If VR is the future, I’m screwed

I’ve been giving Apple, and the Vision Pro a bit of a hard time since announcement. A big part of this is simply jealousy that I can’t get one to be frank. Not only is it not available in the U.K.,  but I also don’t have a spare £3,500 laying around at the back of the sofa.

It’s not all the green eyed monsters fault, however.

In an attempt to both satiate my FOMO, but also get a nagging want off my shoulders I recently ordered a Meta Quest 3. I got it from Amazon, because of their very robust and reliable return policy. It arrived today, and I got it setup just after work. I’m now writing this at just after 7pm and it’s already reset, packed back in its box and a UPS collection, courtesy of Amazon, is arranged.

Let me just be clear that the device itself was very impressive. I’ve had a Quest 1 gathering dust in my cupboard for years now, but the Quest 3 is a huge jump forward in quality. The screens look far sharper, thanks to the pancake lenses, and the full colour pass-through makes it very compelling. The experience of moving windows around, exploring the various AR and VR experiences and watching 3D content was all top notch. This was, however, very much a “it’s not you, it’s me” situation.

A few minutes into a cheeky spot of VR Roblox (purely to impress my kiddo who was watching it as I cast the footage to my TV) and I could feel the nausea and dizziness kick in. I then start getting very warm all over, which is possibly some kind of cave man fear instinct kicking in? Who knows. What I do know is that it completely supersedes any endorphins kicking in from the positive parts of the experience I’m feeling.

It’s not only what I’m seeing that gets me all in a tizzy either. Despite the fact the Quest 3 is a lot more streamline than the original, it still feels incredibly restrictive to me having it hanging off my head. I don’t suffer from claustrophobia generally, but it quickly makes me feel like I imagine sufferers do. Using a Quest 3, for me, is like shipping in a Facehugger from Alien and treating it to a candlelit meal before inviting it home to latch onto your face for some intrusive chest impregnatation.

With the Vision Pro, Apple are betting billions of R&D dollars on AR / VR devices being the future. If that turns out to be true, I think I’m destined to be put out to pasture before my time, wallowing with the low tech luddite’s. As a self confessed Apple fanboy, I don’t often want Apple to fail, but if my feeling of these headsets are anything to go by, it’s not a future I’m relishing. Let’s just hope that if they do take off, we get to a point of miniaturisation sooner rather than later.

The chances of Vision Pro, or this product category in general, taking off feels very much 50/50 to me currently. When I’ve shared criticism of the device online before I received quite a few comments along the lines of ‘people said that about the iPhone when it came out, but now look at it!’ Whilst that’s a reasonable sentiment, it’s not very accurate in my eyes. When Apple entered the phone market with the original iPhone they were entering a market of people that already loved and embraced the product category, and were foaming at the mouth for Apple to bring out the ‘best in class’ version. I think it’s safe to say that the VR market is far smaller, and not all that loved even by people that have brought into the category before. 

If anyone can make augmented reality happen it’s Apple, but it feels like the device has to be far less intrusive than anyone, even Apple, can achieve quite yet.