“I’ve never trusted virtual reality, and I never will.”
I rode motion rides before, Back to the Future the Ride, Star Tours, Spiderman at Universal, the Virtual Ride gimmicks at arcades… Some of them made me feel like I wanted to hurl. Some didn’t, some gave me headaches for days. I could stand the Playstation VR a good 5 minutes… then migraines started. “VR just isn’t for me. ” are my thoughts. I could see all the pixels on the screen and any sense of displacement just turned into pure nausea.
A few months ago when Apple announced the Vision Pro. “Meh.” I thought initially. The price press wasn’t convincing me it could change my perception on VR headsets. Until I saw a couple of you-tubers out making content with it after they left the Apple Store… doing stuff. Walking around and interacting in real life with it. There was something about seeing people out in the wild playing with these things started to change my perception. so I immediately caved. I got one. I paid for it up front, not even aware if it would make me vomit day one. I took the risk, bought into the hype and with little convincing after two weeks I hadn’t returned them. I early adopted.
I never spent more than an hour at a time using them. But in those first critical 5 or 6 hours I was thoroughly impressed. I only once had a nausea moment with them on and that was from seeing a lo res video. As expected, Apple got the VR experience of it right.
But Apple isn’t selling a VR headset. They’re basically selling an iPad you control with your eyes. And charging your right eyeball for it. But it’s capability is so much more. Only time will tell if enough real world application is out there to set it mainstream. Eventually we’ll get there. Perhaps I will have buyers remorse a few years down the road when the next revision will drop in price. Until then, I’m good.