Apple’s working on a powerful, wireless headset for both AR, VR

Apple CEO Tim Cook has nothing but praise for augmented reality, saying it's a technology that's potentially as important as the iPhone. It turns out he may have big plans for virtual reality too.

The company is working on a headset capable of running both AR and VR technology, according to a person familiar with Apple's plans. Plans so far call for an 8K display for each eye -- higher resolution than today's best TVs -- that would be untethered from a computer or smartphone, the person said.

The project, codenamed T288, is still in its early stages but is slated for release in 2020. Apple still could change or scrap its plans.

Source.

PS5/XBZ/Switch U are already dead imo.

8000 x 8000 per eye is certainly feasible as far as rendering goes. But the cost of those panels would be insane if they're expecting to release this in 2 years. It's more realistic to expect 4000 x 4000 per eye.

Still, it's nice to see that Apple is clearly thinking of VR.

I’m definitely interested but knowing Apple it will probably be useless for gaming and overpriced.

RIP PSVR

$100 for each pixel.

"as important as the iphone"

...

lol

Do apple have access to processors nobody else does?

A high end PC has no chance of running such a display let alone a mobile chip.

If you don't think AR and VR altogether is more important than smartphones, then you're kind of disagreeing with the whole tech industry here. Both of them in one compact device will be one of the most important technologies in human history.

A high-end PC would run 8K per eye with Nvidia's 1180. This is after foveated rendering. And that's for games. It would be far easier to run non-game applications.

The more companies in on AR/VR the better. Though I'm not going to touch Apple products at all, I do hope they bring out a mega hit akin to the iPod or iPhone though, because it pushes other companies to do better.

Isn't Microsoft's HoloLens coming out in 2019? I heard it's going to be announced this year.

Ar and vr will replace the cell phone. Personal drone assistants will be the next hot companion item. 12-30 years tops.

Wireless is a step in the right direction... Apple is 3 steps back however.

8K for each screen and not tethered to a PC, in two years time! Someone is in the realm of wishful thinking or Apple has access to a time machine.

Can't wait to see the price point for this.

Color me interested, though I don't care about AR. And I don't think Apple is too interested in gaming. We'll see, though. Eventually more and more companies are going to get into AR/VR. You can't stop this train.

"Apple's headset would connect to a dedicated box using a high-speed, short-range wireless technology, according to a person familiar with the company's plans. The box, which would be powered by a custom Apple processor more powerful than anything currently available, would act as the brain for the AR/VR headset. In its current state, the box resembles a PC tower, but it won't be an actual Mac computer."

Sounds like it would draw processing power from it. The part that's hard to believe is the display panels themselves as they would be crazy expensive to produce.

If they do manage to wirelessly display what is essentially 16k, it's certainly not going to be doing anything more intensive than basic UI. Even the simplest of 3D AR overlays would bring any modern CPU to it's knees and gaming is way, way, way out of the question.

You can run certain content today at much higher resolutions, and games can simply render at a lower resolution; problem solved. Foveated Rendering with a wireless foveated protocol ensures that the bandwidth will remain manageable.

So does this let mac os users enter a virtual reality where their tower isn’t completely useless and overpriced?

VR... lol

Apple... lol

If you're going to render at a lower resolution what is the point in having an 8k display for each eye?

@GarGx1: because it reduces screen door effect.

GTX 1080 TI's 8K with Forza M7.

@xantufrog: I know that screen door effect is reduced when rendering at higher resolutions (that's pretty obvious really), especially in VR where the screens are right at your eyes, but just because the screen is capable of rendering higher than you're displaying, would it make that much difference? If you display 1080p on a 1080p screen, or display 1080p on an 4320p screen, isn't it still using the same amount of pixels of the same size regardless of maximum potential?

@GarGx1: it's not the rendering resolution that creates/reduces the effect, it's the effective ppi (and display design). So you could have a game at 1024x768 rendering resolution have a lower screen door effect than one rendering at 1080p+ if the former was on an 8k screen and the latter was on a 1080p screen of the same design

9000$ with 1/20 ablities of vive

only works on apple devices over iphone 8

but hey, it's white and simplistic

**** apple

Take something already out, tweak it a bit, put an Apple on it and charge a fortune.

Dont expect this process to change if they bring out VR/AR stuff.

Untethered doesn't mean stand alone. Vive's adapter makes it untethered also. Anything Apple will be way too expensive compared to the competition. Good to see another big company is invested in VR and it's not dead as some idiots (that pee daily) say.

Is an apple product so $5,000 dollars.

If nothing else we can be generally confident that apple will at least nail the form factor 100%.

since everything Apple makes is overpriced then I think this is just a waste of time