Can Apple Vision Pro solve our problems?

jordan

I tried the Vision Pro!

Here is a comment I posted a few days ago on 9to5mac:

I tried a friend's Vision Pro and I can definitely say this is much less of an issue than I worried. I have issues with binocular vision and get eye strain with some types of screens in laptops/phones like OLED iPhones, so I was extremely surprised how comfortable VP is, maybe more than some "typical" screens. Not disoriented, felt great after 1.5hrs+ use!

I can 100% assure passthrough, although low res, is depth correct. Objects across room look far away as they normally would. (Something to note is that I did not see warping at all. The weird distortion people mention about Quest's passthrough is not there on VP.)

Your other comment about if it can create "differing ranges of focus" is actually true. Can be close, medium, far objects from both passthrough and VP's UI all within one scene. They appeared at the correct unique distances for me, able to shift focus between distances pretty easily.

The thing about eye strain in the context of close up objects is that it's less about actual distance of objects, and instead, the way eyes are moving to look at that object. Because VP's lenses allow the "close" screens to stay clear when eyes are diverged — like they usually would when looking far away — so eyes remain relaxed, more likely to focus farther than using phones. 2 unique screens (1 per eye) actually helped me "not focus wrong"!

Only eye strain was Mindfulness app, it blacks out passthrough, no "naturally moving" feed to compare depth of app graphics to. Only time I felt "too close" or "OLED taped to my face"

Based on my experience constantly browsing the web and trying a few apps for 1.5 hours…

I am actually very optimistic about Vision Pro!!

Disclaimer:

• I'm typically sensitive to PWM, temporal dithering, and flickering LED/fluorescent lightbulbs. I do not have seizures or migraines at all, which means lights that are visibly flashing, like at a concert, are actually fine to me. However, my issue is when light "invisibly" flickers, such as PWM.

  That's when I get extreme fatigue, eye strain, brain fog, reduced field of vision, trouble concentrating, and trouble focusing and moving my eyes correctly.

• Yet all of those symptoms basically stop impacting me when I use "true zero flicker" setups, like Waveform lights, old dither-free graphics drivers, and FRC-free + DC dimmable monitors.

• In the case of dithering, my sensitivity depends on the content. I seem to be OK with temporal dithering in media that has lots of motion anyway, like movies or fast paced action games. But when temporal dithering is applied to static content like on most MacBooks and newer GPUs, I cannot stand it, it completely prevents me from understanding information-dense text or feeling relaxed.

• If you have more severe symptoms than I do, or also have issues with visibly flashing lights at concerts in addition to invisible flicker like PWM, my experience might not be as helpful or applicable.

A few more Vision Pro notes:

• Screen resolution is adjacent to looking at a good projector, it's okay but not as sharp as reviews might lead you to think. It's not low res but not quite "retina" either. (Yes, my friend who owns the Vision Pro made sure to reset eye and head calibration and redo setup for me.)

• Surprisingly, I did not notice any flicker in my peripheral vision from foveated rendering!

• Despite using PWM OLED it did not feel like looking at iPhone OLED! This is probably because there is a dedicated screen per eye, as @Maxx was theorizing, so my eyes seemed to more intuitively know how to focus and I didn't get "the typical PWM strain".

  BTW, Vision Pro's subpixel layout is decently closer to RGB, which is great because I vastly prefer RGB to the typical, uneven Diamond PenTile layout in OLED smartphones.

• Not sure if temporal dithering is used in the visionOS UI, but I highly suspect it is (because Apple ColorSync…) What's great though is that the constantly moving background video feed actually did help reduce potential dithering strain. Since I'm always seeing natural motion in the background in sync with any tiny head movements, it's easier for my brain to relatively understand that still elements on the same screen should be processed as actually still.

• Of course, a true 3D display like this prevents the issue that some bad 2D screens have where they "appear to have depth when they actually shouldn't". This screen actually does have depth, so flat objects appeared properly flat.

• Temporal dithering is present in the screen stream when using Mac Virtual Display, almost hilariously so. The background of dark windows is obviously changing every split second or so, and text is literally twitching around at a magnitude that even someone with no sensitivity would notice LOL.

  The funny thing is that I actually preferred this "so obvious it made me laugh" dithering to the usual macOS dithering, because it's NOT trying to convince my brain that it's static at all, and thus what my brain processes stays in sync with what my eyes see. Native visionOS apps don't seem to have this obvious flicker.

  I hope that if Apple "fixes" this, they do it by removing dithering from Mac Virtual Display entirely, not by trying to make it "invisible"

Here is the absolute best feature about the Vision Pro:

• Eye control. With default settings, the primary way to select what to click on Vision Pro is entirely through moving your eyes. I thought this would be a dealbreaker for me, because "bad screens" typically have a huge impact on my eye movement ability, but I am so happy to report that it is the opposite and almost therapeutic.

  I tried desktop versions of websites with lots of tiny links, and even tried navigating around a complex web app (the web version of Visual Studio Code). Shockingly, I was totally able to click the right thing 90% of the time just by moving my eyes.

• Because you have to move and focus your eyes correctly to even be able to click the thing you want, if you are using it and successfully navigating around, that was possible because your eyes did the right thing.

  This means every time you interact with a UI element on the Vision Pro, it is literally training your eyes how to move better, and more in sync with your intentions.

  I think this control method is THE reason why I had such a surprisingly comfortable Vision Pro experience, despite the use of PWM and (possibly) dithering.

  You can also select letters on the virtual keyboard with just your eyes, which actually felt like a cool way to "exercise" darting my eyes around to precise locations. (I thought typing with my eyes like this would make me dizzy, but it surprisingly didn't!)

  I actually came out feeling like I could control my eyes in the real world better, which is a really good sign that my theory that the Vision Pro might help "train my eyes" might actually be accurate. This is in contrast to typical "bad screens", which usually even make reality look worse for a few hours after using them.

  I came out of the Vision Pro feeling pretty great with only some slight strain.

  Of course, a custom "0 PWM, 0 FRC, 0 Dither" laptop or desktop setup definitely can still be more comfortable in the end and can offer wayyy more sharpness and clarity…

  But the Vision Pro actually outclassed many "typical, unmodified modern displays" for me in comfort (including the rest of Apple's current lineup, LOL), which is awesome and something I didn't expect at all.

  Just don't use the Mindfulness app! (or any other app that similarly blacks out the background)