Their preferred term is “spatial computing”. My guess is for two reasons
They want to present this as a different use case than VR/AR/XR. “You’re not just playing around in some virtual reality, you’re doing spatial computing.” Basically more similar to the stuff you do on a laptop or tablet, but in 3D 360 6DoF.
Also, going by the reviews it’s not especially good at AR/MR, and has very few VR uses. They have to come up with something to describe what it does that doesn’t suggest it’s just a fancy novelty toy.
VR uses will probably come up. Its M2 processor can probably handle most VR games at medium to low settings. We could be seeing first gen VR cartoony stuff like Job Simulator soon. It’s an easy addition to their Arcade service too. Unless they’re just too stubborn about it being purely “spatial computing” to do that.
As for AR/XR, I haven’t kept up with that as much, but I don’t think any headsets are especially good at it.
They have to come up with something to describe what it does that doesn’t suggest it’s just a fancy novelty toy.
My understanding is that nobody has really cracked A/MR yet mostly due to hardware limitations. From what I’ve read, this thing really is the best contender so far–it has decent passthrough cameras–but there are still noticeable video artifacts and (this is probably more important) you’re still basically strapping a fucking ipad to your face and carrying around a battery pack. None of this shit is going to take off until we have something that fits into at most the form factor of bulky sunglasses and allows for genuine transparency (or so close as to be unnoticeable), but whomever cracks that hardware problem very well might be the world’s first trillionaire. I’ve said for decades now that VR will always be a niche product but true mixed reality will be just as transformative as smartphones were, and nothing I’ve seen recently makes me question that opinion.
Did they ever explain the reasoning for the preference of terms?
Their preferred term is “spatial computing”. My guess is for two reasons
Also, going by the reviews it’s not especially good at AR/MR, and has very few VR uses. They have to come up with something to describe what it does that doesn’t suggest it’s just a fancy novelty toy.
VR uses will probably come up. Its M2 processor can probably handle most VR games at medium to low settings. We could be seeing first gen VR cartoony stuff like Job Simulator soon. It’s an easy addition to their Arcade service too. Unless they’re just too stubborn about it being purely “spatial computing” to do that.
As for AR/XR, I haven’t kept up with that as much, but I don’t think any headsets are especially good at it.
But yeah, this is still pretty true.
My understanding is that nobody has really cracked A/MR yet mostly due to hardware limitations. From what I’ve read, this thing really is the best contender so far–it has decent passthrough cameras–but there are still noticeable video artifacts and (this is probably more important) you’re still basically strapping a fucking ipad to your face and carrying around a battery pack. None of this shit is going to take off until we have something that fits into at most the form factor of bulky sunglasses and allows for genuine transparency (or so close as to be unnoticeable), but whomever cracks that hardware problem very well might be the world’s first trillionaire. I’ve said for decades now that VR will always be a niche product but true mixed reality will be just as transformative as smartphones were, and nothing I’ve seen recently makes me question that opinion.