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.