The future of AR has a ton of potential for pinball owners. However it's still many years out before the trifecta of price/quality/content is reached.

I'm looking forward to the day we can:

1. Use guided overlays in conjunction with AI to help diagnose and repair games.
2. Same as 1 but for giving you scoring and game advancing strategies.
3. Visual overlays to 'mod' a game. Like the balls having fire or smoke trails when in multiball.
4. Visual overlays to completely change a game. Like a fun fan-layout that could be changed into dozens of themes.
5. Better angles and immersive views for watching competitive pinball.
6. Play a "ghost" machine that is pure AR wherever and whenever you want.
7. Real time shot maps and aiming guides floating directly above your flippers.

Most of these won't appeal to old-timers but I could see a future where the new kids on the block love their AR Pokemon Pinballs.
Although what's not to love about convenient and smart information overlays when your tinkering?

Agree, surprised nobody has tried to project AR on the PF glass - maybe just not functionally possible

Every Apple product seems to amazingly manage to get "20-30% improved..." every new iteration.

LOL!!!

I bought the Occulus 2 whatever, two Black Fridays ago. Bought it just because there is a good pirating scene and I didn't have to pay a dime for software.

I stopped using it almost two Black Fridays ago.

AR/VR have great business applications. I’ve seen it used in medical and plenty of other training exercises. Apple is imbedded in many businesses and this seems like a business first headset. Price is still high but in a decade who knows.

This one comment disqualifies you from passing judgment. Lol. Not even in the same ballpark.

VR is incredible when done right. But I get it... it is weird. But my God can it be amazing.

Considering the price tag of $3500 + $1750 for the external charging pack (I wish I was joking), the total comes to $5250 USD or $8000 CAD. That's 4 months of mortgage payments LOL or almost 1 pinball machine. Not happening.

I think it's hilarious that we cough up 10k+ for old school, dedicated gaming devices and then complain about the price.

I actually agree the price is too high for the consumer market it's targeting, but for the big boys on Pinside? C'mon!!!!

Like others have said, I just don't want to wear goggles and the battery life sucks (apparently 2 hours).

I can see owning the 3rd generation of this in a few years...for now, I'll let the early adopters have fun.

Well I'm not saying I'm the worlds greatest predictor but I was all aboard for mp3 players and social media and it was easy for me to see how it would catch on. I was also a naysayer for 3d tv's. Maybe I'll be wrong on this one. VR and AR definitely does have some cool stuff about it

Oculus is good fun for a few hundred $.
I still reco it to people.
The zen Star Wars pinball app is really good

Along with all the other best sellers

Apple is going to need a KILLER app for that price.

Lol. I guess people who like VR already are the target demo?

Guess they have no interest in developing it growing this market that they’ve invested billions in.

Hold on a second, do you think Apple invested more in R&D on this bleeding technology device than Stern does on their rinse and repeat LCD pins? No way. I bet the BOM on this is only like $50 in cheap Chinese parts.

Wow, I seriously hope this is a joke. The curved glass they are using is reportedly ~$300 alone. The BOM on this device is likely $1,200-$1,500. The software development cost is HUGE. Our old school pinball machines are constructed from more "cheap Chinese parts" (unfortunately)!

Apple is one of the most unethical companies out there. Remember....Apple's main product is not phones or other electronic gizmos - it's YOU.

You are confused...Facebook is the company that makes its $$ on YOU. Apple actually sells stuff that people want...like computers, watches and phones.

Hardly. Well, you are right...Facebook is another of the breed of modern companies which abuse the privacy of their users. But Apple? No better. Plus, it's astounding how year after year, Apple produces products which are designed to intentionally degrade over time and ignore the most simple features people want while heaping on tons of unwanted bloat and trackware. Apple does not serve its customers; they have re-engineered the game so the customer serves them.

I’m not a Luddite. I work in tech. But this here looks like my worst nightmare. I don’t want the world of apps invading my freakin space. They can stay on a screen.

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Also, Half Life Alex is the only thing ever made worth experiencing in VR.

It was definitely a joke and you translated it to my actual thoughts perfectly.

I worked for the company for 20 years (full disclosure of potential bias Intentionally degrade? That's ridiculous. Apple iterates on their designs in an almost maniacal fashion. They care more about form, function and customer experience than almost any company on the planet. That doesn't mean you have to like the products...many people don't!

The only thing I will "give you" is people are addicted to their iPhones (big time), and as addicts there is no doubt they are serving Apple (who provides their drug of choice).

Thank goodness!

Not my worst nightmare, but I agree with you. The first iteration of this product doesn't strike a chord with me. It will be interesting to see what the army of Apple Developers come up with. 10 years from now, I bet this product will be much less bulky, much less expensive and will have a vast number of killer apps.

The price isn't that crazy when you consider people will spend 7k on a NIB Stern. At least you can do more than play pinball with the glasses

How much longer until AI just makes apps and games at our own whim though?

If I could buy one and sell it in a few years for 90-100% of what I originally paid for it I would get one to try it out.

We will all be dead, so it doesn't matter

As long as you mentioned AI. These sophisticated devices will likely be used as client side AI devices by developers. For the next 3-5 years or so, this will be a developer platform with niche adoption. Not just a price issue...

You really think it'll be that long? I honestly see the rise of AI becoming more and more mainstream and accepted faster than VR....for better or worse.

Hard to say. I just don't see AI manufacturing custom games for this crowd (which I thought is what you were implying).

AI isn't new. What's new is the hype. No doubt with more and more automation, jobs will be vanishing in many industries (a serious issue some of the politicians occasionally babble about).

I had a VR system that I liked and used alot before support was withdrawn... Samsung VR. Essentially for $100 https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Controller-SM-R325NZVAXAR-Version-Warranty/dp/B074GB37V8 you got a special remote and device holder that let you scrap your flagship samsung phone to your face. It was fantastic for watching movies on the rowing machine and the tech demos were extremely impressive, even on 6 year old hardware. However, they were just demos and they were huge. The 30 second immersive experience of having the Apatosaurus walk over top of you was amazing, but it was like a gigabyte for a 30 second experience, and there were really only a handful of them. There were one or two games you could play with the remote. For $100, it was really a solid experience and if they had more 3rd party support I think it would still be around. I couldn't imagine spending $3500 for something like that. It is going to suck if there are no good apps for it and the app market for VR is really fragmented right now. Could this be the next big thing? Maybe, but unless Apple heavily incentivizes development of this thing its going to crash and burn.

Heavy, short battery life, external battery, not see through, little to no software support made worse by being stuck in Apple's ecosystem. Apple wants you to wear this to use.....apps? Watch an under 2 hour movie uncomfortably? The best you can hope for is to play some Apple Arcade games you've already played a better version of on an Ipad. For $3500 people want a powerful computer, not an app machine. I think the VR market has already proven that there are not enough people who want these types of AR/VR headsets to get software developers invested, and software support is everything.

Thats exactly what I was implying, you're right. I mean, I'm not in the tech sector so I can only speak as a lay man but from what I understand the capability of AI is one of the hottest and fasted growing segments in tech we've ever seen. Of course its not new, but the rate its progressing at right now is staggering. Certainly there is a lot of hype right now too, so I just find it very interesting

I've seen some pretty interesting use cases for augmented reality, especially for urban environments. Guided tours, sign translation, etc. I just don't want to live in a world where we all walk down the street with a Minority Report overlay of yelp reviews on every business.

But then, I'm old. My kid will probably love this crap. Reminds me of something I read about old very old people, like 90+, being more at peace with dying because the world they grew accustomed to is already dead.

I remember the commercials for the Samsung VR stuff. Really summed up the experience.

You strap it on your grandmother once and she laughs and rolls around on the couch. And then nobody ever uses it again.

He was just ahead of his time.

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I got the new Sony VR2. It's amazing...

...until 10 minutes later when I have to run to the toilet to throw up. They should give you a free pack of Dramamine with every purchase.

Hell, this is topper money.

They're at piece because 90+ usually sucks.
All that other stuff is just old folks flavored text.

It's a problem for sure, but most get used to it pretty fast. I have terrible motion sickness and have no issues anymore in VR. The real problem is that it causes motion sickness in people that have never experienced it before and they just get killed by it as they don't recognize the early signs and keep going until it's too late. In a perfect world a part of the headset's tutorial would tell you how to build tolerance, but I don't think it's exactly the message they want spread about their product.

There's lots of reasons this stuff might fail, but I don't think motion sickness is going to be a major factor (though it doesn't help for sure).

The PSVR2 has some tough games for motion sickness -- that's for sure. Driving games are among the toughest to get used to, I think.

I really like VR, but I never really was able to get my VR legs, so I get motion sickness on any of the 'drive/fly' games, which tend to be the funnest IMO...and it's a very unpleasant experience. But as you mention, I never experienced it before VR.

The things where I can walk around, or sit I'm fine.

Supposedly the 9 cameras and sensors help with the motion sickness.

I love vr, it was the first time I ever watched an Apple presentation.

I really would love to just try one, the resolution and just Apple polish should be impressive.

Also if meta irks you, the Pico headsets are made by Bytedance. They’re known for something called TikTok.

Yup, for the most part modern VR still seems like a carnival or theme park ride. It's something that's fun for a few minutes but not something I want to do for a half hour or more. I have zero interest in watching a show or movie on a VR headset, even Apple keeps pushing this feature.

Apple seems to me marketing this device as a productivity tool. No one is going to walk around with a VR headset at the office, that just looks weird and I would argue is counter productive when others want to talk to you. Use a standard display.

Another way to look at it is that for the price of two toppers these days, you could buy the Apple VR headset.

I'll pass on all
For the price of a shiity Taylor Swift ticket at Ford Field you could by Lion season tix.
Lots of cash out there

One day of suffering vs. eight or nine? Easy choice.

Just kidding, I'd enjoy the Taylor Swift show.

Anyone pre order? I grabbed a 1Tb and a case. Can’t wait to try it out.

Hey Brad - I pre-ordered a 512GB on launch day - anxious to try it as well! I bought a Quest 3 back in October, and was really blown away by the mixed reality experiences the most. It got me thinking about a mixed reality experience to overlay on your physical full-fledged pinball machines, and wanted to see if anyone was doing any development, or even started listing out the possibilities of features to experiment with.

Was thinking I'd start a thread on it, and then I found this one, and especially FlippyD post - he nailed exactly the things I was thinking of. His post is #51, but I'll quote him here:

---------- FlippyD ---->

The future of AR has a ton of potential for pinball owners. However it's still many years out before the trifecta of price/quality/content is reached.

I'm looking forward to the day we can:

1. Use guided overlays in conjunction with AI to help diagnose and repair games.
2. Same as 1 but for giving you scoring and game advancing strategies.
3. Visual overlays to 'mod' a game. Like the balls having fire or smoke trails when in multiball.
4. Visual overlays to completely change a game. Like a fun fan-layout that could be changed into dozens of themes.
5. Better angles and immersive views for watching competitive pinball.
6. Play a "ghost" machine that is pure AR wherever and whenever you want.
7. Real time shot maps and aiming guides floating directly above your flippers.

Most of these won't appeal to old-timers but I could see a future where the new kids on the block love their AR Pokemon Pinballs.
Although what's not to love about convenient and smart information overlays when your tinkering?

------------------------

Also, I've never messed much with the Virtual Pin cabinets - but seem like if you could overlay an entire field in VR over your physical/blank cabinet, so that the head tracking allowed you to look around the playfield in true dimensions - that would be cool. However perhaps they already have a much smaller head tracking device that could allow the embedded monitor in your VPin to adjust to your viewing angle, and not have to mess with pass through cameras? Not sure if I am making sense, after typing it out, LOL.

-Brad

That sounds cool, especially no.6 (ghost machine). Real-time shot map overlays would be neat as well.

Did you get in person pickup?