Raven Zachary On VR Versus AR Across Specs, Xreal, Vision Pro, HoloLens & Magic Leap

Raven Zachary’s story with VR and AR dates back to the 1990s and, in the years since, he’s become involved with a range of impactful projects at the cutting edge of technology.

As a guest for the Good VR Podcast he recaps the journey for the first 15 minutes and then we end up having a spirited discussion for the next hour about the current landscape for VR headsets and AR glasses as we cover everything from Steam Frame and Vision Pro to Xreal and Specs.

“I've had some very magical, perhaps even mystical experiences, in VR over the years. But when I think of that as a percentage of my time in headset, those types of experiences are a fraction of my desire to go out into the world and augment my life with things digitally in my physical world,” Zachary explains.

He’s got a strong point and makes the case for optical AR well throughout our discussion. The talk heats up as I respond with the idea of video AR passed through VR optics. I propose the steady application of mass market economics to increasingly high resolution headsets will win the day for VR. As an example, I discuss the moment when iPhone 4 surpassed so-called “retina” resolution around 2010. For those unfamiliar with the history here, iPhone’s breakthrough user interface debuted in 2007, apps followed in 2008, and in 2010 the iPhone 4 dramatically upgraded the resolution of the display past the point where you could discern detail at a regular viewing distance. This resolution bump essentially unlocked whole classes of use for phones, namely reading and other passive media consumption, that were previously constrained by the display limits.

“I certainly think it made media consumption more compelling,” Zachary replies. “How much did it affect the general app market? Web browsing, sure, fonts are more legible. I can use a Kindle app on my phone or the Books app from Apple on my phone and it looks much nicer. But I think probably media viewing had the most impact for increasing pixel density.”

Vision Pro’s displays are certainly the highest resolution in consumer-grade hardware right now but its pixels are spread over your field of vision. That means it’ll still be a long time before true retina resolutions are achieved in a consumer-grade head-mounted display. Until that time, experiences you have with your unaided eyes will be more compelling to look at than anything you might see through a VR headset.

“What you essentially just told me is in one generation reading wasn't really a thing you really wanted to do on an iPhone,” I said. “And then the next generation reading full length books became something that you could actually do on this device in your hand. The exact same thing is true of VR headsets and the exact same thing gets solved.”

The original recording of our conversation was an hour and 36 minutes using the podcasting platform Riverside. I edited it down to 1 hour 20 minutes. My sincere thanks to Cameron Brown of Rec Room for giving me permission to use music from Rec Room for the intro and outro of the Good VR Podcast. Become a subscriber on Substack to support Good VR directly and receive most podcast episodes before everyone else. You can also simply donate any amount via Stripe to support my work at Good Virtual Reality.

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