Hacker News .hnnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
UHF X11: X11 Built for VisionOS and Apple Vision Pro (lispm.net)
230 points by zdw 17 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 63 comments


>3D in 2D in 3D. OpenGL clients can use GLX rendering over X11. Compatibility varies, as it did in the 2000s.

Made me chuckle. I think at one point in my life I actually knew which exact GL versions and features were working on which servers. Also it's pretty cool.

Still won't buy an AVP.


why not? Personally, I tried but the crap with my prescription because I wear glasses was too much, so I didn't end up getting one because I fail at executive function.


im an apple enjoyer with disposable income, i bought because my brother worked on the foveated rendering, but goddamn it’s so heavy that if i use for >2hrs i’ll have neck pain for >2 days. it’s neat and fantastic for chores and cooking if i wear for 30min at a time but super impractical for me to actually use if im not speed running exactly one task


Are you using the new better balanced harness?


yes. i think i need to do F1 driver neck training or something.


I've been interested in VR for a while and would be interested to try out a headset I could actually work in, but personally my interest in the Apple Vision Pro basically disappeared when the Steam Frame was announced.

It's lower resolution, but I think it would probably be sufficient for light work, and I'm not really interested in the pass-through camera features of the AVP. The real differentiator though was that the steam frame will also work with my existing computer for gaming, and I think it's likely to be much more hackable than the Apple Vision.


Yes I really hope the memory storage just leads to a delay and not a cancellation.


I need a new couch more than I need an AR headset, for one. $3,500 is a lot of money for a glorified devkit.


The Apple Lisa was introduced at around $10k (~$32k in today’s dollars). I do agree it is expensive but not historically out of line for a version one of a new product category for the company.


And thousands of Lisas went unsold, eventually getting dumped in a landfill after failing to find an eager audience like the Apple II enjoyed. There's a lesson, there.


Without the Lisa we wouldn’t have the Mac. The Vision Pro is a first gen of a new product category for Apple and I fully expect whatever comes from it will be very different than what we have today.


The Mac arrived one year and five days after the Lisa. Vision Pro is over two years old now. It got a speed bump, but not a price decrease.

I think the Vision Pro will be more like the Newton vs current iPads. Something will eventually replace it, but it will be significantly different, not slightly different, like Lisa vs Mac (I know they cut corners for the Mac, changing some nice OS features)


> Without the Lisa we wouldn’t have the Mac.

Without the NeXt Cube, we wouldn’t have the modern MacOS, or, for that matter, the iPhone (or Vision). Apple would certainly not be a multi-trillion-dollar company, and the Cube was a commercial flop.

In that case, it wasn’t the hardware, but the operating system and app development framework that made the difference.


And that will be true about the Apple Vision too, how do you get there if you don’t have the ability to put the operating system and the hardware together and then iterate, the biggest problems with the Apple Vision is that it needs to be three or four times faster performance wise than what it is, needs to be half the size and it definitely needs to be more energy efficient from a battery standpoint and last but not least half the current price how does that happen? Only through iteration over time.


AR simply has no market. Apple could sell Vision Pro for $10,000 apiece, if there was natural demand for high-quality AR hardware. But the product isn't competing for Hololens' commercial contracts, and it forfeit the consumer VR segment on release. The remainder of consumer-forward AR experiences are even less lucrative than Zuckerberg's commoditized Quests. Apple wants to build a nonexistent market with an inaccessible product.

Until that demand actually materializes, Apple's ability to miniaturize the tech is inconsequential. Vision Pro's "iPad for your face" philosophy is not enough to carve out a niche, and definitely not enough to displace the iPhone or the Mac.


You can pay half that on eBay at the moment.


Still expensive, for a devkit. $1,750 would buy me a new in-box Pimax Crystal, or likely a Steam Frame with enough money left over to afford a Steam Deck.

Vision Pro just doesn't have the content to justify that price. I use VR for flight simming, but even at half-off the Vision Pro looks like one of the worst immersive headsets money can buy.


Actually, that’s cheap….


It is more expensive than all three VR headsets I have owned and the PC I built for them, combined.


> why not?

For me it's nausea and motion sickness. When my ears don't sync with my eyes, my brain calls bug(), and it doesn't end well.


PrisonOS. It isn't a computer. They control everything to take 30% sales and monopolize the ecosystem including controlling your whole body.


I can't believe the screenshot isn't running xeyes. At least it is TWM.


Right. The only thing I want to know is do the xeyes follow you around the room!?


Apps don’t get access to gaze position on the Vision Pro, for privacy/security reasons.


You can get the user's head position using WorldTrackingProvider, that's enough for xeyes to follow you across the room.

There's even a sample app close enough

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/visionOS/placing-e...


Could you run xeyes on the outside? IIRC Apple Vision had this outer display for rendering the bits of user's face that are covered by it.


Indeed, it's annoying that there doesn't seem to be an Apple-approved method for customizing the outer display.


I was thinking the same thing


WayVR is also worth checking out, if you're interested in using a native x11/Wayland desktop with a headset on Linux: https://github.com/wayvr-org/wayvr


May I ask what the recommendation is at the moment if I want a Linux AR headset that can take prescription lenses (or accommodate glasses)? I'd like to write my own code but not have to beg somebody else to let me run it.


Oh absolutely wait like two weeks and get on the list for a Steam Frame. It actually runs arch Linux and Steam says “it’s your computer, you can do what you want with it” unlike Meta and the Quest. I’m excited to do Kicad in mine.


You can do what you want with your quest too. It's android and you can sideload whatever you want.

I was thinking of getting the steam frame but considering the component crisis it'll probably be well above €1000 and that's a non-starter for me. I'll just stick with my quest 3 which has about the same level of specs. But was only 450€ for me on prime day.

If it were a significant bump in resolution over the quest (like the vision pro or the galaxy XR) I would have done it. But it's not.


Thanks, that looks tempting! Shame about the monochrome camera, but maybe I can use an add-on camera to colour in the world.


Meta Quest, but treat it as a dumb headset with ALVR?


Steam frame is out soon and should be the ultimate Linux friendly headset. It runs real Linux and Valve is big on “it’s your computer to use as you please”.


but you can't use it like the AVP right? the camera in Steam Frame is black and white only (or is grayscale the better term?)


There is an expansion port on the nose area that can be used to add color cameras if you really want that.

Personally, I think not being tied to a particular OS in the control of the device manufacturer is much more important than whether the cameras are color or just grayscale.


well the whole point of AVP, at least to me and many others, is the AR functionality , being able to walk around your house and having virtual screens in every room. Stuff like that. You would want full colour for that I think


The LCDs are colored so the virtual screens would also be. Not sure walking around a grayscale world is all that bad.


Ah you’re right I was keying off of “Linux friendly” and missed the AR part.

right after Half-Life 3 comes out soon.


Signs really do seem to suggest it will be announced soon. There’s records of multiple large shipments of Virtual Reality headsets arriving at Valve, and they say it’s coming out this summer.


Thanks!


Very creative!

Does anyone else besides me suspect X11 will outlive visionOS?


Hell I half expect X11 to outlast wayland at this point.


Certainly, XLibre just released a new version 25.2.0. I suspect X11 will long outlast Fedora


Seem to be unavailable in German App Store?…


Lots of individual / hobbyist developers are no longer publishing to the EU App Store due to Digital Services Act regulation and compliance.


it’s too damn spooky. i know they rolled back or caveated some of the language after the uproar but i certainly would like to travel to the EU without any kind of anxiety about “do my open source apps mean im an EU felon if i forget to check github issues for security issues”


Crimes require criminal intent, generally speaking.


I know startups who don't publish to certain EU countries because they have to fill "a big scary form"


You can always switch to US app store region (cancel exisiting subscriptions, leave family, and wait until apple music/tv subscription is expired).

You won’t be able to use non-US credit card for the app store but you can always buy US virtual apple gift cards on amazon straight from apple shop there.


I guess it’s easier to find a testflight link if one is set up, or just to create a new account altogether, and sign in to it temporarily.


Just that easy! /s


Interesting. I wonder if it's based on Xorg or something else


Neat, it would be cool if it also worked on the Quest.


I'm GLaD to see more X11 projects recently


This is what I call interesting!


It would be great if this would work on the quest too. The AVP is just way too expensive.


On that note, anybody has rayneo air4 pro working with x11?


I thought it would have something to do with Weird Al. Oh well


Bet Raul's wild kingdom would be awesome in 3D...


It would be fun to teach poodles how to fly in 3D




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: