VISION QUEST QUESTIONS (SKIP AHEAD A WEEK IF UNINTERESTED IN VR)
Over the next five days I am going to ask five questions about the Apple Vision Pro, questions which I will wonder about but not be able to properly answer. If you are not interested in the Apple Vision Pro spatial viewer skip the next five days, although I think these are questions which will become more and more significant as we head into the new world of virtual reality.
The first question I have is how the does the Vision Pro know where I my eyes are focused? On the MacBook I would guide my mouse to whatever I wanted to select, such as the play button on a video, and click on the mouse and the movie would start. Then on the touchscreen iPhone or iPad I would touch the play button with my finger and the movie would start. Now on the Apple Vision Pro I simply look at the start button of the video and touch two fingers together and it starts. It feels to me that I am touching the start button by looking at it and clicking. But how does the computer know what I am focused on and how does the computer know that I have touched two fingers together if my hand is sitting loosely in my lap? Obviously there are hidden cameras following my focus and watching my hands but how is this happening?
But I am learning that this process, at least seeing what I focus on, is much more complicated than just looking at what I focus on. And touching my hands together is more complicated, too. The Vision Pro seems to recognize every person individually and what works for one person doesn‘t work for another until the computer gets to know that person. When I first used the Vision Pro the computer very carefully tested my vision and how I looked around by making me go through a series of steps. It also got to know my hands.
So now when I begin to use the Vision Pro computer by looking and touching my fingers together, it works well, at least most of the time. But when I put the goggles on someone whom I want to share with, no matter how hard they concentrate, and focus their eyes on the play button, doing exactly what I have been doing successfully, almost all of the time nothing happens when they click. Why?
The same must be true of my hands. Once my hands are registered the touching of two fingers works. When someone else touches two fingers mostly nothing happens.
This makes it much more complicated to share a video on the Vision Pro with someone else. So far it has caused me and other people tremendous frustration as they do just what I have done and it doesn‘t work. My frustration is partly because I am functioning intuitively and my intuition is all wrong. I have no idea how eye focusing and clicking works. And because Apple doesn‘t believe in giving me an instructions booklet, I have to learn by making mistake after mistake. I didn‘t know the alternative viewer button existed until today, so I functioned blindly through several sessions. Lesson #1 is to first find the instructions when things go wrong and then to follow them.
I have learned that to share with another person, you put on the goggles yourself, adjust your focus by holding down the rotating button on the upper right until you get a check sign that you are aligned, and then you look up and see a faint arrow above the screen. You look at it and click your fingers together and you will see a Control Center. In the lower left of control center you will see person icon with a dotted line around it. Look at it and you will see Guest User. You then follow instructions.
More on this later when I find someone to test this on and figure out how to do it.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 