Vision Pro: As Apple headset reaches Europe, will VR ever hit the mainstream?

Apple’s very high-tech, very expensive virtual reality (VR) headset, the Vision Pro, finally went on sale in the UK and Europe on Friday, but the best way to gauge public interest in the product is to head to an Apple store.

In the past, people have camped outside Apple branches overnight as they desperately tried to get their hands on the tech giant’s latest products.

But when I went to a branch in central London on Friday morning, there was only a small group of mainly men waiting for the doors to open.

One reason for this is that people these days prefer the convenience of ordering ahead of time.

But it might also tell us something about a question that persists in the VR headset market: Will VR headsets ever move out of the realm of tech enthusiasts and become truly mainstream?

Apple’s plan for its products to break through is to position them as products that do what they already do, but better. Home videos will look 3D-like, and panoramic photos will span 360 degrees all around, from floor to ceiling. Apple repeatedly reminds us that it calls this “spatial content.” Others don’t. But the Vision Pro’s price has left many people surprised. A whopping 3,499 pounds.

Meta, the Facebook owner, has been keeping a close eye on Apple’s approach; the company has been in the VR business for years. During a recent demo of the Meta Quest 3, on sale in the UK from 2023, the team was keen to talk about “multitasking” – juggling multiple screens at once. In the demo, a web browser, YouTube and Messenger were lined up in front of you. “We’ve always done this but we just didn’t talk about it much,” one Meta employee told me.

and In the latest advertisementA man puts on the Quest 3 and watches the video instructions while assembling a baby bed. It may not be the most exciting concept, but it gives us a good idea of ​​how Meta wants people to view its technology.

While Apple and Meta are the two big players, VR is a competitive market, with dozens, maybe hundreds, of headsets already on the market.

But what they all have in common is that none of them have yet gone mainstream.

So far, the Vision Pro has only been sold in the United States, where research firm IDC predicts sales of fewer than 500,000 units this year.

Meta, which has been on the market longer, also hasn’t released sales data for the Quest, but it’s thought to have sold around 20 million units worldwide.

VR headsets aren’t as popular as tablets, let alone mobile phones.

To make matters worse, many of the devices sold are simply sitting idle, said George Dziziashvili, an analyst at market research firm Omdia.

“This is primarily due to a limited influx of compelling content to keep them engaged,” he said.

But of course, a lack of content reduces interest and reduces the incentive for developers to create that content in the first place.

“It’s a chicken and egg situation,” Dziziashvili told the BBC.

Alan Boyce, founder of mixed reality studio DragonfiAR, warned that early adopters of Vision Pro will need to “wait patiently” for more content to arrive.

That’s where the Quest 3 wins for him: The Quest 3 already has a “robust game library” and can perform virtual desktop tasks, just like the Vision Pro.

IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said Apple’s slow start to new products shouldn’t be a reason to give up too quickly.

“There’s always an expectation that any Apple product will sell millions of units straight away, and there’s always a comparison to the iPhone,” he said.

But the reality is that even the iPhone took a long time to catch on and failed to attract huge numbers of buyers.

According to Melissa Otto of S&P Global Market Intelligence, the iPhone went mainstream when its App Store “started to explode with apps that added value to our lives.”

“When people start to feel like their lives are getting better and easier, that’s when they’re going to step up,” she said.

However, there’s another factor to consider here: the physical experience of using the headset.

Both Apple and Meta use so-called “pass-through” technology to enable so-called mixed reality, which blends the real world with the computer-generated world.

Utilizing a camera on the exterior of the headset, users can view a live, high-definition video feed of their surroundings, allowing them to wear the headset while walking or exercising.

But strapping something that weighs 500 grams to your face doesn’t feel particularly natural, and while headsets today are generally lighter than before, I still can’t imagine wearing one for hours on end, although my colleagues tell me they do so often.

Quite a few people, myself included, experience VR sickness, which is when you feel nauseous while in VR. Advances in technology have significantly improved this issue and it’s much less common than it used to be, but the experience of moving around with controllers instead of your feet still takes some getting used to.

Most VR experiences today include various setups to get around this issue, such as the ability to “teleport” between locations. Sony’s VR game “Horizon: Call of the Mountain” solved this problem by letting you move by swinging your arms up and down. It sounds silly, but it helps trick your brain into avoiding nausea.

Whatever the experts say, the companies themselves are bullish on their products and their respective strengths.

It’s no secret that the long-term ambition of the tech giants here is to make mixed reality, or augmented reality, a normal reality. Facebook’s owner, Meta, renamed the company after its grand plan for us all to live in a virtual world called the Metaverse, where we work, rest, play, and express ourselves as ordinary digital avatar versions of ourselves. For now, all of that seems to be going a little quiet.

But they’re okay with the idea that one day something will replace our cell phones, perhaps something like a VR headset. I expect these will eventually look more like glasses than giant ski goggles… unless they’re brain implants (no joke).

“I think we know that the device as it looks today is not a device for the masses. It’s too heavy and cumbersome,” Dziziashvili said.

It’s an area rivals are focusing on, with Viture and XReal making sunglasses with embedded high-fidelity screens.

Melissa Brown, Meta’s head of developer relations, said she “absolutely” thinks the Quest 3 will one day replace smartphones. But the next day, Meta’s PR team received a more cautious response from Mark Zuckerberg, who said, “The latest generation of computing isn’t going away… Just because mobile phones are here doesn’t mean people stop using computers.”

Judging by what we saw at the Apple store on London’s Regent Street, the UK isn’t going to be flooded with people walking around with Vision Pros and Quest 3s.

The first customer I spoke to was actually just stopping by to buy a charger, and was a little confused when an Apple staff member applauded him as he entered the store.

But in the few hours we were there, several people walked out smiling, carrying big white bags of Apple. The question is, how many more can we convince to do the same?