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2024

VR is in a Weird Place Right Now

Context

I wrote this a bit ago as part of a conversation with a friend about VR in general. Reading it again, I thought others might be interested.

To be clear, this is my opinion. In particular, there are other players in the high-end PCVR space than Pimax. I just know more about them because I use their product. The story with their competitors (like Varjo, for instance) is similar.

Apple nailed the hardware side of things. The software is a small subset of what it needs to be - but, to be fair, that's the Apple way. The things it does it does very well.

Pimax got the tech side of the hardware right, but the design aspect isn't great. It's unwieldy. The software side is a garbage fire. It works great for what I use it for, but that's powered either by F/OSS utilities, or by Steam (via SteamVR).

Meta missed the mark in both areas IMO. Both their hardware and software are "good enough". The hardware is cheap enough to be accessible, through compromises and subsidization. The OS is adequate but not great. The software ecosystem is thriving, because of the market penetration.

Resetting and Replacing my Apple Vision Pro

I recently had an issue with my Apple Vision Pro; the one that I received from my initial order had a single "hot" pixel on the left screen.

Based on the behavior I saw and iFixit's excellent Apple Vision pro teardown report, I believe that there was a single pixel group where the red element was incapable of emitting anything less than full brightness while the green and blue elements were incapable of emitting light at all. In other words - rgb(0, 0, 0) rendered correctly, with no light being emitted, but if the value for the red channel was anything greater than 0, it rendered at full brightness. rgb(128, 128, 128) should render as 50% gray. On my device, that pixel rendered as rgb(255, 0, 0).

I scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store. Unfortunately, "local" in my case is a two and a half hour drive away, so I wanted to make sure everything was in place to take care of it in a single trip. I called ahead to ensure that they had a Vision Pro with the same specifications in stock.

At the Apple Store, the Genius that I worked with was excellent. He mentioned that this was the first time he'd had a chance to work with the Vision Pro in a support setting, so I went into the experience expecting some hiccups along the way. I wasn't disappointed!