Rumor of $3,000 Apple 8K VR/AR Headset

9to5 Mac has republished a leak from “someone with direct knowledge of the device” of a supposedly pending Apple $3,000 8K VR/AR headset that would achieve its performance by concentrating on the natural foveal vision area of sharpness of the human eye. The article tongue-in-cheek points out that the price would be a relative bargain as it’s hard to currently purchase an 8K TV for around that price. Sounds like the device is more intended to be an industrial device (like the Microsoft HoloLens) but that some of the technology would leak down to Apple Glasses. The article terms the device “the Mac Pro of VR headsets.” Also says with that pricing, Apple expects to only sell only about one such device per day per Apple Store.

Just kidding here but the question remains can one do MSFS with the device?!

Apple mixed-reality headset: Two 8K displays, $3,000 price tag - 9to5Mac

And more in-depth analysis by Ars Technica, including whether the “report” can be the real deal…

New report on Apple’s VR headset: 8K in each eye, potential $3,000 price tag | Ars Technica

You’ll need two (2) RTX 3090’s no doubt, and still the performance would be just-about not-Ultra.

Which begs the question how do you get hold of, or how long do you have to wait in line for two RTX 3090’s? :slight_smile:

It’s not even 8k according to this, it’s 8k per eye… and that’s before the super sampling required for distortion correction! Even 3090’s need not apply lol.

This doesn’t seem viable to me, but if it turns out to be true it can only be being achieved through use of heavy foveated rendering (likely with machine learning based sparse rendering for the low resolution areas) and extremely high accuracy/low latency eye tracking.

Honestly if they suddenly came out with an 8k x 8k headset $3000 would be an absolute steal compared to what is currently available for enterprise. I doubt the veracity of all this info but I am excited to see what Apple with all of its vast resources can do in VR… anything that moves the tech forward is good in my opinion!

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Why do you think it needs dual 3090 though?

Let’s think outside the box for a minute: the headset ships with dual M1 embedded and you connect the headset with a single cable, TB4/USB-C and it works as eGPU…

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I’m wondering if the Apple headset comes with liquid cooling, though! :slightly_smiling_face: My G2 feels pretty warm after I’ve been using it a while and that’s in a house that we allow to drop into the 60’s deg F in the winter, too! Wondering what will happen in summer when we allow our house temperature to arise into the 80’s deg F and whether high-performance headset makers assume everyone will be using their rigs in air-conditioned splendor. Hope anyone selling a $3K headset will make it pretty rugged and durable both to some shock and some temp/humidity extremes.

My Index has been trustworthy during the summer :wink:

I have zero interest in anything by Apple but at least this is another big player entering the world of VR, this will help push the tech forward so regardless of my interests (or lack thereof) of the company I see this as good news.

I’ll await more details to see how it’ll work, bit sceptical at the moment so will await full specs.

Doubt it’ll be the M1 personally but will definitely be packing custom apple silicon for standalone capability imo… perhaps an M2 or something more specifically tailored to the needs of XR? Will be interesting whether they give the ability to use PC Desktop VR too or whether they focus purely on standalone as was initially the Quest’s direction before link… limiting it to standalone would make more sense from an app store perspective, and given the capabilities of apples silicon if you put something like an M1 or similar in it you really could view it more like a laptop that you wear on your face, so they may not feel the need to enable linking to desktop.

Even a theoretical dual M1 would be weak sauce on the GPU side though if you were intending to use it as an eGPU, it’s roughly equivalent to a 570 so even perfectly scaled a dual M1 wouldn’t even reach the power of a 3060Ti let alone a single 3090. Assuming those rumours of dual 8k are true (and that’s a BIG assumption imo) they have to have figured out a very capable eye tracking and foveated rendering system.

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I can’t really comment much on the accuracy of the rumour obviously but with VR now becoming more popular I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they had some sort of VR HMD in development. I would think it would be fairly upmarket though and maybe not sold at a bargain price.

An Apple VR HMD? I think that could fit in pretty well into their current product line up and more to the point for them I think there would be a healthy demand for it from their customer base. I also think that VR is less of a market risk now than it was, say, 5 years ago. :slightly_smiling_face:

Tracking your foveal bits is how they’ll deliver the very best experience. It’s a no brainer. Anything else is a total waste of resources.

However if people moan about their giant flashing hand controller tracking lord knows how they’ll manage one’s beady, swivelling eyes.

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Given it’s Apple it’ll certainly not be usable for PC gaming in any way, only to run on-device apps bought from the App Store :smiley:

Update on rumored Apple VR headset, supposedly mid-2022. Kuo has a pretty good record on leaking Apple stuff ahead of time. Kuo claims significantly better than any VR headset currently on market. The price is now said to be $1,000 in U.S.

Kuo: Apple to Launch Mixed Reality Headset in Mid 2022 and Augmented Reality Glasses by 2025 - MacRumors

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