This is total speculation on my part, but I do wonder why Apple have suddenly got this out the door to developers right at the same moment their headset is announced. They’ve never seemed very interested in this section of the games market before.
I wonder if this could be the first building block of allowing existing modern 3D games to play in some kind of new semi immersive way inside. I’m imagining playing an FPS on a huge wrap around screen with some adjustable depth perception. That could potentially open up a huge market.
Some background: Currently PCVR is basically 100% Windows. It's possible to stream VR games from a PC to a standalone headset (ie: with the Quest AirLink) but it depends on network conditions. For example, if both computer and headset are connected via WiFi, and neither has line of sight to the router, performance is likely to be questionable, at best. In theory a computer could use it's own WiFi chipset to make a direct connection, but there's also a WiFi 6 dongle that allows for a direct link between computer and headset.
With that said: Apple already has devices that talk to each other, laptops with high-speed WiFi chips, and now they're making a VR headset. So they have all the parts for a really slick PCVR (er, MacVR?) experience, except the games.
So I 100% don't think the timing is coincidental. They're almost certainly targeting PCVR, although I don't know what they will do with motion controllers. That said, there's still nearly a year until launch, so maybe they haven't shown us everything (or maybe it's not ready).
Edit: should also add that this might be really important for VR gaming because we don't know how much compute is available for apps. However, the dual-chip design implies that a single M2 was not enough for visionOS, which does not bode well.
It is also their first Vision generation, and it is spec:ed more closely to a Mac Pro than anything else really. Which makes me think of this as a devkit to see what devs are going to do with it.
100% agree with you on targeting PCVR Gaming, which is why I am a bit pissed off that they just dragged in wine as an abstraction layer. It means they are not really committing to working with gaming companies, they just want the fruits of their labour and can at any time just yeet that layer out of the OS.
They could have come with Wine at the same time they did Rosetta 2 but they chose not to. Had they done that, then I would have been less suspicious of their motives.
I think more than gaming porn is the current killer use of 360 VR tech. More on that later.
I’ve always believed VRs biggest use case in the end is work, but resolution and integration to the surrounding environment has been lacking. Have a 360 3D environment to work in, assuming resolution is high enough to read text, opens a lot of possibilities up. Ive done a fair amount of POC with various devices over the years and I stand by that. The gesture recognition of the new apple devices leads more in that direction IMO. For instance, it should be able to key (harhar) off a virtual keyboard being typed on. (Haptics will be an issue!)
I’d note also that VR has been successful in high end manufacturing design as well for these reasons.
I think gaming is what proves a tech and motivates people to engage. On the shadier side, porn even more so. But these technologies wend their ways into all aspects of our lives after being proven out in the game / porn use cases.
This is an actually interesting use of the headset. Price tag at this state to high for most users -- but imagine it dropped down to something reasonable. Throw in your favorite game and the immersive experience would be pretty slick.
You are definitely correct -- they are opening the door for gaming on that system though they are doing it quietly not to get competition up in arms.
I will wager the headset will drop slightly in price but new skus will be offered that cover a price range. Apple products have always been too high for most users - yet they seem fairly successful as a company by chasing the top half of the market only. I don’t see them making burner VR headsets ever, I think they’ll stick at the ultra high end with some high to mid market lower ends that eschew things like showing yours eyes etc.
I wonder if this could be the first building block of allowing existing modern 3D games to play in some kind of new semi immersive way inside. I’m imagining playing an FPS on a huge wrap around screen with some adjustable depth perception. That could potentially open up a huge market.