The coolest use for the Vision Pro

So when clients come in, and feels adventurous, we'll setup the headset, set the display height to their actual, and let them walk around their beautiful new home.

The response has been powerful. My clients are able to truly understand the scale, the proportion of rooms, ceiling heights, and the smallest details.

We're able to make real-time changes to the model (within reason) and provide instant design feedback.

I've been using this technology for years and I'm surprised it's not being adopted faster - good for us right now though!

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!

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.

https://www.twinmotion.com/

Basically, you do the geometry modelling in Sketchup, Blender or what have you, import that into TM, texture it, place lights and then walk around Doom style. VR headsets are supported natively. There is also a decent (and very easy to use) support for "scenarios", so you can open/close doors, turn on/off lights, etc.

Highly recommended.

PS. There is a free desktop version of Sketchup Make 2017. Got everything one needs for a single-person setup. There is a copy on the Internet Archive.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1ut1atj/how_i_ret...

https://old.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1tq34lj/created_...

Submitted previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48867417

https://kmcheung12.github.io/climb-preview/w/a6ece004

I think 3D application is massively under utilised. There is whole family of interaction the textual web cannot provide

[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.

It’s useful for placing furniture in your home. The IKEA app used to offer something similar.

Technically there’s no reason you couldn’t do something like a full house too.

[1] In the early 90's VRML was going to create a Snowcrash style metaverse of 3D places you could visit.

Having experienced other AR/VR products I was interested to see how Apples general 'refinement' of this product area worked out.

I admit, I had low expectations; and probably for the best, because nothing could've prepared me for what I experienced.

Given this was a gen1 product, I was blown away by how seamless and 'complete' the experience was. There was a few obvious places for refinement like battery-life, weight and the screen. But the immersive experience was incredibly convincing, compelling and even relaxing. The price point clearly needs to come down, and I suspect the technology was a little ahead of its time. But I can see in 5-10 years after continuous iteration and improvement that this product will be something else.

I also did some light simulations so we could see how the skirting roof around the building would allow light in for summer vs winter.

We have been very happy we used VR. It allowed us to iterate on what felt right, communicate exactly what we wanted to the builder, and the sunlight simulations have allowed it to be comfortably usable year round - letting light in during the winter, but keeping direct light out during the summer.

https://ibb.co/TD9Ygkpy

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

It worked great. There's nothing better than walking through a design. It turned out to be the _only_ way I was able to get over my analysis paralysis and actually commit to the project. I took pictures from all angles and printed them for our contractors, and they found it very useful as well.

It's stunning how similar the real pictures are to our renders. Here's an example for those interested: https://imgur.com/a/y3KXphc

I really struggle with visualising what things are going to look like. Even trivial stuff like choosing a colour to paint the wall. Sticking tiny paint swatches or painting sections from sample pots just doesn't work either, it's either all or nothing to me. I don't have that aphantasia thing either, quite a vivid imagination actually, but for stuff like home decor and I'm useless

I'm not really in the market for a vision pro or VR headset so my version of this is to take a picture of a space (say a wall) and feed it into on of the AI image generators with a colour - probably taken from a screenshot of a paint vendor, and tell it to generate me an image of what the wall would look like in <this colour>.

Obviously it's not perfect but it's definitely given me a better idea of what, in the ballpark, something would look like when painted on the whole wall.

I've also had some success with getting it to generate stuff with wall decor on as well, even pasting in product images (e.g. "what would this mirror look like") - even on the "painted" wall.

Again, not perfect, but it's helped me a lot.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0g7glgm

It prompted me to wonder why environments haven't evolved into fully realistic room makeovers yet. As the writer notes, the hardware is ready for more uses.

The Vision Pro is great hardware, waiting for a beyond-toy-app beyond-media-kiosk OS.

I use it as a Mac screen. But why one "screen". Why not all Mac windows. Why not Mac windows that naturally handle 3D content.

I am talking "mundane" but seamless support. The better use of visual space, the better physical ergonomics of screens that can be easily moved, and no barrier to evolving practical uses for 3D, would create the "NeXT" Pro experience over macOS/Mac over time. Instead of another iOS check out counter.

I believe Steve would have seen the beyond Mac potential.

The first version's hardware is still "Pro" enough for a Pro OS.

Just as a screen, switching between a MacBook Pro and Vision Pro is frictionless (aside from a few seconds to link each time). Eye tracking and pinching could be implemented on the Mac, via its camera/island so physical memory translated both ways.

I use mine every day, with just-out-of-reach frustration in direction proportion to real what-I-have-now appreciation.

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.

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.

I imagine at least the architectural stuff just happens now.

I wish I had a vision pro it would be more awesome. But yes you can quickly create 3d models now from just a drawing. What a time to be alive.

On the other hand, we can just do this stuff ourselves now. No movie studio level of equipment required. And THAT is pretty awesome.

There's definitely a perception gap that needs to be closed for these things, whether through VR or something slightly less digital. That's probably also a big part of the appeal of prefabs.

https://www.sweethome3d.com/

Mushroom or plant recognition training through navigatable and manipulable gaussian splatters of the speciments in their habitat

Awesome things..

Also while you are at it- add a Brain Interface reacting to a P300 response with LLM changes to the house depending on what the user looks at :p

I can only imagine how powerful that experience would be for experiencing your future house.

Throw in some time-of-day lighting and sun-path illumination... would he great!

Should have done it. Should have called it Project Plowshare.

This is arguably the most banal use of XR, for the Vision Pro or any headset.

It's still cool and useful but if that reaches the top of HR it shows a worrying state of both the platform and the XR industry.

PS: I work in XR and spend time on HN so clearly not the audience.

Anyway, I've been using Radiance to help me deal with the above issues, but it's for all practical purposes non-interactive. At some point there's bound to be a e.g. Monte-Carlo physically-based ray-tracer for these use cases, featuring radiometry with visually negligible error compared to reference (i.e. if you were looking at the real thing with your eyeballs), that is _interactive_-capable (at least in the frames-per-second category and not seconds-per-frame). It's probably already out there, but people have different preferences as to the tools they wish to employ. I like Radiance because it's text mode and gives you a lot of quality for all the text editing and tool composition (which frankly is a bit weird, Greg Ward was sure a maverick!), but mileage varies there.

But bringing the tools to the masses to create something like this, well that’s another story (one that I’ve been pursuing for many years myself).

Thanks, Christian!

An effect of the heat wave, maybe.

We''re burning the world and destroying biodiversity, yeah let's continue our destruction with tech as a bonus, this is awesome.

I mean, if you already have the land, "the housing market" doesn't really matter. The construction costs are a relatively small % of housing costs in expensive markets; usually the land is the biggest factor.

Plus, when you're building, the cost of each marginal square foot is relatively small.

Sorry, usually not that snarky but.. c'mon...

Am I so used to shit-tier ads that a "tasteful" ad confuses me?