reason I think you’re not counting those is because you claim equivalency of capability despite cost difference, but there’s clear areas that I know of where a Quest would not cut it.
Your link to metas business use has no relation to my argument. I’m not saying the quest can’t be used for business cases, because I myself have set up professional environments around it. But that’s why I’m confident in saying the Vision Pro allows for a level of fidelity that the Quest cannot provide for today.
Excuse me for being very skeptical.
I don't see a whole lot of Apple marketing material talking about the Vision Pro as a professional device. They have a grand total of one press release that highlights different uses for business. There's no landing page that says "contact sales" or anything like that you'd see for an enterprisey specialized solution.
In my mind the more plausible explanation is that Apple misjudged the pricing strategy for the Vision Pro, a device that it considers to be primarily a consumer content device.
If the Vision Pro was a $1000 product they would have potentially had a hit. But I think what's going to happen is that Apple is going to have a product like that in 2026 and when it comes out the response is going to be quite muted.
Also in terms of press releases, a quick google search shows these two
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/04/apple-vision-pro-brin...
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-vision-pro-unlo...
Just because Apples consumer marketing pages don’t target enterprise, doesn’t mean they don’t target enterprise as a product. See the Mac Pro webpage that also doesn’t mention enterprise contacts https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ but it’s clearly not targeted for just consumers either.
https://time.com/7093536/surgeons-apple-vision-pro/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39140319/
https://youtu.be/tAmXzksBvpw?si=LX_VvqYjSUH43Pwd
https://youtu.be/3MoOB7Er-vw?feature=shared
But yeah, if Apple can become a medical device company, it would unlock a huge revenue stream for them. Looks like these people are optimistic, I'll take them at their word for that.
I personally don't know if Apple is willing to put the investment into the devices to make them viable as medical devices. There is a reason medical devices have huge costs, and that's largely because of the human effort involved to go multiple rounds with the FDA and other regulatory bodies to get a device approved for use in medical facilities outside of trials and studies.
This is why you’ll often see a range of display devices in operating theatres. You’ll even see iPads or other tablets that aren’t necessarily certified for use.
But I could also see the value of a comparably priced or even higher priced version, with ultra versions of their M chips, going all in as a Mac or MacBook upgrade in terms of user interface.
I use mine as a MacBook Pro screen upgrade. I would love to dispense with the MacBook, while retaining Mac level (as apposition to limited iOS style) applications.
Maybe for current device clunkiness and capabilities.
I expect that would change if it could do a good job of replacing desk screens, or let people spend their commute staring at a hud instead of staring at a phone.
But at the same time everyone knows that the tech will get there eventually. A lot of current VR products seem to mostly exist to position companies to be able to exploit the market once the tech gets good enough.
https://www.kandaovr.com/Obsidian-Pro
Panoramic photography for VR is on my bucket list although I have a huge list of other projects such as having a reliable camera-to-audience system for stereograms I shoot with another other camera from that company
https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
Note there are cheap pano cameras too
https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-3
though my Uni has a resource center for that kind of thing and I can probably talk my way into borrowing one of the better ones.
Stereo panos can be absolutely amazing on a consumer VR headset, I've greatly enjoyed crowd scenes from Paris such as in front of the Louvre and an observation deck on the Eiffel tower.
The 3d economy more fundamentally needs some kind of photo-to-3d technology and that is going to take multiple photographs from different angles, a depth camera helps but in one shot it does not give you the pixels that are only visible on the L or the R channel in a stereogram because of obscuration.
I've got a friend who makes 3-d models using a $265 million camera
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/111915448546172624
one thing we've talked about is where to get the missing pixels that aren't in any of the photographs, it's a tougher problem for him as a scientist than it is for me because he can't make stuff up.
Pano content in VR really is something new.
Apple's lack of vision with the Vision Pro is shocking as is the arrogance that somehow a $3k headset will revive interest in something people wouldn`t pay an extra $5 for at the movies.
With twice the memory and a desktop grade processor the AVP could trash the Quest 3 at immersive application but Apple is stuck on a backwards and conservative vision of mobile apps floating in the air - totally mundane sci-fi (Washuu had this in Tenchi Muyo) but a $3k headset has to do all, not just what one rich dude thinks is stylish.
If you are doing any VR or AR work you realize memory for textures is terribly short and 'more pixels' is the road to nowhere.
Lots of as-well-made-as-able 3D "stereo" movies in Disney etc that work on AVP beautifully. None of those are the same "you are here now" sense as the Alicia Keys demo.
Agree with you on Apple's seeming reluctance to empower a new UX/UI for the AVP affordances. Having a multi-window iPad strapped to your face is less compelling. Over the past 15 years one notices how much of iOS UI was invented by the market (pull down to refresh, for instance). Perhaps they want to see what people come up with for this.
Not going to happen without jailbreaking the locked-down VisionOS.
Apple could choose to enable for 18 months, then integrate the best use cases into the platform.
Yes, you'd have to have your various "apps" in your same "suite" app (like Microsoft ships Word, Excel, Powerpoint, inside Office for iPadOS), but third party apps wouldn't know your new UX/UI paradigm anyway.
Most people have seen maybe three real 3-D movies from among: the Avatars, a Pixar movie, Hugo, The Hobbit, the Transformers one where they tore up Chicago, and... yeah, I'm hard-pressed to name another movie right now that was shot in 3-D... oh, and Drive Angry. Which no one saw.
The vast majority of movies offered in "3-D" were post-processed junk.
The BlackMagic design is aimed squarely at cinema use, where BM is already one of the industry standard platforms for color grading and increasingly for editing, and already highly respected for image acquisition. This matters because film distribution agreements increasingly mandate specific technologies for production to mitigate the risk of customer complaints abouts image quality.
The 3d part of the camera is somewhat relevant for the cinema release market (and VR headset users who want to watch a movie in 3d...but I think this will remain a small market because wearing a helmet/goggles to watch a movie is inherently anti-social), but even if you never plan to release in 3d it's nice to be able to acquire that way for vfx purposes. Recording ground truth 3d information during acquisition is always going to be superior and cheaper to inferring it computationally from a monocular image.
Any projection is bound to separate areas which could be compressed more efficiently together.
A native stereoscopic spherical video encoder could improve compression even more, since side by side views are quite similar in general.
Now that's an interesting problem to solve ! (and a very hard one probably)
Existing video formats already support this for interlacing, although you could also let inter-prediction refer to earlier parts of the same frame and get most of the benefit.
Edit: I'll certainly read the rest of the articles!
Thanks!
A setup with a fixed VR camera and a 180 FOV could totally transform the experience, because now with a VR headset I'd be the one tracking the ball with my head movements like in a real stadium.
Many smaller local clubs suffer from low attendence due to local factors like people leaving the area, not having time or just bigger clubs playing at the same time.
This could be overcome with global audiences and live VR recordings (where you're still able to move your head) and potentially be a nice source of income for many clubs selling virtual stadium tickets.
https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/rf5-2mm-f2-8-l-dual-fisheye...
Firstly, it’s an actual cine camera so has a lot of cine features for reviewing, output, formats that are recorded etc.
Next is the lenses, this has a wider inter pupillary distance so will feel more dimensional and natural. It also has wider coverage.
Then there’s the sensors and readout: this can capture 8K per eye, for 90fps. This is required for the Apple immersive format because it partially surrounds you and so you need 8k per eye to make sure you have good resolution coverage for the portion of the video shown on the 4k per eye display.
There’s no other commercial product that compares to this.
I’m no photographer, but it seems like it’d be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera - when you could just use an existing high end camera like RED + new lens.
The canon fisheye lens does not have the same IPD as this lens.
Beyond that, you’d still be limited by the sensor. The highest RED sensor is 8k? This is 8k per eye. Thats double (actually slightly higher than double).
So, you could make something inferior, yes, but not the same capabilities.
Blackmagic does have e.g. a 12k non-stereo Ursa Cine but, like you hint at, whatever they can have in the non-stereo can always be better in stereo because a 2x sensor setup has 4x the sensor area as a 1/2 sensor setup. Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines the quality of the recording. When quality is what's important to a professional setting then it doesn't matter (in this market segment) there is a solution which is 20k cheaper if it's always going to be inferior by design. They don't expect to sell many of these to professionals even so it's fine it doesn't make cost sense to the average person.
The rest of everything (recording workflows and settings, IPD, framerates, editing software) can all be identical with either approach but the sensor area is sensor area and there is nothing which can be done to fix that.
But that’s still not 16k of pixels. You don’t even need two 8k sensors to make this work. Just aim the stereo lenses at different parts of a 16k sensor. The Canon solution is simply lacking IPD and pixels.
> Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines the quality of the recording.
This is false. Going to get up on my soapbox again here:
Larger sensors actually have more noise (noise is proportional the square root of the area).
It’s easy to understand the confusion, though: Putting a larger sensor behind the same lens is the opposite of cropping… you get a larger field of view and less image detail. Thus, keeping field of view the same, a larger sensor forces you to use a lens with a longer focal length.
Now, if you re-grind the original lens to have a longer focal length, you encounter another problem: The same physical aperture divided by the new longer focal length means that you have a smaller focal ratio (the number in F/<number> gets bigger). You have a dimmer lens!
So, to keep the same focal ratio (“F-stop”), you need a lens with a larger physical aperture… That larger physical aperture is collecting more light onto your sensor!
That’s why everyone seems to think larger sensors are better. It’s the lens you are forced to use, not the sensor itself.
Since light collected is directly proportional to the area of the lens (and lens area will be proportional to sensor area, see above) and sensor noise is only proportional to sqrt(area), the signal to noise ratio goes as area/sqrt(area) = sqrt(area).
But that’s not the same thing as saying a larger sensor is better… you could have just used a lens with a larger physical aperture in the first place. You don’t need a larger sensor to do that.
You're of course correct that the better lens helps. But a bigger sensor can also be better by itself.
Most optical aberrations increase with high powers of the f-number so it's highly undesirable to make ultra-fast lenses, so it quite quickly becomes cheaper to use a larger sensor with a slower f-number. Try matching a jellybean 85/2 lens on a full-frame sensor on e.g. MFT. It's going to be rather expensive. Then try matching a 85/1.4 or 85/1.2 (nowadays not uncommon) lens and you find yourself at "that's not physically possible".
Coincidentally, full-frame sensors can be made from just two stitched exposures on a regular chip stepper, so they're sort of the largest sensor size before cost explodes. Meanwhile S35/APS-C offers some real cost savings (single exposure).
In stereo you really do have more visual information. It's not unusual for 10% of the pixels in a stereogram (say a close up of a person) to be unique to one channel. On top of that you have left and right eye pixels that are shared which must be equivalent to more than one mono pixel even if they aren't equivalent to two.
Although I get MPO's with two JPEGs in one file from my New 3DS, stereo content is frequently delivered in side-by-side format as one big JPEG. Stereo movies and TV frequently use side-by-side with half horizontal resolution on the assumption that stereo is feeding your eyes and brains more data although it probably doesn't match the original perceived resolution.
Which would help with synchronized sensor readout.
Of course it's still possible that's really just one sensor with a logical split, which would be some disappointing marketing.
But very impressive that they have such tight synchronization between sensor readouts to feel comfortable splitting it.
Here’s the RED body list https://www.red.com/productcategory/Camera-BRAINs
There’s no brain for an 8k sensor where you could have more than one for the cost of this. So you’d have to at the very least compromise on resolution.
You’d also have to construct a multi camera rig which adds to both cost and size/weight/difficulty. So you’d compromise on the ergonomics of it.
Then you’d have to add the lenses. These have them integrated. Finding comparable lenses would set you over your comparable budget.
Okay, then let’s talk storage. This has 8TB on board. Getting an equivalent for the RED would also set you over the budget.
Finally, connectivity. The only REDs that you could maybe bring under budget need additions to add connectivity. So you’re compromising there.
And at the end of the day, 30K for a camera of this caliber is insanely cheap. I think everyone getting caught up on the cost has only dealt with prosumer stuff at best. Anyone at the professional level has been awed by black magic’s ability to bring this and the Ursa Cine 17k at the price point that they have.
Besides, the cost for everything else will far outpace the camera. The camera is the one thing you don’t want to skimp on. You have a bad camera day, you ruin everything else and waste more money than you’d have saved.
I’ll reiterate: 30k is an absolute bargain for this or the 17k.
These are cameras that productions rent by the day for a specific shoot, not something they buy outright. Similar to high-end cine cameras, slow motion cameras, underwater cameras, etc.
I don't think hobbyists are the target market. Isn't that price in-line with any studio-quality camera? (I have no idea if this qualifies as a studio-quality camera, but I can imagine at least a few studios would be willing to try it out).
Pro equipment can reach prices that seem unbelievable to prosumers.
https://youtu.be/RkTaMyatsTo
In the digital age zooming video is completely routine and if you've got a picture with absurd megapixels you can do it in a big way.
It's an awesome camera, but note the absence of a price, on the Web site. I think it retails for around $80K.
[0] https://www.phantomhighspeed.com/products/cameras/4kmedia/fl...
WITHOUT the cost of additional lenses. Then you add in sets, lighting, generators, cast, etc.
All of this is fractions compared to maybe millions of dollars for marketing.
And if you are a small film crew, you rent.
Outright purchasing a camera and equipment vs renting them for a shoot is a waste of money unless you're a production company that is going to use the equipment over and over again until it falls apart, and even then if you rent it it is on the rental company to handle maintenance and providing replacements in case of equipment breakdown, so it can still be a good deal for you.
For mass market consumers, you can already shoot in Apple's spatial video format with an iPhone.
Reviews in the tech press do not agree.
> Apple iPhone Spatial Video Looks Amazing on Vision Pro
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-iphone-spatial-video-...
Source: own an AVP and an iPhone 15 Pro
With the example Canon lens approach alberth had linked the device does not need to natively support stereo. The downsides, and why one might still spend 30k on an alternative, is said lens approach effectively halves the sensor area and the optics system won't be quite as well designed as a natively optimized one. Also the device is aimed to match the AVP precisely e.g. 90 FPS at full ~59 MP resolution.
I doubt they expect to sell many units but the units they do sell are for top professionals looking for the absolute best stereo quality they could get for the AVP, not for prosumers or average productions which would be fine with the slight quality and workflow bump to save 20k.
So is "I, as a non-photographer, openly question the utility of this pro-photographer tool to pro-photographers", though.
> Can you not get this capability with...
Can be interpreted as "this is pointless.. you can do this other thing for way cheaper" OR "help me understand why this exists because I don't understand it". GP is _clearly_ in the latter camp and saying "as a non-photographer" to make that clear.
Since we're already quoting HN guidelines
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith
The whole point of the Canon Dual Fisheye lens is to record stereoscopic video on a “standard” single sensor camera.
Today I adjust stereograms so that most objects are close to the paper or screen by sliding them horizontally, but I think Lipton is right that it is better to make the cameras converge though all my stereo cameras are parallel.
Anyway, this feels like the beginning of that.
Strange Days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Days_(film)
> The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot, required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation.[5] A full year was spent building a specialized camera that could reproduce the effect of looking through someone else's eyes.[5] Bigelow revealed that it was essentially "a stripped-down Arri that weighed much less than the smallest EYMO and yet it would take all the prime lenses.
It's an unfairly forgotten film. Much like Blade Runner, it suffers from a clunky plot but has quite smart world building.
I find GPT quite useful for those “tip of your tongue” type queries, and have used it to name movies and actors quite a few times.
What’s funny is that there are others out there that are thinking the same thing regarding that film. Cheers!
Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977) also by Gibson already had this.
Does anybody know even earlier instances?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0085271/
I saved a newspaper clipping from a local theater showing "BRIANSTORM". My father's name is Brian. 7 y/o me thought the misspelling in the ad was hilarious.
Also, see the last episode of season one of Black Mirror.
And "brain dances" in Cyberpunk 2077.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
There was a scene, where one of the researchers looped a porn scene, and they busted down his door, to find him in bed, twitching.
is underrated, the visual depiction of the lab is like Crichton's Looker. In my mind Research Triangle Park is as cool as it is this movie, in real life it falls short only a little.
Thoughts -> (electric signal) -> LLM decoding and calling a generative model -> (electric signal) -> Brain
Anime has the advantage of being drawn frame-by-frame, thus able to "change" lenses, cameras, etc mid action-packed shots. Using this may allow for shooting two different setups at once, achieving a similar effect.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/@weedonandscott
I would love to see that attempted today again with how much progress we've made in terms of screen resolution and camera quality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Evo_3D
The iPhone 15 and 16 pro models can take 3D photos and videos right now https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/spatial-photos-record...
I would love to have a 3d tv that works without glasses even if it was a limited depth thing (like multiple screens on top of each other to create real depth within a confined space) but I think the technology of the 3DS screen wouldn't scale to larger screens.
iirc this is effectively what looking glass displays do [0], or at least the early prototypes I saw, split a projected beam across 16 or so panes of glass. I've only seen the little one in real life but it was pretty enchanting. They go up to 32" and 64", something like 20,000 dollars tho [1] I don't know if they've actually made any sales of the larger formats
I was recently googling for whether these displays supported Apple Spatial Video and the answer was yes after some 3rd party conversion and playing media back straight from the iPhone it was recorded on, sounded annoying but feasible [2]
[0] https://lookingglassfactory.com/about
[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/looking-glass-unveils-second-gen-...
[2] https://stereoscopy.blog/2024/09/22/how-to-use-the-looking-g...
But back then everyone just said "3D is a gimmick I hate it I just want an normal TV" and the fad died.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/SH-12C
The iPhone recently added support for actually shooting spatial photos in addition to videos so I need to try that out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hydrogen_One
Sure, I could get one from Germany. However I did that with a Google Pixel 6 Pro and that turned out to be hell when I needed to claim warranty on it. Which required an address in Germany. So I'm not really inclined to go down that road again.
We've had techniques for editing videos on underpowered PCs since the 1990s. Possibly earlier.
You use something called a "proxy workflow": For each 8K source video, generate a 480p "proxy" with the same frame timing but a much more manageable amount of data. You edit the entire film using the 480p videos. Then once you're happy you "render" the video - which swaps the high quality sources back in and produces an output file. The final render might take all weekend for an hour-long video - but you've only got to do it once.
Then a person called the negative cutter would go through the list, duplicate the editing decisions on a high-quality negative without the generational loss, and that would go on to become the final print.
That’s why sometimes you’ll see a deleted scene from a movie whose picture quality looks quite poor. That was most likely taken from the workprint, and never went through negative cutting or any finishing.
Is it really? I haven't touched "high end cinema cameras" but if my consumer camera can generate ~1TB/hour and it's a "normal" consumer camera, I'd easily expect 4x that in high end cinema gear for 3D video (multiple videos stitched into one essentially)
But again, haven't used any of those or looked it up, so what do I know. It doesn't sound outlandish to me though.
If your consumer camera generates 1TB/hour then you're generating data as fast as a Red Komodo [1] recording at 6K "VFX, Extreme Detail Scenes"
Consumer quality? A high-end iphone can record 4K 60FPS video and an hour's footage takes up 24 gigabytes.
And you're watching 4K 60fps video on Netflix? Youtube? Maybe 12 gigabytes an hour.
[1] https://www.red.com/komodo
According to https://support.apple.com/en-us/109041 4k60 recording in ProRes needs 220 MB/s storage, so an hour would be ~792 GB. Sure, you can choose to throw away most of that data with more lossy compression, but the barely-acceptable bitrates used by streaming services are not at all the right point of comparison here.
Of course most people wouldn't shoot at 60 fps for historical reasons, and raw video codecs are intra-only so data rate scales linearly with fps. They're just relatively heavily lossily compressed raw images in a box, basically.
Does anyone have better ideas?
There are options from caldigit on the low end: https://www.caldigit.com/t4/
or qnap on the mid end: https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tvs-h874t
To prevent causing issues upstream you would want to write to a fast NVME SSD first before backing up to a HDD array. Unfortunately, it doesn't support this use case as the NAS is designed for movie streaming, offices, security cameras etc.
What's the point of integrating two cameras into one unit, when you can just capture with two cameras. It's a software problem.
Say you want a stereogram that shows you Manhattan or the Grand Canyon as if it were a model laid out on a table before you. A human-like stereoscopic shot of those places will not produce the depth.
(Maybe something can be computed, but that's a separate discussion.)
This is the page you want https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20241217-01
What I find interesting is that there appears to be no way to view the live video on a set of goggles for the camera operator, or the director. At least, it's not mentioned in the link above.
Also, it seems like Apple must have contributed to Blackmagic's investment in this product, right? There are ~300k Vision Pros, so maybe Blackmagic will sell a couple hundred of these units? Without Apple's involvement, how could they have justified the investment in hardware and the new version of Resolve?
My background was in film where I also worked on stereo for certain big projects. I know some anti-Apple folk will criticize my comments below so I want to be clear I’m talking about 3D video specifically.
I think it’s a bet on the future. Even though Apple aren’t high volume, they’ve dramatically shifted the professional stereo video landscape more than anything else in the last decade.
This is everything from bringing full resolution stereo videos for home viewing , to making a seemingly standardized format for 180 videos. Even if the latter is just restricted to their platform.
If I was BMD, I’d be seeing how everyone else is now following Apple in this specific area. Even though Meta were first, they’re undeniably also following Apple in some key areas. Same with Android XR. You can just look at their software releases/announcements over the last year as evidence.
If DaVinci can output to a range of formats, then it reduces the issue of it being apple specific. It’s a bet that they’ll be effectively the only professional game in town when all the brands (Apple, meta, Google) want to start driving content.
Beyond that, I don’t think the outlay for hardware is that high. It’s largely based off the Cine 17k, so most of the investment is amortized there.
Also even beyond the VR space, there’s the market for immersive experiences like projection events, the Vegas sphere, theme parks etc…
Their color science too is very nice and I think they’re making good moves with the 17k.
> This is everything from bringing full resolution stereo videos for home viewing , to making a seemingly standardized format for 180 videos. Even if the latter is just restricted to their platform.
I'd assume Porn already achieved all of the above. The format seem to have mostly settled, and the volume produced are relevant.
Apple might succeed in the "not first but best" approach, but do they have that much of an impact on the landscape right now ? In particular while this camera is marketed toward AVP movies, Apple being an early partner and probably footing the bill for most of it, is a weaker signal than BlackMagic doing it on its own as a forward investment.
https://x.com/Blackmagic_News/status/1868723512455970999
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursacine...
which seems to be more in line what the article talks about
Then again... Maybe if AVP owners represent an audience that you'd like to target it wouldn't be a bad decision. Everyone that owns one will probably be starved for special content and I'd imagine they'd be willing to buy something specifically made for their niche platform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJcUtVIB_g
But based on the Vision Pro demo I would expect to see them prioritise non-fiction content e.g. Planet Earth style movies, concerts, athlete profiles etc.
>the world’s first advanced cinema camera designed to shoot for Apple Immersive Video
I think they are tapping early into an emerging "new" video format.
Converting to the "Apple Vision Pro" format is the last step on the pipeline, after editing.
CinemaDNG is not a compressed format. It is a directory with DNG files. DNG is an open raw photo format. Both DNG and CinemaDNG predate REDCODE.
My camera records 4K 12-bit CinemaDNG with no compression and is in the same price segment.
If BM, given options they had (which also include things like “pay RED” or “recall products”), chose to silently remove the support for CinemaDNG in cameras that they sold advertising CinemaDNG support, I doubt blaming RED is anything but a PR tactic.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/media/release/20241217-0...
The article you linked mentions it uses BRAW which is indeed supported in Resolve today already.
You’ll turn your head and the image will just stay fixed in 3D in front of you?
But of course the quality is probably a lot lower than with this camera
Um, okay, what is supported and what is achievable are two entirely different things. Even with the fattest of pipes, uploading media content to the cloud is only considered fast if you're a turtle or a snail. Even with 12Gbps connection it takes 10-12 minutes to transfer 250GB files.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccloudsto...
Firstly, it is not passthrough video.
Secondly, you cannot currently have the same experience on the quest. You can have lower quality versions of it, but immersive video is 8k per eye at 90fps.
There has literally never been cameras available to consumers to capture that till this specific camera. Unless you did professional custom camera rigs.
As someone who owns both a Quest and a Vision Pro, and has worked in stereo for a large portion of my career, the two experiences are not remotely comparable when it comes to video today. The quest excels in other areas, but this is one where Meta have very weak coverage on.
Moreover, it's not really a proprietary format and you can already play them officially on Quest.
Nobody has been able to extract Apples immersive videos yet and I’m not convinced the Quest has the decoding power for it.
It’s a lot of pixels to decode (16k at 90fps) , while also doing reprojection of the frames (https://hackaday.com/2024/04/18/unraveling-the-secrets-of-ap...) and I don’t believe their Qualcomm chip used has enough juice leftover to do that.
That's not to say it cannot be used for other things. Blackmagic frequently market all their cameras for prosumer/professional film-making, but you can use the cameras for so much more than just recording films, although the marketing is geared towards film-markers. Doesn't make it misleading.
Sometimes tech is amazing.
The equivalent to the Cine from other makers starts at the $30k and goes up depending on what options you want. Except, at those prices, you're only getting 4K. Red, Arri, Sony, etc won't even get out of bed for anything less than $30k.
That's just BMD's DNA to give the customer so much bang for their buck. Every thing they offer is so much lower MSRPs than competitors. I remember when they first released Resolve for Mac, for free after BMD acquired DaVinci. Of course it couldn't do much without a $20k MacPro build, but the software was free. This was running right next to the $50k Resolve Linux build, so naturally it was jaw dropping.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Studios
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D_films_(2005%E2%80%9...
Of the 13 3D movies released this year only four are native 3D, and those are all fully CGI animation, so none of them used 3D cameras. Avatar 2 (2022) was the last movie to use 3D cameras for live action shots and Avatar 3 is the only upcoming movie known to be using them. It's beyond niche at this point unless your name is James Cameron.
If you pay attention in their work you can see how they try to hide the hard drive array that was required, and sometimes also the accountant holding on to it so that it doesn’t get swept away.
Vision Pro has been released for near a year now. I don't think it got the traction that's anywhere close to the hype when it was first announced. Not even among VR enthusiasts, let alone the mass consumer market.
There is an Apple Store near where I live. When I walk by it, 9 out of 10 times there is nobody around the Vision Pro booth, when many people are playing with iPhones and iPads.
In the first year, they were constrained by the number of displays Sony could produce.
> Sony, the supplier of Vision Pro's ultra high resolution OLED microdisplays, can't manufacture more than 900,000 displays per year. Apple needs two displays per headset, so this bottleneck would impose severe limitations on how many Vision Pros can be produced.
https://www.uploadvr.com/apple-vision-pro-production-severel...
As far as I've seen, their sales were in line with the number of units they could be expected to build, at least until Sony is able to ramp up production.
> 2024 Apple Vision Pro Shipments Estimated Between 500–600 Thousand Units, Micro OLED Key to Cost and Volume
https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20240118-12003.h...
My friend has one and I’ve got a Quest 2 and I was absolutely blown away by the AVP, significantly better VR experience in my opinion.
Vision Pro supporting PSVR2 controllers will help a lot.
The final piece is getting something like ALVR or Virtual Desktop to support PCVR without requiring fiddling.
The Q2 has horrible lenses that induce a terrible experience. I had mine for all of a week before I sold it and decided to wait another gen. The Q3 with better lenses is a significantly better product than Q2.
I’ve not had any issues with my Q2 though, I can play for quite extended amounts of time and it tends to be my arms and legs that stop me playing!
It's more that the Vision Pro deliberately prioritized certain things that Meta or Vive or Valve or Sony have not: geometrically stable pass through, wide library of popular 3D movies via AppleTV and Disney+, high resolution immersive environments, seamless keyboard/mouse/trackpad migration between PC and native apps, strong iOS/iPadOS ecosystem integration, high fps / low latency wireless ultra-wide virtual displays for the Mac, etc.
In some ways it focuses on what the Oculus Go was trying to do but was underpowered to really do it. It's meant to replace other iOS devices for general productivity and entertainment, and to complement a Mac.
It's not focused on VR gaming though it can do that.
I have a Oculus Rift dev kit, Ovulus Go, Quest , Quest 2, Valve Index, PSVR2. The AVP is much better of an experience on almost every level but three: too much motion blur when moving your head (this isn't bad when watching high fps video), lack of controller support, not so great hand tracking (which the Quest had to do well due to lack of eye tracking). The controller support should be fixed with the Sony PSVR2 partnership. Motion blur and hand tracking I suspect will be software fixed as they evolve to prioritize active fitness with the AVP.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/13/apple-might-release-a-2000...
People that bought Vision Pro at $3,500 they are not using it all that much. A lower price will just result in more headsets gathering dust.
VR has no product-market fit except for a couple of game niches. Far from the “next computing platform” that justified investment of tens of billions of dollars a year.
Headsets and platforms need fundamental rethinking before optimizing for price.
People that bought Vision Pro are often using it for multiple hours a day. I am sure some collect dust, but many are heavily used.
The Meta Quest is outselling the Xbox series. VR clearly has product market fit, but it doesn't yet have iPhone or iPad levels of market fit.
Also sales /= usage and retention. Engagement is what you need to grow a platform.
Your numbers about XBox sales might be true for a brief period of time between Quest2 and Quest3 releases. Still what matters is engagement and retention.
As mentioned only product-market (albeit niche) fit for VR has been some games subgenres. Can you point to any other applications with significant numbers?
I have no more data than you do when you say a "shrinking tiny fraction" of AVP buyers. I've been in the industry for 30 years. We both have our anecdata.
Sometimes it’s ok to make Lamborghini and it’s not a failure to say it has less owners than the Corolla.
This is so that people can begin making content for the Apple AR headset that comes out 3 years from now, not the $3500 devkit.
People also forget how bleak the iPad app market was for the first year or so. They also forget that VR has existed for the quest for the better part of 12 years and there are .... 4? 5? very good apps.
Even now there's nothing -incredibly- compelling for the Quest. I'm not a hater, I've owned 5 of them starting at DK1.
No such equivalent exists for AVP, it's a new type of device for pretty much everybody.
Who builds half a million units of a dev kit?
Some stuff you can just tell is going to flop. This is one of them. Apple still doesn't get that people dont want to put on highly conspicuous headsets to watch a movie or play a game, they're fine using a phone or tablet for that. Zuckerberg still pretends like he didnt spend 2 years and untold billions trying to will Horizon Worlds into relevance. Similarly, nobody talks about immersive video on AVP as some kind of gamechanger, not even the usual Apple consumer strategy whisperers like Daring Fireball.
Apple is not Sony, who were happy to keep investing in their ecosystem even if people didn't buy it (Betamax, MiniDisc, GPS addon for the PSP).
Citation needed. The AVP is priced for supply constraints.
'A "gamechanger" in Apple-ese means tens of millions of units shifted'
Not at all. That may be an external party's definition of success. It is not Apple's.
"Apple is in the business of selling Big Macs, not wagyu steaks."
I can't even begin to describe how wrong this statement is, even based on a cursory glance of their current product line.
This is a 5-10 year strategy, not a 1-2 year one.
The closer you get to that 5-10 years, the more these types of capital intensive projects start looking non-viable (think Apple EV) compared to cash cows like the App Store and iCloud.
Pornographers
IMO vision pro is like the first iPhone/iPad and in a few years if they keep refining it there will be a larger adoption.
I think the main thing is that it should support full mac os apps without tethering to an external macbook/mac mini. They need to move the compute out of the headset itself and into the battery module. Apple probably would never do this, but imagine if you bought a mac mini sized compute module that could go on an external display or connect to a vision pro device. If the compute was separate the headset would be significantly lighter and more comfortable.