So, I watched the Marques Brownlee review of the Apple Vision Pro, and what struck me is that it's incredibly technically impressive, but also just...so utterly joyless and boring. Some of the most sophisticated computer vision, imaging, and display tech currently available in service of making an ugly talking head of yourself for Zoom calls. A 40-something Californian tech exec's vision of the future.
There's an incredible amount of irony in that vision; every review I've read has described how the "personas" (a slightly blurry 3D scan of your face) and the eye displays in front land pretty far into the uncanny valley. Vtubers and furries have been getting around this for years now using actual art, but we can't have that. That's too weird, and gives too much freedom over to the user.
Honestly, my biggest hope for the Vision Pro is that it does take off, enough to spawn a new generation of knockoffs that people can hack on for vtuber avatars and weird porn. A VR headset (and don't let Apple's marketing fluff distract you, it's a VR headset) that can accurately track and reproduce facial expressions and head movements is genuinely very cool, and has a lot of potential. It's just not cool when Apple does it. And if this takes off it won't be cool when Google does it either.
But I guess that's the future that cyberpunk always offered us. Building our own world from the scraps of an economy that doesn't actually care about us.
My mom was asking me why VR stuff is still so expensive recently and I told her "because no one's adopting it because all tech companies can think of to do with it is strapping your work desktop to your face."
