The Verge's review says the FOV feels noticeably smaller than the Quest 3 which is 110°:
"The displays have other limitations: the field of view isn’t huge, and the essential nature of looking at tiny displays through lenses makes that field of view feel even smaller. Apple won’t tell me the exact number, but the Vision Pro’s field of view is certainly smaller than the Quest 3’s 110 horizontal degrees. That means there are fairly large black borders around what you’re seeing, a bit like you’re looking through binoculars."
I don't think it's even possible to get a fully immersive FOV in that form factor with the current SOTA optics, the few headsets which do have ultra-wide FOVs are enormous bricks.
The widest FOV headset you can currently buy is the XTAL 3 at 180 degrees, and it's huge, despite being a PC-tethered design that doesn't need to make space for a SoC or battery.
Yeah, but XTAL 3 MR has zero standalone capabilities and requires being tethered to a rather beefy PC to function at all.
From their own page, the very minimum requirements for the PC are 32GB RAM and an RTX2060 GPU. And that’s a minimum, so I am not sure how well it functions with those specs.
That battery pack is nothing in terms of weight compared to the type of a rig needed to support XTAL 3 MR headset. I can put the Vision Pro battery pack in my pocket, but I would struggle to fit the rig for XTAL in a backpack.
Just the lightest GPU listed in the minimum requirements (RTX2060) is around 950g[0], while Vision Pro battery pack is ~350g. Add to that a motherboard (being able to support that GPU and a i7/i9 CPU and 32GB of RAM), a CPU fan, and a 500W (probably could get away with less, but i decided to be safe) power supply being around 3.9lb(~1.7kg)[1].
Even without accounting for the motherboard, desktop case, and CPU fan weight at all (which can vary significantly and are pretty heavy compared to the rest of the components) and counting them as a zero, you have already crossed into the 3.6kg territory. With those accounted for, you are crossing into the 5kg territory easily. And if you decide to go beyond minimum specs for GPU, I would expect it to be even worse. And the size of that monstrosity would be rather significant too.
I think comparing that to the weight and size of the Vision Pro battery pack is not that good of a comparison at all.
P.S. I am aware that there is a noticeable variation in weight of GPUs depending on the manufacturer and the specific variant for any given model, as well as for motherboard/cpu fan/power supply. However, that would not change the overall conclusion at all, as there is exactly zero way you would be able to get the build below 3kg. And I am being extremely generous here, as my estimate is very likely below even the lowest real-life lower-bound estimate.
I've got an HTC Vive which is also ~110degrees. Although you do initially get the 'looking through ski goggles' feeling when you first put it on, that feeling VERY quickly goes away when you start doing anything inside. It's plenty immersive. Sure, more FoV would be nicer, but it's not like looking through a telescope or something.
Right, your brain really does not give a crap about the very edge of your vision. Instead of spending thousands on way more screen and optics real estate that you will barely notice because you barely notice ANYTHING outside of your focal point, we'd probably be just fine with a couple RGB LEDs shining just colors at your periphery.
That sounds like a way that may actually work (and don't cost too many penny). Just put dozens of programmable LEDS at the edge of your view. And shining correspond colored light when someone actually use a flashlight to point at you. That might even be used as a safety measure without block your view.
You don’t need a large FOV for movie viewing. Even if it were only 60°, you’d be able see a 2 meter wide screen at a distance of 2 meters (and that’s measuring that distance to the edges of that screen; its center would be about 15% closer)
