You can see that in this Slow Mo Guys YouTube Short showing the flashing of the invisible-to-the-human-eye IR illuminators of Apple’s face computer, both on the front and around the lenses’ edges.
At 1,000fps, the Guys show the Vision Pro’s very fancy micro-OLED displays alternating between images and black frames, with a ring of IR lights popping on during the dark moments to help track where your eyes are looking.
Jason Snell of Six Colors details his experience with the MLB’s visionOS app now that the season is underway. Of the Gameday feature that puts a 3D-animated baseball field in your space during a game, he writes:
I couldn’t find support for Gameday when I first used the app, though later when playing back an archived stream, I did find Gameday available—from within the video playback, so you can’t use it for a game you’re not watching on the app. And it’s immersive, so you can’t put it up and then do something else, which is also probably a mistake.
Ah, the early days of the Vision Pro’s app ecosystem.
[Six Colors]
Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City, Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, and Spire Blast will each get Vision Pro “spatial” apps tomorrow, Apple shared in a release emailed to The Verge.
Also, rhythm game Synth Riders — aka the only game I’ve been coming back to besides bullet hell shooter Void-X — has been updated with Game Center leaderboards and a pass-the-headset Party Mode.
First adopters are ambassadors for the future. Glassholes need not apply.
I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs now uses video passthrough on Meta Quest headsets (and the Pico) to project your target for destruction onto a real-life table or whatever.
If you don’t have a VR headset with passthrough though, there’s been standalone version of the game on smartphones for years.
A source tells MacRumors that Apple is working on just that, potentially allowing Vision Pro wearers to use the Pencil with drawing apps like Freeform and Pixelmator. Rumors suggest that Apple is planning to take the wraps off of a new Pencil next month, but there’s no word on whether it will come with visionOS support just yet.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told press at the China Development Forum in Beijing that China will get it this year, according to Reuters this morning, citing a Chinese state media Weibo post.
MacRumors notes that this is the first time an Apple executive has confirmed where the Vision Pro will launch outside the US this year. Rumors have also suggested Apple will prioritize UK and Canadian launches.
It’s essentially the same thing you’d see if you were browsing the store in the Vision Pro itself — a few curated lists of native apps here, some recommended iPad apps there.
But at least there’s a way to casually cruise those sweet spatial apps without popping the headset on now.
[AppStore]
I’m not the one making this very big claim. That’d be Hugo Barra, former VP of Android and head of Oculus. Go check out his in-depth blog about his Vision Pro experience. It’s a great read overall, but this bit stood out:
Intentionally making the Vision Pro optics blurry is a clever move by Apple because it results in way smoother graphics across the board by hiding the screen door effect (which in practice means that you won’t see pixelation artifacts).
I’ve been hopping between both headsets and... I see what he’s saying!
An alternate game feed on ESPN Plus, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Plus will present today’s Bruins vs. Penguins matchup as the NHL Big City Greens Classic 2. It goes beyond Nickelodeon’s slime-filled Super Bowl feed by using NHL EDGE positional data and Hawk-Eye optical tracking to turn real action into an animated version.
Sportico explains that to control their animated avatars, commentators have replaced the motion-capture suits they wore for the first game with Meta Quest Pro headsets.
