This comment almost made me quit my job and pursue my original passion in architecture. So the job was, all along, as fun as I imagined it… And the full-stack knowledge to make it happen is still rare? I am currently designing my house in Blender and was planning to import it into Unreal Engine to make it navigable. HN has a way of serving me the content I’m looking for at the right time…

I really hope that one day I am so incredibly rich that I can hire a team like yours. It would be amazing to have a professional firm design a house for you. I’m guessing you have to be in the 1% for that.

I did this circa 2021 (with SketchUp, Enscape, Quest 2) during our house remodel. It was very successful in reducing the number of walls my wife wanted to move around after they had been finished

Do you find the value of VR/AR to be in the communication of design intent to clients unfamiliar with traditional 2D representations, or do your designers leverage VR/AR during the design development process as well?

Wow I’m incredibly impressed that you’ve decided to embrace VR technology. When renovating our house, it was incredibly hard (and still is) to visualize how everything. So far we just got lucky but the basement is going to be a challenge as we’re making structural adjustments.

How did you get your team to get onboard with the process? How is the ROI?

Wait, you actually have an empty building/area the size of a typical custom design home? Aren't those typically rather huge? Do you partition the previews?

Do you believe Apple will continue to spend billions on a device that caters to niche enterprise use cases and is today selling in single digit thousands per month, if that? If so, qhat other Apple products out there suggest that enterprise is something Apple cares about enough to maintain a distinct product line? This isn't Mac Pro where 95% of the R&D and production costs are shared with half a dozen other major Mac SKUs. This isn't MacOS. It isn't iOS. It isnt even iPad OS which it was initially based on. Excepting the SoC, the hardware is entirely bespoke. It doesn't seem realistic to me that they'd continue it without a real consumer audience that the last 2.5 years proved does not exist. Hell, even the lowly Quest, that cost Meta over $100B so far, sold nearly 30M units and Meta's clearly bailing on that as it pivots to non-enclosed facial computers like glasses. The whole category is a failure outside of a few enterprise cases.

> Yeah, we did the same thing when designing our house almost ten years ago now, using a HTC Vive running https://irisvr.com/prospect/

Coincidentally enough, author of the submission ended up calling their thing "Prospector"

> After some intense typing with a combination of Claude and Codex over the course of a morning I had something I was pretty happy with. I named it Prospector (can’t remember why) and I’ve been really happy with it.

I can't help but think that the author asked the LLM for suggestions on the name, and Prospector/Prospect was recommended as it was so similar to an existing thing, but I might be reading too much into it.

I did this. Less so for the sun light entering the windows (albeit a great idea), but more so for making sure I'd see the sunsets. There are great websites that will let you see the sunrise and sunset directions for any given day of the year.

This is so awesome. I wish more realistic problems get solved like this instead of every new gadget getting shoehorned for gaming or porn.

We use it all the time for light studies. LAT / LONG inputs in Enscape. I've actually compared models to actual days and it's pretty f'n spot on.

I feel like at this point you should just hire an architect.

Awnings are your friend, particularly on windows facing the equator. It's not very difficult to calculate all the ways sun will hit a window throughout the year and design an awning to block the sun in the summer but not the winter.

Like many others, I said I’d quit Reddit when they killed Apollo. I was skeptical that I’d actually follow through, but it didn’t end up being a sacrifice at all. The official app sucks so hard it isn’t fun to browse, and now that the mobile site forces you to download the app, I don’t even look at posts from search results much anymore.

I’ve said it in a few other places here before, but axing Apollo is the reason I’m on HN at all.

I used to use Reddit daily to follow a few games and news subs, and was fairly active in a couple of those communities as a contributor.

But I don’t know that I miss Reddit all that much, save for a few small corners of the community. The discourse here is a lot more thoughtful, generally, and the community aspect is what I enjoy the most.

Christian’s work on Apollo made me hopeful that good app devs will continue to exist (shoutout to HACK for iOS, it’s a great HN reader), and I’m glad he seems to be doing something pretty cool with his time

Bars! My friends and I constantly talk about how good Apollo was. I've tried side loading with alt store as well, but I can't seem to keep it stable, it crashes, fails, etc.

All the best to him on his future endeavors!

Apollo was the best iOS app there was.

Thankful for its spiritual success, Voyager for Lemmy.

The new reddit, the not old.reddit, is hideous and offensive, and it's hard to believe they didn't acquire Apollo.

Good for me though, no more reddit.

I recommend protego https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/protego-for-reddit/id673795972...

You can use Apollo reborn still with your own API keys. I personally use a modded reddit app on Android or old.reddit in Firefox. Reddit is way too valuable to stop using entirely. I also use it in LLMs asking them to reference reddit if I am looking for specific suggestions.

Yep, me, too. My reddit usage went down 10x (maybe more) after Apollo was killed. Probably a good thing, in retrospect.

I also quit once Apollo was done in. Thankful to him for improving the Reddit experience, and for helping me leave completely.

Man the reddit apps sucks

That name sounded familiar! Those were the days.

Similar story here. Great software

The best part about Kagi is you can set it to redirect reddit links to old.reddit.com to avoid the enshittification

Looking through your phone at an AR object is not anywhere close to what VR offers. Maybe with a Google Cardboard / Google Daydream type experience. But not holding the phone out in front of you.

Obviously $3500 is not nothing for most people, but neither is building a house in this economy. I think the skillset of leveraging the provided code here and working with 3D models is gonna be a bigger barrier to entry than the cost of a Vision Pro.

Ive used various AR apps to see how products fit in physical spaces--like Ikea used to offer. I've also worked on VR projects for car interiors. With VR you really do get a sense of scale and space that you're still guessing at with AR on a phone. I really liked when people removed the VR headset they were surprised to be back in a small room.

Like you mentioned, Ive wanted to scan some spaces to remember them in the future. Last time I looked, those apps werent very easy to find or easy to use.

How did you actually end up doing it, like the full pipeline ? For example what app did you use to scan your apartment and orocesss it into a 3d model (which kind?) and then how do you actually do the planning (like which tools/software to plan your new space?)

And I ask for details because I have attempted something similar but wasn’t getting the best results. I was using ‘3d scanner app’ (which was good but was sold and is not recommended now), and that created pretty decent models, but like, they were still I think based on lidar and not super precise. I also wasn’t sure how to reconcile my actual floor plan with that 3d model the right way - like if the 3d model got some error built-up, the wall which I know to be 100 inches has to be that, and not 101 or 99, since for furniture planing an inch definitely matters. So I kind of got stuck here on how to actually generate some useful and as correct dimensionally as possible 3d model, into which I can later put furniture 3d models into. Thanks for any info!

Arkit is the first thing i thought of and has way way more of an adressable market.

Or a used meta quest 2 which is like $100.

Maybe not $3500 better, but likely $300 better (price of a Quest).

If you're using it for hobby projects and you're budget constrained yeah.

If you're making a sales pitch the $3500 is an investment in raising sales.

You’re missing the difference between a feature and an application of that feature.

Yep, we did hackathons with old Oculus Rift DK1 around this concept over 15 years ago or so.

One application is a toy. The other is catching mistakes before applying hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When I did this for a home remodel, the big difference was that it was AR and not just VR. Being able to experience where the virtual changes line up with the real world makes a huge difference.

"Ah yes, how hard could it be?", he confidently asks.

> What am I missing?

So much.

> This is an absolutely standard feature of any VR headset that has ever been released in the history of VR headsets

The article is describing "room scale positioning". The first consumer available headset to offer this was released in 2016.

It may feel like it's been around forever if you're not familiar with the space except as a consoomer, but exploring a 3d space at room scale has only recently come into the realm of possibility for consumer grade headsets. For much of the 80s and 90s (and 00s), it was head tracking only. Real time positioning and moving around required positioning hardware that was a magnitude more expensive - and pretty much always had very specific space limitations. Sure, it existed to some degree, but it was such inexpensive addition that using an expensive and complicated treadmill was often considered the economical choice.

In fact, I don't think there was even a "professional" solution that offered room scale positioning before the vive. Previously, they all had specific limitations like a 4 x 4 foot area or were massive tech demos that existed in a quantity of one in a university basement somewhere, running a very tailored demo, and they certainly weren't feasible in the 90s.

> Make a 3D world, walk through it.

First of all, how do you map the room? Do you set up lighthouses? Low latency positioning? To do what is in the article, you need a large space and the ability to map into it. Only recently, has "inside out" tracking become feasible. Previous generations didn't have it, and it's almost a guaranteed requirement for any large scale deployment of VR - for example, exploring multiple rooms.

Second, how do you create the "3d world"? It may seem simple, but VR headsets require more than double the graphical computation, and that means that any geometry and graphics you inert of the world needs to be within the compute budget of the headset solution. The fact that the person in the article was able to just export a USDC directly out of fusion and have it render without hitting the compute budget limit is amazing and really speaks to the graphical power of the AVP.

Lastly, stitching, the 3-D solution and compositing, and the real world is a very difficult problem. Again, it may feel like we've had the technology, but really we haven't had the high speed camera solutions in small packages, and the compute power to process all of that in anything approaching a consumer solution. To do what AVP is doing with the USDZ files, composing them into the real world, and even applying lighting information, previously would have required a fleet of large and expensive machines. And that doesn't even include transparency and applying real-world attributes of lighting and reflection onto the USDZ file, a a task that's hard to parallelize.

I agree it is under utilized but genuinely question if it provides sufficient value to warrant increased utilization.

reading some of the comments i was expecting something really high end and polished, but yeah, this is something you could with a headset 1/10th the cost

I was expecting an app that works like the VR version of a laser indoor measuring tool. Where you hold a piece of wooden board and the VR tells you where it should go and then another person wearing a VR helmet attaches it to a post, also at sub-mm precision. Etc.

Seeing the title and the upvotes, I thought the author just discovered a use case that justifies the ~~$3500~~ $3700 price tag.

To say I am disappointed is an understatement.

This can be done with the Google Cardboard :|

Sounds like the kind of project that would have afforded a Vision Pro, right? I bet you can spot mistakes before building it, that way. Things like, oh, this room will be very dark.

I feel like this is supposed to be a "gotcha", but this is VR, not AR.

So you can just, move up.

VRML, now that’s been a while. If I recall correctly it was only a changed header from the Silicon Graphics Open Inventor format.

Wow that is dark. Personal experience?

Your legless manager in the daily Workrooms stand^h^h^h^h^floatup glares at you.

It is the greatest piece of technology I have ever owned, and I have a very hard time recommending it anyone.

It's clear that it is the future. But there's still some steps between where Apple is at with it today, and where it needs to be in order to be a mainstream product. I would look and see if you can find one used either in the local market, or via a short trip if possible.

Favorite tech product I have ever purchased. I use it as my main MacBook display for often 8+ hours per day. As long as you are willing to bump up the font size a bit, the programming experience is fantastic. I use it as a 21:9 display, but it can go up to 32:9. My wife and I watch movies together in the theater environment, and the in-room sharing experience is great. My face and neck were prepared from numerous past headsets, but my wife really hasn't had any comfort issues. Since this is her first headset, I think that just varies by person.

I bought one and returned it within the 2 week window, well before the last day. I didn't even use it the last weekend I had it, I couldn't be bothered. When I brought it into the Apple Store to return it, the employee who processed the return seemed happy I was returning it rather than getting stuck with it, she didn't pull her punches when talking about it, which I found a bit shocking from an Apple employee. She marked down the reason for return as "not enough content", so I'm assuming that's why most people return it, but that wasn't really my issue.

While the new head strap was better than the original, it still wasn't all that comfortable to wear. Some things were super sharp, while other things always looked blurry. The window system still seemed buggy and I'd describe it as finicky. The battery doesn't last long enough to feel comfortable untethered, while it also gets in the way while being plugged into the wall. It also felt like a lot of work to actively look at what needed focus all the time. It still feels like it should be in beta, maybe even the lab. I'll be willing to try again down the road, but it's hard to tell how much attention Apple is really giving it, as we haven't seen all that much progress in the last couple years.

Not worth it. Get a Meta Quest 3 and can vibe code something similar in a few hours. I recommend WebXR that comes with the built-in browser. Easier to distribute, share, collect feedback and iterate than native. And can use A-Frame: open source framework, very accesible and that I help maintain :)

It is not worth it. The problem is the weight. For all of the good features it has, it's so heavy that you can't use it very long.

It’s a cool use case, the same thing is achievable with other VR headsets of course. I imagine you can buy a second hand Quest 2 headset for under 100 euros

I keep on hearing it’s a flop, but where I live, Switzerland, they don’t sell it. So I can’t really say.

And I am not even talking about the badly taken product decisions for such a great headset but… how can they get devs onboarded for an app ecosystem for a device that can only be bought in a handful of countries?

Clearly Apple sold it and did their best so that it fails.

Im waiting for v2/smart glasses by now , weight seems to be the most sticky issue to daily usage

The title says "The coolest use for the Vision Pro," not "The Vision Pro is the coolest way to..." or even "The Vision Pro is worth the money."

Watching some of the Lakers courtside games on the Vision Pro was awesome, and I’m not even a Lakers fan. If they rolled that out more broadly it would be a system seller for sports fanatics.

There were full-length NBA Lakers games in the Vision Pro headset earlier this year. I watched a few - super cool. They even had a separate announcer just for the immersive broadcast.

It is absolutely unreal the experience watching the ~10 minute sports games on the Vision Pro. The thing is 4 grand but that’s how much the first 4K TVs were. Hope the price can drop where this becomes a more widespread experience, I am a virtual daily user of my AVP

I made this: https://github.com/dsernst/NightVision

but the OS blocks it when it gets too low-light, disabling all AR features :'(

I'm curious here but can't find that title. Do you mean the "Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics" by Gavriel Salvendy and Waldemar Karwowski?

You walk down it. Extend your hands, see if they pass through the walls, etc. If you've never used VR before this can be hard to explain with words, but "it's like you're really there" in terms of spacial presence at least. Something about being able to turn your head and have the camera perfectly mirror that movement helps your brain with all sorts of depth cues that are harder to pick up with a flat panel.

The most expensive dollar is the one you don't have. Not everyone has a flexible budget.

From my (limited) experience, construction costs can tend to rise with the local real estate market. Those construction workers also have a mortgage or rent that they need to pay every month, and buy goods and services from other people with mortgages or rent to pay.

There was an article shared today about skilled laborers are in very short supply wherever data centers are being constructed, so that may not be a universal truth.

Do you have a source for this? Sounds interesting...

the steam frame will also have eye tracking cameras.

It's not. I did a walkthrough of a Sketchup model of my home using Oculus Rift almost exactly 10 years ago.

You really felt this, huh? So much so that you had to post it twice? Damn. Lmao