The real purpose of the Apple Vision Pro

I have now owned my Apple Vision Pro for a couple of months, and I have been using VR goggles playing games on my PC for a couple of years.

Those of us who bought the AVP have been desperately looking for more content to make the massive price of the device worthwhile.  But I think I have actually figured out the real killer purpose for the AVP:

VR on PCs (i.e. Windows) is awful.  Oh boy, is it terrible.  

I have bought two of the very best consumer-grade PC VR headsets available, the Varjo Aero and the Bigscreen Beyond.  The Varjo Aero is a somewhat cut-down consumer version of the headsets Varjo sell to things like air force training centers, for use in their professional flight simulators.  It is (was, actually, since Varjo no longer sells it) a great big box, with high resolution LCD eyepieces, a large, air conditioned area between your face and the screen, large enough so that you can wear your own glasses, and automatic controls to figure out your IPD (interpupillary distance, or the distance between your eyes), the point being that anyone who is at least a late teenager will be able to wear the headset.  You can share it between people.  

The Bigscreen Beyond is made to be as small as possible, which it does by creating a headset that only fits the one person involved.  When you buy it, you use an iOS app to scan your face, from which they create a foam liner that attaches to the very small headset, in the shape of your eyes and the top of your nose.  You send in your vision prescription and Zeiss makes lenses that snap into the headset.  And unlike every other PC headset, the Beyond uses OLED (actually micro-OLED) screens instead of LCDs for better color resolution and perfect blacks.  

Both of them are considered "expensive" in the VR headset world.  They have the pros and cons: the Varjo is big and clumsy, but it will fit almost anyone without modification.  The Bigscreen Beyond is small, but it is still pretty heavy and clumsy to wear.  The lens inserts reflect a lot of glare from the micro-OLEDS.  But the colors are better and more realistic.    

Both headsets require external base stations (sold separately, and by a different company) in order to be used, and if you want to play true VR games you need to buy separate hand controllers also.  

And my experience is: they suck.  Not so much because of their own hardware, but because of the horrible software on the PC that is required to make them work.  Both require the Steam VR third-party software to operate, and I swear to god, every time I fire the system up, it's like it's a new experience every time.  Sometimes the headsets don't initialize, and have to unplug something.  Sometimes the view in the headset is incomplete.  The Steam VR "room" that you start in looks like a silly cartoon.  Windows is, of course, famous for making their OS work with "everything", although what they really mean is that every company that makes a Windows product has to make it work with whatever Microsoft provides, because they have the largest PC market.  And for VR, what they've provided is pretty damn terrible.  But if you seriously want to play VR games, Windows is the ONLY choice.  

And keep in mind, if you enjoy games on a PC: to get a 3D view, you have to generate the screen TWICE.  Just attaching a VR headset doubles the required resolution to play, as your eyes are very sensitive to detail and are very unforgiving.  Each eye requires the equivalent of a 4k monitor.

And then there's the Apple Vision Pro:

and as soon as you put it on, you see exactly what Microsoft hasn't bothered to provide for you.  NO third-party software OR hardware is required.  You don't even need an external PC: the AVP is basically an iPad with stereo vision, and has built-in CPU, GPU and memory/storage, although you CAN throw your Mac screen onto it, completely painlessly, and thus have a huge virtual monitor anywhere you want it.

The AVP is covered with cameras, which it uses to allow you to just use your hands directly, as long as there's reasonable lighting, anyway.  Just pinch and drag.  

We're in early days, and there are bugs and other problems, but Apple have really shown how good VR must be in order to be useful to the general public, not just for hardware nerds like me.  It's very illuminating.

Tesla, Sapiens and Software Upgrades

 One cool thing about my new Tesla is that they've moved much of the operation of the car into software, which means that, as time goes on, my car will actually improve, unlike almost any other car out there.

In his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the author, Yuval Noah Harari, points out that the main difference between Homo Sapiens and other primates is that we can organize ourselves around ideas and so we can have groups larger than just people who know each other personally.

The point being, we, as a country, are attempting a software upgrade of our humanity, trying to replace the old meme, which was good for some people but not all, with something that works for everyone. The old guard are resisting the upgrade, they're afraid of change, but eventually you have to upgrade, to get the new features.

 My friend Ken Stanley and I created a song for the times, and posted it everywhere.  

My wife told me it felt like the Apocalypse; I realized it was Tuesday and contacted my friend the ace songwriter Ken Stanley, and suggested that he create a song called "Apocalypse Tuesday", in the vein of the "Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society".  A couple of hours later he had finished the song.  I sang it and played guitar and bass on it.

Then Ken created a great video for it in the space of a couple of days!  So here it is:

Apocalypse Tuesday

Film Frame Rate

I think it's high time for people to get used to high frame rate video.  The "Soap Opera Effect" seems eerily realistic because it IS MORE REALISTIC.  24-30 fps was a way to make film cheap enough to use, but just barely fast enough to make action less jerky.  We don't have to do that anymore; we don't use film stock anymore.  Realistic video is a GOOD thing!  It's time to start working with it!

The only movie I’ve heard of that was actually filmed to use a high frame rate was Ang Lee’s “Gemini Man”.  A kinda standard action movie starring Will Smith.  And the thing is, it looked pretty cool!   It bombed, but it looked cool.  But I agree with Lee: digital is not celluloid, and we don’t need to be limited to what celluloid can do just because of movie audience nostalgia for a crappy motion format.


https://www.indiewire.com/2019/10/james-cameron-disagrees-ang-lee-high-frame-rate-avatar-1202184115/

Containers

[geeky]
Containers.  The new buzzword.  The latest iteration of the desire to make applications invulnerable.

I've been working with Docker a lot recently.  I have to admit: I'm basically offended by containers.

Containers simply gather a lot of technology that already exists into one place and let you use it all at once with yet another interface and set of commands.  Some parts of virtualization, some parts of more advanced, kernel-based security features, all bundled into a single thing called a container.

The thing is,  we could have made running apps on single unix machines much safer and easier to do.  For instance, let's just admit that dynamic libraries were a bad idea.  They were meant to save space when hard disk space and RAM were expensive, but the price was library/DLL hell.  We don't need to deal with this anymore.  One time I begged my manager to let me statically link the older version of OpenSSL to a program.  It would save so much time and effort on the customer's side to not have to install our antiquated version of OpenSSL themselves, but the manager didn't want the responsibility for having to issue new binaries if another "Heartbleed" was found.  Fair enough.  But boy, does that manager want to get us working with Docker!  What?  Now we're not going to just be responsible for our own binaries, we're going to be responsible for the entire OS installation in the container?

Star Trek

I like many aspects of the new Star Trek series, but ... the writing.

SPOILERS!

The entire premise for the series is that Spock has a previously unknown adopted human SISTER.  Does that sound like a fanfic from a 15-year-old girl?

The first season is yet another trip into the “Spock’s Beard” universe.

The premise for the second season is that Spock (the real one) and his sister have to, um, save the universe. Yes, Mr. Spock is a really popular character.  Does he really need to dominate yet another series?

I mean, I often think about writing sequels to my favorite tv episodes.  Doesn’t everyone?  What most people DON’T do is write original stories.  I would think that’s what you pay actual writers to do.

Social Democracy

I'm one of the last of the Baby Boomers. Me and my parents' generation were deathly afraid of Communism and, by extension, Socialism as well. But those days are long over, the Soviet Union is dead and gone (despite the efforts of Putin), and China continues to be an example for the problems of both Socialism and Fascism in the 20th Century, that is, the problem was really Authoritarianism all along.

It's time for all true non-Classical Liberals and Progressives (which basically includes everyone to the left of Ayn Rand) to get over our fear of the "S" word and get behind Social Democracy. No one wants to have workers control the means of production (unless they really want to) and no one wants a "strong man" in control of everything; Social Democracy is key. It's what we and all our cousins in Europe and Scandinavia were already using, we just didn't have a name for it. Let's embrace it, and get to work!

Do liberals think Trump supporters are dumb?

I've seen many statements by Trump supporters that they are angry because liberals think they are "dumb" or "evil". I've even been told this by someone I know who feels this way. So, let's break it down:

Trump has been a celebrity almost his entire life. Everything he's ever done is out there, documented. All the philandering, all the bankruptcies, all the screwed employees, all the racism. Anyone who wanted to know about Trump and exactly what he was could have found out, long before the 2016 election.

Given that, there are three possibilities:

a. You didn't bother to check into Trump before you voted for him

b. You checked, but you didn't believe the bad stuff, despite it being posted by many, many sources that had no intrinsic anti-Trump bias, they just posted what he did, or

c. You liked what he stood for, even knowing what it was.

Now, which of these options should make me think you aren't either dumb or just plain nasty?

Can't go Back to iPhone

I decided to do a little experiment; I wanted to see if I could stand iOS well enough now that I could use an iPhone full time, specifically the iPhoneX, perhaps the most beautiful piece of tech I have ever seen. 

But once again, iOS has stopped me.  For instance, I want to copy a FLAC file to my phone and play it.  On my Android phone that's a drag and drop operation.  On the iPhone, however, the native iTunes can't handle FLAC, and so I can't use iTunes to transfer the file to my iPhone.  I could use a third-party app, but I'd still have to use iTunes to transfer the files.  It's too much of a pain.

So I want to arrange the locations of my app icons on my Home screens.  On Android, I can do this.  But using iOS, I can do no better than to limit the amount of icons on each screen in order to show some free space.  And I can choose which icons are on which screen, but I can only change their order, not where they are actually displayed.  And the big icons still look awfully Windows 3.1 to me.  

I want to buy a new Kindle book.  On Android, I can do that from within the Kindle app.  On the iPhone, I have to open up a web browser session at Amazon, buy the book there, then load it on to my iPhone using the app.  What a non-elegant operation.  Pisses me off.

Apple, it's time to join the 21st century.  Oh, I'll probably keep using my iPad; Android just doesn't have what I need there yet.  But phone-wise, do the following, and I'll consider returning:

1. Let me drag and drop music and video files onto the phone from my computer, and not just from a Mac.

2. Reduce the size of the damn app icons and let me arrange them how I want.  It's a beautiful phone, let me keep it beautiful-looking!

3. Let me buy stuff in the apps I want to use.  Preventing it makes you guys look like idiots.