Yeah, we did the same thing when designing our house almost ten years ago now, using a HTC Vive running https://irisvr.com/prospect/
Just like the article says: Within a second after putting on the headset you just know if things are proportioned right, or need some fine tuning. That's really valuable!
Also, when the house was actually (partially) built, it felt exactly like the simulations we knew pretty well by that point.
Christian is a brilliant developer, that made simply the best experience for reddit that ever existed; after the ban, and when Apollo was dead, I simply stopped consuming reddit (other than an occasional kagi search that takes me there).
I hope he knows that a lot of iOS users really appreciate his work, (I even convinced one hardcore Android user to get an iPhone just for this one app, it was that good).
Bars! My friends and I constantly talk about how good Apollo was. I've tried side loading with alt store as well, but I can't seem to keep it stable, it crashes, fails, etc.
That's neat. Once it is built, I think a cooler use is to trace wiring and plumbing through your walls of your existing house. Your revit model may include all of this data, or at least the plan. Things change. :)
Though this is especially helpful for old homes where you have to sort of improvise ethernet wiring.
I normally just use it to consume 4k hdr media though.
It has not lived up to being a utility player device, but so far it is so good at media delivery that is sort of okay.
This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets. Make a 3D world, walk through it. What am I missing?
The most incredible tech on the planet is just a useless, Rube Goldberg machine without an application for the tech.
VR has lots of uses, but it takes someone outside the field who wouldn’t have given it a go otherwise to see another use and go “hey guys, you can do THIS too!”
When I did this for a home remodel, the big difference was that it was AR and not just VR. Being able to experience where the virtual changes line up with the real world makes a huge difference.
Definitely a useful application for this but the article isn't doing AR at all, so it is just VR. The most common VR headset according to Steam can also do the same thing (but probably not as well).
"Ah yes, how hard could it be?", he confidently asks.
> What am I missing?
So much.
> This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets
The article is describing "room scale positioning". The first consumer available headset to offer this was released in 2016.
It may feel like it's been around forever if you're not familiar with the space except as a consoomer, but exploring a 3d space at room scale has only recently come into the realm of possibility for consumer grade headsets. For much of the 80s and 90s (and 00s), it was head tracking only. Real time positioning and moving around required positioning hardware that was a magnitude more expensive - and pretty much always had very specific space limitations. Sure, it existed to some degree, but it was such inexpensive addition that using an expensive and complicated treadmill was often considered the economical choice.
In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive. Previously, they all had specific limitations like a 4 x 4 foot area or were massive tech demos that existed in a quantity of one in a university basement somewhere, running a very tailored demo, and they certainly weren't feasible in the 90s.
> Make a 3D world, walk through it.
First of all, how do you map the room? Do you set up lighthouses? Low latency positioning? To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it. Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible. Previous generations didn't have it, and it's almost a guaranteed requirement for any large scale deployment of VR - for example, exploring multiple rooms.
Second, how do you create the "3d world"? It may seem simple, but VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation, and that means that any geometry and graphics you inert of the world needs to be within the compute budget of the headset solution. The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem. Again, it may feel like we've had the technology, but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages, and the compute power to process all of that in anything approaching a consumer solution. To do what AVP is doing with the USDZ files, composing them into the real world, and even applying lighting information, previously would have required a fleet of large and expensive machines. And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.
> To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it.
No, while you could do this, the article specifically mentions controller support for moving around. But sure, inside out tracking is not available on all VR headsets.
> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
No offense but did you look at what they exported from Fusion? Or the video demo of what they built? The only things that are not blocky are the models downloaded from IKEA. Nothing about this is impressive - AVP can render much better. Even the Meta Quest 3 can render much better.
> Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem.
Yes, but this article makes use of none of it because they are not doing AR.
There are apps for displaying RevIt models on the Apple Vision Pro, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, iPhone ARKit, and Android AR [1], so if you are working with an architect it is worth asking them if they can provide in-progress models as you iterate to avoid having to reproduce them yourself.
It seems like everything here can also be done with any iPhone using ARKit. Obviously the headset is better, but not $3500 better than just looking through your phone.
Just thought I’d raise this since it weirdly isn’t mentioned in the article.
I used a similar technique the last time I moved - scan the apartment using the iPhone, then I had a 3D model for measuring and planning out the space before/during the move. It’s a big help when planning out furniture etc.
And I scanned my old place before leaving so I can virtually step into it any time I want. iPhone via finder/preview handles showing 3D models in AR out of the box.
reading some of the comments i was expecting something really high end and polished, but yeah, this is something you could with a headset 1/10th the cost
I'm really excited to see AR take off in use cases like this, given how useful it would be to give all our technicians e.g. a legacy Google Glass (not the Intelligent Eyewear thing) and direct them to a rack, overlay information about a failed component, and walk them through the repair SOP.
It is absolutely unreal the experience watching the ~10 minute sports games on the Vision Pro. The thing is 4 grand but that’s how much the first 4K TVs were. Hope the price can drop where this becomes a more widespread experience, I am a virtual daily user of my AVP
Apple doesn’t sell the Vision Pro in Spain yet, so acquiring one would require taking a trip to France.
For Vision Pro owners: is it worth it? Do you use it often? The post does mention a very compelling use case, but it is quite narrow (how often are you remodelling your house?)
It is the greatest piece of technology I have ever owned, and I have a very hard time recommending it anyone.
It's clear that it is the future. But there's still some steps between where Apple is at with it today, and where it needs to be in order to be a mainstream product. I would look and see if you can find one used either in the local market, or via a short trip if possible.
I bought one and returned it within the 2 week window, well before the last day. I didn't even use it the last weekend I had it, I couldn't be bothered. When I brought it into the Apple Store to return it, the employee who processed the return seemed happy I was returning it rather than getting stuck with it, she didn't pull her punches when talking about it, which I found a bit shocking from an Apple employee. She marked down the reason for return as "not enough content", so I'm assuming that's why most people return it, but that wasn't really my issue.
While the new head strap was better than the original, it still wasn't all that comfortable to wear. Some things were super sharp, while other things always looked blurry. The window system still seemed buggy and I'd describe it as finicky. The battery doesn't last long enough to feel comfortable untethered, while it also gets in the way while being plugged into the wall. It also felt like a lot of work to actively look at what needed focus all the time. It still feels like it should be in beta, maybe even the lab. I'll be willing to try again down the road, but it's hard to tell how much attention Apple is really giving it, as we haven't seen all that much progress in the last couple years.
Favorite tech product I have ever purchased. I use it as my main MacBook display for often 8+ hours per day. As long as you are willing to bump up the font size a bit, the programming experience is fantastic. I use it as a 21:9 display, but it can go up to 32:9. My wife and I watch movies together in the theater environment, and the in-room sharing experience is great. My face and neck were prepared from numerous past headsets, but my wife really hasn't had any comfort issues. Since this is her first headset, I think that just varies by person.
Not worth it. Get a Meta Quest 3 and can vibe code something similar in a few hours. I recommend WebXR that comes with the built-in browser. Easier to distribute, share, collect feedback and iterate than native. And can use A-Frame: open source framework, very accesible and that I help maintain :)
It’s a cool use case, the same thing is achievable with other VR headsets of course. I imagine you can buy a second hand Quest 2 headset for under 100 euros
I keep on hearing it’s a flop, but where I live, Switzerland, they don’t sell it. So I can’t really say.
And I am not even talking about the badly taken product decisions for such a great headset but… how can they get devs onboarded for an app ecosystem for a device that can only be bought in a handful of countries?
Clearly Apple sold it and did their best so that it fails.
Vision Pro: when you're done sitting in the dark on your couch looking at photos of the family who left you, you can use AR to remodel your apartment. It even has textures.
It would be interesting to see someone apply the principles and techniques of Christopher Alexander to this - trying to "grow" the house virtually and seeing what it might feel like before committing to building it.
This is a killer use case, but you should also take a peek at the Human Factors Handbook -- it's got great information about how to architect buildings like homes that will help you avoid some pitfalls I've seen in custom homes that I've been the second owner of.
The coolest use I've seen is a research at the University of Alberta (Canada) that aims to use the Vision Pro to alleviate nystagmus[1].
This is a disease on the muscles that control the eyes' direction. It causes the eyes to twitch involuntarily. They use the Visio Pro to "twitch" the image along with the eye, so the patient doesn't feel the jitter. It enables them to read, watch movies, etc.
Another cool one is to use them to substitute the visual field test machines in ophthalmology offices. These are machines that cost U$15 000.00 dollars.
But this use isn't specific to the Vision Pro, or am I wrong? What prevents things like that from running on any other VR headset, like my half-broken Quest 2?
Human experience is a part of conservation. Without a house, these trees would get clear cut once they are big enough to be worth anything. With a house, the homeowner will want to keep them.
(I'd say it would be sweet to plant 2x as many trees as are cut! Especially if one has the expertise to pull that off in a meaningful way... lotta big companies ran into trouble trying to do similar in carbon credit scheme contexts.)
Also if the land's protected then you're right. In California, from Muir Woods to Big Sur, more segments would be countless mansions instead of redwoods w/o hard-fought battles & generous philanthropy. But not sure we're given enough data to sideeye Christian (post author and UX extraordinaire).
Humans destroy to create shelter; this can be done responsibly, meeting the Earth & Maslow's needs.
I agree. Despite the housing shortage, no more houses should ever be built. If you're late to the party and don't like getting wet in the rain, I dunno, find a cave or something.
Just like the article says: Within a second after putting on the headset you just know if things are proportioned right, or need some fine tuning. That's really valuable!
Also, when the house was actually (partially) built, it felt exactly like the simulations we knew pretty well by that point.
I hope he knows that a lot of iOS users really appreciate his work, (I even convinced one hardcore Android user to get an iPhone just for this one app, it was that good).
For that, thank you Christian!
The new reddit, the not old.reddit, is hideous and offensive, and it's hard to believe they didn't acquire Apollo.
Good for me though, no more reddit.
All the best to him on his future endeavors!
Though this is especially helpful for old homes where you have to sort of improvise ethernet wiring.
I normally just use it to consume 4k hdr media though.
It has not lived up to being a utility player device, but so far it is so good at media delivery that is sort of okay.
VR has lots of uses, but it takes someone outside the field who wouldn’t have given it a go otherwise to see another use and go “hey guys, you can do THIS too!”
> What am I missing?
So much.
> This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets
The article is describing "room scale positioning". The first consumer available headset to offer this was released in 2016.
It may feel like it's been around forever if you're not familiar with the space except as a consoomer, but exploring a 3d space at room scale has only recently come into the realm of possibility for consumer grade headsets. For much of the 80s and 90s (and 00s), it was head tracking only. Real time positioning and moving around required positioning hardware that was a magnitude more expensive - and pretty much always had very specific space limitations. Sure, it existed to some degree, but it was such inexpensive addition that using an expensive and complicated treadmill was often considered the economical choice.
In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive. Previously, they all had specific limitations like a 4 x 4 foot area or were massive tech demos that existed in a quantity of one in a university basement somewhere, running a very tailored demo, and they certainly weren't feasible in the 90s.
> Make a 3D world, walk through it.
First of all, how do you map the room? Do you set up lighthouses? Low latency positioning? To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it. Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible. Previous generations didn't have it, and it's almost a guaranteed requirement for any large scale deployment of VR - for example, exploring multiple rooms.
Second, how do you create the "3d world"? It may seem simple, but VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation, and that means that any geometry and graphics you inert of the world needs to be within the compute budget of the headset solution. The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem. Again, it may feel like we've had the technology, but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages, and the compute power to process all of that in anything approaching a consumer solution. To do what AVP is doing with the USDZ files, composing them into the real world, and even applying lighting information, previously would have required a fleet of large and expensive machines. And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.
No, while you could do this, the article specifically mentions controller support for moving around. But sure, inside out tracking is not available on all VR headsets.
> The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.
No offense but did you look at what they exported from Fusion? Or the video demo of what they built? The only things that are not blocky are the models downloaded from IKEA. Nothing about this is impressive - AVP can render much better. Even the Meta Quest 3 can render much better.
> Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem.
Yes, but this article makes use of none of it because they are not doing AR.
[1] https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdc...
Just thought I’d raise this since it weirdly isn’t mentioned in the article.
I used a similar technique the last time I moved - scan the apartment using the iPhone, then I had a 3D model for measuring and planning out the space before/during the move. It’s a big help when planning out furniture etc.
And I scanned my old place before leaving so I can virtually step into it any time I want. iPhone via finder/preview handles showing 3D models in AR out of the box.
I'm really excited to see AR take off in use cases like this, given how useful it would be to give all our technicians e.g. a legacy Google Glass (not the Intelligent Eyewear thing) and direct them to a rack, overlay information about a failed component, and walk them through the repair SOP.
Often, the more effort you put into the tiniest details, textures, etc the larger the realism payoff.
I also found that immersion got better when the headset responded to the subtle head movements that we all make.
Mushroom or plant recognition training through navigatable and manipulable gaussian splatters of the speciments in their habitat
It's clear that it is the future. But there's still some steps between where Apple is at with it today, and where it needs to be in order to be a mainstream product. I would look and see if you can find one used either in the local market, or via a short trip if possible.
While the new head strap was better than the original, it still wasn't all that comfortable to wear. Some things were super sharp, while other things always looked blurry. The window system still seemed buggy and I'd describe it as finicky. The battery doesn't last long enough to feel comfortable untethered, while it also gets in the way while being plugged into the wall. It also felt like a lot of work to actively look at what needed focus all the time. It still feels like it should be in beta, maybe even the lab. I'll be willing to try again down the road, but it's hard to tell how much attention Apple is really giving it, as we haven't seen all that much progress in the last couple years.
It’s also a terrible experience. Pixelated. Laggy. Can’t see where the keyboard is… it’s half baked.
I can work max one hour then I give up.
And I am not even talking about the badly taken product decisions for such a great headset but… how can they get devs onboarded for an app ecosystem for a device that can only be bought in a handful of countries?
Clearly Apple sold it and did their best so that it fails.
Instead, what will happen is that it will get gradually slimmer and lighter with each generation, a few hundred grams at a time.
The coolest use I've seen is a research at the University of Alberta (Canada) that aims to use the Vision Pro to alleviate nystagmus[1].
This is a disease on the muscles that control the eyes' direction. It causes the eyes to twitch involuntarily. They use the Visio Pro to "twitch" the image along with the eye, so the patient doesn't feel the jitter. It enables them to read, watch movies, etc.
Another cool one is to use them to substitute the visual field test machines in ophthalmology offices. These are machines that cost U$15 000.00 dollars.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nystagmus
(I'd say it would be sweet to plant 2x as many trees as are cut! Especially if one has the expertise to pull that off in a meaningful way... lotta big companies ran into trouble trying to do similar in carbon credit scheme contexts.)
Also if the land's protected then you're right. In California, from Muir Woods to Big Sur, more segments would be countless mansions instead of redwoods w/o hard-fought battles & generous philanthropy. But not sure we're given enough data to sideeye Christian (post author and UX extraordinaire).
Humans destroy to create shelter; this can be done responsibly, meeting the Earth & Maslow's needs.