It doesn't need a battery at all. Just have it connect directly to a Mac to use as a virtual Mac display. It's what I use my Vision Pro for as its primary use case, to have an ultra-wide monitor in front of me without taking up any physical space. I use it for hours every day as my primary programming platform.
I really have no other use case, and don't need the VR/AR features. The virtual ultra-wide display of the latest VisonOS updates, which has the area of 2 4k monitors, is just amazing for coding. It's an incredible user experience and worth every penny for the Vision Pro for that alone.
Throwing away some of the AR/VR features and using it as a virtual display only would make it lighter and smaller. I could use something that doesn't block me from taking a drink while I code, for example. I couldn't care less about video games as well.
Apple (and Meta) didn't want a great PC accessory, they wanted new platforms they could own and monetize. They spent 10 years, both of them, integrating the whole PC inside the goggles because the display only approach had little value to them. Apple may try a PCVR headset, probably similar to the Beyond 2 but with glass and aluminum instead of plastic, as "big Mac display" is the only value any decent number of Vision Pro users get from their devices and Apple's got plenty of unused component supply and supply chain lined up already, but goggles are likely a dead form factor.
Man, I don't even bother using the ultra-wide monitor on my desk. The screen on my laptop can already display orders of magnitude far more information than I can easily process at one time. Even with contexts where I'm comfortable managing windows/buffers manually (e.g. emacs) there's simply too much space to easily manage. What do you do with all that space? Is it just pulling up every possible resources at once so you don't need to bother doing anything more than moving your eyes to switch contexts? How often are you switching contexts?
I find the extra space useful over just a laptop screen for coding - I can have a simulator to one side, and a coding window open with a good amount of space for metadata sidebars, along with a window or two for code documentation.
Where it really shines though is for photo review and editing. There it is spectacular to have so much space for image review even with a good number of adjustment controls up.
The other thing the screen is great is for use on a plane. No-one can see what you are working on, but it's also a kindness to others since your laptop screen is totally dark. It was really nice working on an international flight with the AVP and a laptop.
I appreciate the insight. I definitely understand why you might prefer this, especially with the in flight example and the photo editing. The one example I came up with internally was video editing/viewing, which seems to align quite well.
And yet I have people constantly telling me how they have four monitors set ups and still not enough screen real estate… and this is why they don’t like the Vision Pro, which can only give you one big ultra wide max.
I've yet to meet someone with strong preference for screen real estate that could back it up with productivity. Sometimes people just want stimulation.
Edit: i have no gripe with these people, I just simply don't buy that they're more productive. We all need our comforts. Mine is music.
There's nothing really to "throw away" that would make it slighter and smaller whilst still keeping your desired feature set.
The reality is that you're using the VR/AR features in one specific way - not that you're not using VR/AR
It's possible a slightly weaker CPU or GPU could be used but I don't think so and in any case the effects of that would be on cost not on weight. And I don't think the difference would be significant.
The external display being the EyeSight thing? I agree there. That's an expensive boondoggle that will probably be missing in the next iteration in any case.
I don't think you can get rid of cameras without reducing the gesture tracking fidelity. That's the reason the Vision Pro has so many cameras.
> M2 CPU subsystem
Not clear on what this means without looking up the spec sheet. Do you mean "use a slower CPU" or something else? If the former - it won't help that much with size or weight.
Sounds like you're really looking for something like the Bigscreen Beyond?
Congratulations, you just reinvented a decade old discontinued Microsoft products, Windows MR and HoloLens, which ended up being subsidization program for SteamVR and a pure tech demo.
Did not know HoloLens had 23megapixel displays to show high resolution text for coding. It must have been really useful back then with such a high resolution display that you could use for coding all day.
People really need to understand that its the details that make a product viable, not the concept.
HoloLens 2 had higher pixel density than AVP at 2K horizontal resolution at 43deg HFOV. So yeah, you just didn't know HoloLens had 23megapixel displays to show high resolution text for coding, nearly a decade ago.
The problem was the same as today. Dead numb market response to non-SteamVR VR/MR/AR/XR headsets.
Sure, but that PPD number is what prevents me from using these headsets as a primary display replacement. I personally don't need a virtual display that fills 100 degrees of my vision and would happily sacrifice FOV for something usable.
This is from someone who has spent hundreds of hours coding in VR, which currently requires big font sizes and screens that take up massive FOV, which I find very uncomfortable for extended periods.
Also two decades of headset display products that have existed the entire time VR has been a thing of pop culture interest, and yet has never been a product the masses give a fuck about.
The masses don't consume everything on their phones because they care about screen size or fidelity. Sure, they will buy phones with bigger and better screens than other phones, but if they want to do something on a big screen they will use their 60 inch 4k TV
In fact, the masses basically don't do computer stuff at all anymore.
I really have no other use case, and don't need the VR/AR features. The virtual ultra-wide display of the latest VisonOS updates, which has the area of 2 4k monitors, is just amazing for coding. It's an incredible user experience and worth every penny for the Vision Pro for that alone.
Throwing away some of the AR/VR features and using it as a virtual display only would make it lighter and smaller. I could use something that doesn't block me from taking a drink while I code, for example. I couldn't care less about video games as well.