SPATIAL PHOTOGRAPHS (1)
This week Apple updated the operating system for the Vision Pro computer Spatial goggles. First, let me say that it is very odd to be living in the future and reporting on discoveries that I am making that no one that I know can see unless I put my Vision Pro goggles on their head. Sharing is not easy to do. I can’t show you what I am discovering here on this website where all my spatial videos look like ordinary videos.
The first reason I have trouble sharing spatial photographs is that almost everyone is suspicious of new ways of doing things and secondly, a new way of doing things requires people to learn an entirely new way of thinking which is difficult to adapt to and requires a lot of patience. Once we are used to a way of doing things, a new way of functioning is complicated and annoying.
I think this difficulty in adapting is one of the things that is polarizing the country. There are those who don’t want to adapt, who want to go back to a time when they were comfortable, usually older people, and those who only know this new world and adapt to it fairly easily, usually young people. The 3D world of the world of virtual reality of the Vision Pro is one more small wrenching step into a new world.
One of the problems in sharing this world is that this is a solitary world that is difficult to share because you have to put on goggles and enter it one person at a time. You can’t sit together and share as you can with looking at a photograph or watching a show together on tv. Unless mirroring on another device such as an iPad lets you know what the person who is entering this world is seeing, you can’t even guide another person in as they wander around lost and irritated. And since the control of this new world is done through focusing on points you would normally click on and then tapping your fingers together, it is almost like learning a new language and since this focusing and finger tapping is very fiddly and sometimes requires trying it again and again, it is even more difficult to get used to.
So I have almost given up on trying to introduce anyone to this new world. It is too hard to explain or show and people get itchy and irritated. My latest attempt to guide someone in required a palms up gesture until a white circle appears above your virtual hand and then when you flip your hand over the control panel appears floating in the air which allows you to make your way through the control center by focusing and touching your fingers together.
Since the beginning of the computer age I have noticed a problem that arises whenever a new device, which does things in a new way, appears. Two things happen. The first question people ask is what the new way of doing things will do better that they are already doing and are quite satisfied with, rather than wondering what the new device might do that they never dreamed of doing. The second is that people almost invariably insist that the traditional way of doing things is better and are very reluctant to change. I noticed this when the first digital cameras appeared and people in the photography club I belonged to resisted mightily this new technology. Film was better they insisted. And then they all switched over. But this happened with flat screen tvs, cell phones and GPS and all kinds of new technologies.
This is a long way around to what the new operating system for the Vision Pro makes possible. What the Vision Pro offered a year ago was, for me, two things. The first thing was to allow me to look at normal streaming tv and videos on a huge virtual screen appearing to be just feet in front of me, but actually an inch away in the goggles. But added to this was the ability to see certain photographs and videos in crystal clear 3D. The immersive videos that you could stream from Apple TV surrounded you completely and the 3D effect made what you saw much more intensely real than when seen on a flat screen. Coupled with this was the ability to make your own 3D spatial photographs and videos using your own iPhone.
This was pure magic, except that other people could only see your amazing videos or photographs if they had an expensive Vision Pro (which, still, no one else has) or if you could persuade them to put on the goggles and learn how to see for themselves what you had produced.
So instead of pushing reluctant people I accepted that I alone was amazed at what was possible in my own private world, living in the future by myself.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 