My Most Used Apps and Experiences (and What Matthew Ball Thinks After 6 Months of Using AVP) – Ryan Schultz

Update 10:37 PM: I actually wrote this review in two parts, and upon rereading it, I realized that it read a bit discontinuously because of that. So I added a divider between the two parts to make it clearer. Also, I gave the Encounter Dinosaurs experience the wrong name, which I have now fixed. Thanks!

I’ve also added a link to a blog post by Metaverse blogger Matthew Ball, who shares his thoughts after using the Apple Vision Pro for six months.

Since receiving my prescription lenses for the Apple Vision Pro on July 29th, I’ve been using them almost every day, usually for an hour or two a day, and I’m coming up on my third week. The prescription lenses are magnetically attached to the AVP, so they’re super easy to remove if you decide to show off your Apple Vision Pro to someone else!

I am not familiar with the device yet and would like to make sure I am familiar enough with it before I give a demo to others. I would also like to review documentation already written by other AVP users (e.g. this example) so that I can provide a demo (And the person receiving the demo!) Don’t accidentally damage my expensive device!

For example, you should remember to notify new users: ~ No Do not pick up the device by holding the face shield. (Like my prescription lenses) It is attached only magnetically to the actual glass and metal Apple Vision Pro itself and if you try to pick it up it will detach! Remember to pick up by the edges of the actual curved glass and metal device itself. I think everyone working in the Future Virtual Reality Lab at the University of Manitoba should write a detailed step-by-step guide to help their faculty, staff and students experience AVP for the first time!

Oh, right. I forgot to mention that. I’ve been really touched by what I’ve experienced over the past three weeks.More details are below), Vive Pro 2 and Meta Quest 3, I will also be asking the library to purchase an Apple Vision Pro so that faculty, staff and students at my university can use it for teaching, learning and research purposes. In just 3 weeks, I have become an Apple Vision Pro evangelist! No matter how hard it is, we will get our hands on one. It is so good. I will repeat what I said in my previous blog post about my first week with the Apple Vision Pro.

Apple Vision Pro makes every VR headset I’ve ever used feel like the red plastic View-Masters I played with as a kid in the 1960s. The “screen door” effect that was so noticeable in previous VR headsets (where you could see individual pixels, making everything look slightly blurry) is completely, completely gone.

In fact, the Apple Vision Pro is such a huge leap forward in technology that it will be hard to go back to what were once cutting-edge displays, the Meta Quest 3 and especially the Vive Pro 2!

Anyway, back to why I wanted to write this blog post. I wanted to talk about some of the apps and experiences I’ve had with my new Apple Vision Pro over the past three weeks, and also give you a little bit more of my first impressions of the device itself.

Apple has paid its usual slavish attention to style and construction with the Apple Vision Pro headset. It’s beautiful to look at and fun to use! The front is a single piece of custom curved glass attached to a sleek, rounded metal frame, and it’s the smallest VR headset I’ve ever used (though not as small as the Bigscreen Beyond I’ve written about here before, but then again, I’ve never used that device).

Having worn other, larger VR headsets, I found the Apple Vision Pro to sit higher on my cheek, which felt odd at first, but you quickly got used to it. The AVP has a lot of internal sensors and cameras, and is smart enough to warn you if you’re wearing it too high or too low on your face, so it can adjust accordingly for the best experience. It also has a built-in guest mode that automatically calculates the correct interpupillary distance (IPD, the distance between your eyes) when you’re demoing to someone else, to give them the best field of view. (When giving demos on the Vive Pro 2 and Meta Quest 3 VR headsets, there’s now a special app on my iPad Pro 11 for work that measures someone’s IPD and dials in the correct value before they put the headset on.)

When ordering an AVP from the Apple website (or purchasing one at your local Apple Store), you’ll need to scan your face with an iPhone or iPad with FaceID enabled to determine the correct size face shield. The face shield is very custom-made to fit your face and needs. For example, because it requires prescription lenses, the face shield needs to be slightly deeper to accommodate them (if you wear soft contact lenses to correct your vision, you’ll need to purchase a separate, less-deep face shield, and your field of view will be slightly wider than if you wear prescription lenses).

Here’s something I wish was better: the field of view. The vertical field of view is pretty good, but the horizontal field of view is less impressive. I’m particularly disappointed with how limited the playback is when recording spatial video. While it does offer a wider-screen “immersive” playback option for spatial video, it does have its limitations. The edges of the video tend to be blurry, and it doesn’t have the crisp edges you get when watching video in a regular (small) window. However, I’m sure this aspect of the technology will improve over time.

There are actually two types of 3D video that you can play on Apple Vision Pro: spatial video and immersive video. Here are the videos that you can record and share using Apple Vision Pro or a later model iPhone (iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max models with iOS 17.2 or later): Spatial In the case of the video, the 3D effect is clearly visible, but there is no immersion. Immersive They record videos using more expensive equipment, and the results are amazing. When you watch the videos, it feels like you’re there!

In fact, one of the apps I signed up for is a monthly subscription service called Explore POV (Point of View) that allows you to download and play high-quality immersive videos recorded in 180-degree 3D 16K resolution. Creators visit various locations around the world and record long video footage or a series of footage edited into one video. For example, one Explore POV video shows the videographer walking along a beach in New Zealand, looking at waves crashing onto the sand under a blue sky. It’s so realistic that you feel like you’re actually there, and if you raise your hand and look, it’ll be superimposed on the video! If you want to learn more, visit the Explore POV website. They also have some recent videos made by the creators themselves.

Aside from the spatial and immersive video, there is also a built-in 360-degree environment in Apple Vision Pro, which can be turned on and adjusted using the knob on the top right of the AVP. Turning the knob all the way clockwise completely replaces the space with the selected virtual reality environment. Turning it all the way counterclockwise switches to full AR mode, where icons and app windows float in and out of the physical environment. Tilting the knob somewhere in the middle brings the environment into the central view, which then disappears into the real world at the edges. It’s one of those things that’s hard to explain but easy to experience, but the Apple Vision Pro environment itself is so well-made and realistic that I consider it the “killer app” for Apple Vision Pro! I often find myself closing all my apps and sitting down to meditate (or listening to music from my Apple Music library) or just sitting peacefully in front of Mt. Hood or on the slopes of Haleakala volcano in Hawaii, watching the sun set behind the clouds.

Given these capabilities of surrounding you in a variety of realistic environments, it’s no surprise that one of the many uses for the Apple Vision Pro is as a device to help you calm, focus, and meditate. There are already a ton of space meditation apps in the Apple Vision Pro Store, but the one I use the most is Tripp. Tripp’s main menu has five sections (Focus, Calm, Breathe, Ascend, and Sleep) where you can choose from a variety of guided meditations, or mix and match parts to create your own. The Ascend section features a truly mind-blowing mini-documentary about the life journey of Ram Dass, an American psychologist and popularizer of Eastern spirituality and yoga, that everyone should try at least once!

And of course, there’s already a ton of video content to enjoy on the Apple TV+ app and the Disney+ app, as well as a small but growing selection of 3D videos. There’s also a short but very well-made app called Encounter Dinosaurs that anyone with an Apple Vision Pro should experience! It’s a showcase of the cutting edge capabilities of the technology, and it almost feels like you’re touching a real, living dinosaur! Always a great demo.

And speaking of demos, I finally showed my first demo of the Apple Vision Pro to someone else, my brother. And I have to say, it didn’t go well.

I had trouble getting mirroring to work (i.e. casting what someone else was watching on AVP to another device like a macOS desktop, iPad or iPhone). After I got it working, I was able to set it up so I could explain to my brother how to use the Apple Vision Pro. However, I forgot to turn mirroring off before he could watch content on the Apple TV+ and Disney+ apps! (At least he could try Encounter Dinosaurs.)

Overall, it was very disappointing to try to demo it to other users via AVP’s guest mode. Perhaps I was too quick to judge the usefulness of the Apple Vision Pro in a multi-user environment, such as the virtual reality lab I’m currently setting up for my university library system. I’ll let others have their first taste of the device and see what happens.

PS I also forgot to mention that I tried InSpaze, the best social app for my Apple Vision Pro, 5 or 6 times and had some great conversations with people from all over the world! I will leave a report on that in a future blog post on my blog. In the meantime, you can read my previous post about InSpaze here (before I actually got my hands on my Apple Vision Prto!).

Update 10:30 PM: I just discovered that Matthew Ball (who I’ve written about on this blog before) wrote a blog post titled: 9 Lessons Learned from Vision Pro After 6 MonthsSo I linked to it on my blog. I really appreciate Matthew’s perspective and wanted to share what he said with you as a counterpoint to my own thoughts and impressions, which are obviously more limited. (By the way, I 100% agree with Matthew’s view on the EyeSight feature in the AVP. It’s a cool feature, but I also think it’s a bit weird.)

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