The Future of Virtual Reality: Apple's Breakthroughs and Innovations

Apple is on the cusp of revolutionizing the virtual reality (VR) industry with its latest innovations, setting the stage for a new era of immersive experiences. The company's latest developments, showcased during WWDC, have left tech enthusiasts eagerly awaiting the release of its highly anticipated VR headset. With its cutting-edge technology and user-friendly interface, Apple is poised to redefine the boundaries of VR and take the industry by storm.

One of the most significant breakthroughs in Apple's VR headset is its ability to generate photorealistic 3D avatars that can be created in real-time for users. This technology has the potential to transform the way we interact with virtual environments, enabling users to experience unprecedented levels of immersion and realism. With its advanced graphics capabilities and sleek design, Apple's VR headset promises to deliver a truly exceptional user experience that will surpass existing VR products.

Apple's virtual desktop capabilities are another area of innovation that holds great promise. Virtual desktops have been around for some time, allowing users to place multiple screens into virtual environments. However, most current solutions fall short in terms of productivity and sharpness. Apple's headset is expected to address this issue with its 4K OLED displays per eye, providing a significantly improved viewing experience. Moreover, the company's full control over both hardware and software will enable seamless integration with existing Apple products, creating a cohesive and intuitive interface that will revolutionize the way we work and interact.

The user interface (UI) of Apple's VR headset is expected to be highly optimized for ease of use, thanks to advanced controls such as eye tracking and hand tracking. These technologies allow users to interact with virtual objects without the need for controllers or complex gestures. This intuitive control scheme promises to enhance the overall VR experience, making it more accessible and enjoyable for a wider range of users.

The media experience that Apple has developed for its VR headset is another area of excitement. With its focus on delivering high-quality visuals and immersive storytelling, Apple is likely to create an unparalleled live event experience in VR, particularly in sports. The company's previous acquisition of Next VR, which specialized in live events in VR, suggests a deep understanding of the market and a commitment to delivering exceptional experiences.

In 2019, Next VR partnered with various companies to bring NBA games into virtual reality, offering viewers an unparalleled experience that simulated the thrill of being at the event. The technology allowed users to track positional audio in real-time, ensuring that every movement felt authentic and engaging. Although Apple acquired Next VR in 2020, there has been no public indication of what happened to this innovative technology since the acquisition.

The hardware of Apple's VR headset is expected to be remarkably light, with an external battery pack that connects via a cable to minimize weight. This design feature will be particularly beneficial for developers who will be using the headset extensively, as it ensures maximum comfort and portability. While Apple may not need the portability as much due to the device's advanced technology, it is still a welcome feature that enhances the overall user experience.

With WWDC just around the corner, tech enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting the release of Apple's highly anticipated VR headset. As the company continues to push the boundaries of innovation, one thing is clear: the future of virtual reality is in good hands with Apple.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enover the past few years we've seen a lot of companies try to tackle virtual and mixed reality headsets the vast majority of them though haven't been all that successful but Rumor Has It Apple will be launching their own headset this June at WWDC and if the rumors are true they have some stuff lined up that I think only Apple could pull off right now but before going further I gotta come clean I've been fooling you guys this whole video because if you look carefully you might have noticed that I look a little different this video so I'm going to blow your freaking mind that was just a VR Dave the whole time you probably don't even know got him so it looks like Apple's getting into this VR space pretty soon I think one of the biggest obstacles that they're going to have is somehow popularizing this Tech outside of gaming right because this is Apple it has to be massively popular if they're going to build the hardware and develop all the services for it and make it something that they're gonna make profits from it has to extend Way Beyond gaming so I looked into the rumors just to see what they're doing and it looks like well there's three things that striking is being quite interesting the first is that their headlining feature seems to be some kind of face time in VR or some kind of like 3D face time so the idea being you'd wear a headset and the people that you interact with I keep I don't like my hair right now man you guys just had to deal with uh and the people that you interact with would show up in your headset in 3D in a very photorealistic manner now at first I was like that's kind of cool but when it comes to like realistic looking VR avatars they're usually pretty bad like they're the stuff of memes and Nightmares uh now Facebook or meta has been working on volumetric 3D avatars that look pretty real and can interact with lighting and stuff but these are typically very time consuming to generate like you used to need a rig with hundreds of cameras you can do a kind of toned down version using just the true depth camera on an iPhone like the front facing camera with the depth sensor and then after it does that scan it still needs hours and sometimes days of processing to be able to generate one of these VR models but once you have a model you can pilot it using a headset like you would just wear it and the sensors in that headset would be able to detect your facial movements and all your facial cues and project it in real time to that model but the thing is you can't generate one of those nice looking models using just this headset in real time you had to have had a pre-built model that you can control using a headset and I'm not even sure that this headset the quest Pro can even control it the way that they did in the demos but because Apple's device would have a very powerful chip like the M2 Chip plus supposedly some like ancillary AR chip built into it and it has a bunch of sensors including a true depth sensor and lidar and all that stuff but because it has all the equipment to be able to in theory generate a real-time representation of the user who's using it I think that Apple will be the first company to bring out a photorealistic 3D avatar that's generated in real time for the user I think that's the only way that Apple would have launched this product because if they didn't have that capability like can you imagine Tim going on stage and be like hey you know we have our new 3D face time you're gonna love it and then the audience is seeing these like Derpy ass 3D models that look like they came from like the PlayStation 2 era there's no way that would be funny but it'd be devastating for Apple like devastating to the entire like VR industry to be honest like I just I think that Apple's implementation of this is gonna look good the whole realistic faces in video conferencing okay the second thing of interest to me is their whole virtual and augmented desktop capabilities so virtual desktops have been around for a long time where you can place these big screens or multiple screens into virtual environments and we have mixed reality desktops where we can take those virtual screens and then stick them into your real environment using things like pass-through feeds and there's various forms of it but all of that Tech technology is okay it never feels like a truly excellent productivity experience for me and it just boils down to the sharpness of the screen these are 2K screens per eye good Optics Apple's headset is supposed to be running 4K oleds per eye but I think the biggest Advantage with Apple's whole virtual desktop or augmented desktop thing is the UI like all these other products we've ever seen have simply taken your regular Windows desktop or Mac desktop and just reprojected it as screens right but Apple would have full control of all the hardware and software here so their augmented desktop experience would be really tuned for their ecosystem so they'll probably have a bunch of like functional widgets and launchers and I'm sure I'll just have really tight integration with existing Apple products now the controls for the UI are apparently done through a combination of eye tracking as well as finger slash hand tracking so you'll be able to look at things and just interact with your fingers and it's all detected through sensors on the device there's no controllers required which is pretty cool Okay the third thing I'm interested in is the media experience that Apple built to deliver over on this headset so I'm sure they're gonna have like the giant screens and immersive theaters we've seen that stuff before I'm sure Apple's implementation will be cool but I want to see how Apple's going to handle live events in VR particularly Sports so a few years ago in 2019 I was watching NBA games with a headset with a kavira headset I was using the HTC Vive and there's a company called Next VR that did live events in VR and it was so cool they had NBA games with positional audio so as you moved your head around it would feel like you're at the event and like whatever you're looking at like if you're looking at a ball or a player as you would track it with your head movement the viewport was unique to what you wanted to see and these seeds were good right these were like thousand dollar courtside seats and you'd just be able to experience it from the comfort of your couch and I remember they had a whole bunch of other events in sports but the NBA stuff was particularly cool but then Apple bought that company in 2020 I I think was like 100 million but they bought this company and after that acquisition they disappeared like all the streaming stuff it stopped uh and since then I have not seen a single company that has delivered an experience that was nearly as good as next VR did in 2019 dude that was like three four years ago so I am stoked to see what Apple has done I mean I hope they did something good with it and then just like Burn It To The Ground but I feel like they have something up their sleeve that'll be extra cool uh okay last thing the hardware so just real quick it's supposed to be very light like even the battery pack is supposedly external and connects via a cable to keep the weight down but I think for the user experience that Apple's trying to deliver with generation one of those products and ultralight headset is very valuable like for all the developers that would be picking this up to kind of build the ecosystem that this whole product is you're gonna be wearing for extended periods of time you want extreme comfort for that right not like what wait to bog it down they don't really need the portability as much um but man this pull product category is I'm so interested to see how Apple takes this okay June WWDC we'll see you thenover the past few years we've seen a lot of companies try to tackle virtual and mixed reality headsets the vast majority of them though haven't been all that successful but Rumor Has It Apple will be launching their own headset this June at WWDC and if the rumors are true they have some stuff lined up that I think only Apple could pull off right now but before going further I gotta come clean I've been fooling you guys this whole video because if you look carefully you might have noticed that I look a little different this video so I'm going to blow your freaking mind that was just a VR Dave the whole time you probably don't even know got him so it looks like Apple's getting into this VR space pretty soon I think one of the biggest obstacles that they're going to have is somehow popularizing this Tech outside of gaming right because this is Apple it has to be massively popular if they're going to build the hardware and develop all the services for it and make it something that they're gonna make profits from it has to extend Way Beyond gaming so I looked into the rumors just to see what they're doing and it looks like well there's three things that striking is being quite interesting the first is that their headlining feature seems to be some kind of face time in VR or some kind of like 3D face time so the idea being you'd wear a headset and the people that you interact with I keep I don't like my hair right now man you guys just had to deal with uh and the people that you interact with would show up in your headset in 3D in a very photorealistic manner now at first I was like that's kind of cool but when it comes to like realistic looking VR avatars they're usually pretty bad like they're the stuff of memes and Nightmares uh now Facebook or meta has been working on volumetric 3D avatars that look pretty real and can interact with lighting and stuff but these are typically very time consuming to generate like you used to need a rig with hundreds of cameras you can do a kind of toned down version using just the true depth camera on an iPhone like the front facing camera with the depth sensor and then after it does that scan it still needs hours and sometimes days of processing to be able to generate one of these VR models but once you have a model you can pilot it using a headset like you would just wear it and the sensors in that headset would be able to detect your facial movements and all your facial cues and project it in real time to that model but the thing is you can't generate one of those nice looking models using just this headset in real time you had to have had a pre-built model that you can control using a headset and I'm not even sure that this headset the quest Pro can even control it the way that they did in the demos but because Apple's device would have a very powerful chip like the M2 Chip plus supposedly some like ancillary AR chip built into it and it has a bunch of sensors including a true depth sensor and lidar and all that stuff but because it has all the equipment to be able to in theory generate a real-time representation of the user who's using it I think that Apple will be the first company to bring out a photorealistic 3D avatar that's generated in real time for the user I think that's the only way that Apple would have launched this product because if they didn't have that capability like can you imagine Tim going on stage and be like hey you know we have our new 3D face time you're gonna love it and then the audience is seeing these like Derpy ass 3D models that look like they came from like the PlayStation 2 era there's no way that would be funny but it'd be devastating for Apple like devastating to the entire like VR industry to be honest like I just I think that Apple's implementation of this is gonna look good the whole realistic faces in video conferencing okay the second thing of interest to me is their whole virtual and augmented desktop capabilities so virtual desktops have been around for a long time where you can place these big screens or multiple screens into virtual environments and we have mixed reality desktops where we can take those virtual screens and then stick them into your real environment using things like pass-through feeds and there's various forms of it but all of that Tech technology is okay it never feels like a truly excellent productivity experience for me and it just boils down to the sharpness of the screen these are 2K screens per eye good Optics Apple's headset is supposed to be running 4K oleds per eye but I think the biggest Advantage with Apple's whole virtual desktop or augmented desktop thing is the UI like all these other products we've ever seen have simply taken your regular Windows desktop or Mac desktop and just reprojected it as screens right but Apple would have full control of all the hardware and software here so their augmented desktop experience would be really tuned for their ecosystem so they'll probably have a bunch of like functional widgets and launchers and I'm sure I'll just have really tight integration with existing Apple products now the controls for the UI are apparently done through a combination of eye tracking as well as finger slash hand tracking so you'll be able to look at things and just interact with your fingers and it's all detected through sensors on the device there's no controllers required which is pretty cool Okay the third thing I'm interested in is the media experience that Apple built to deliver over on this headset so I'm sure they're gonna have like the giant screens and immersive theaters we've seen that stuff before I'm sure Apple's implementation will be cool but I want to see how Apple's going to handle live events in VR particularly Sports so a few years ago in 2019 I was watching NBA games with a headset with a kavira headset I was using the HTC Vive and there's a company called Next VR that did live events in VR and it was so cool they had NBA games with positional audio so as you moved your head around it would feel like you're at the event and like whatever you're looking at like if you're looking at a ball or a player as you would track it with your head movement the viewport was unique to what you wanted to see and these seeds were good right these were like thousand dollar courtside seats and you'd just be able to experience it from the comfort of your couch and I remember they had a whole bunch of other events in sports but the NBA stuff was particularly cool but then Apple bought that company in 2020 I I think was like 100 million but they bought this company and after that acquisition they disappeared like all the streaming stuff it stopped uh and since then I have not seen a single company that has delivered an experience that was nearly as good as next VR did in 2019 dude that was like three four years ago so I am stoked to see what Apple has done I mean I hope they did something good with it and then just like Burn It To The Ground but I feel like they have something up their sleeve that'll be extra cool uh okay last thing the hardware so just real quick it's supposed to be very light like even the battery pack is supposedly external and connects via a cable to keep the weight down but I think for the user experience that Apple's trying to deliver with generation one of those products and ultralight headset is very valuable like for all the developers that would be picking this up to kind of build the ecosystem that this whole product is you're gonna be wearing for extended periods of time you want extreme comfort for that right not like what wait to bog it down they don't really need the portability as much um but man this pull product category is I'm so interested to see how Apple takes this okay June WWDC we'll see you then\n"