There’s a big problem with AR and VR goggles; they make some of us feel sick. Apple, understandably, wants to make sure that Vision Pro doesn’t make you feel like you’ve just spent a little too long on the deck of a ferry doing the English Channel.
To make sure that no one gets sick while using Vision Pro, it’s been granted a new patent, with some cool new technology to reduce both motion sickness and eye strain.
In the new patents, Apple seems to have targeted eye strain and motion sickness in particular, amongst other features. There are new sensors, fancy new lenses, and more information about eyeglass adapters.
Keeping Vision Pro useable for everyone
The first patent is for moveable lenses within the headset, so that people with glasses can also use Vision Pro, as well as making sure that the lenses can be at a distance from the user's eye to avoid straining their eyes when using the goggles. It will be an important part of the headset, letting you use it for extended periods of time. Patently Apple first talked about the patent, and has a very detailed write-up.
9to5 Mac also notes how important it will be for reducing VAC, or vergence-accommodation conflict, which causes nausea and motion sickness. It’s all very technical, but the gist is this; Vision Pro needs to make sure that your eyes are looking at a very close-up image as one that is a little further away — a depth issue that makes some users sick.
The patent seems to point to the use of different screens and lenses in order to avoid those depth problems.
The second patent shows off some cool control methods with the Vision Pro headset — including Siri, eye controls, and touch. Again, from Patently Apple, the patent has detailed descriptions of both known control interfaces like the pinch to click from the reveal and the eye tracking, but also using your eyes to move digital objects around a physical space. Very cool.
iMore’s take
We’re excited for Vision Pro — Apple’s first proper foray into VR and AR? Yes, please. We can’t lie, however; we did have some concerns about the motion sickness and eye strain part of the headset.
It is, after all, an issue with other headsets that we’ve used, and one that puts us off extended use of a pair of VR or AR goggles. This new patent does go some way in making us more comfortable with the new headset.
Will we get it on the first printing of the Vision Pro? Maybe. It does seem to be some time before we get the device in our hands, so there should be plenty of time for Apple to get it in the headset.
The control methods are also interesting, and could well be features that we can see coming in a software update to the first edition Vision Pro a little later down the line. The control of the headset already seems interesting to us, so anything extra is always cool to see.
