Apple today has started selling the View-Master Virtual Reality Starter Pack on its online store. With all the news about the company building out and prototyping virtual reality tech, it’s interesting to see it offering a glimpse at what that future tech may be by selling the device on the online store. Harkening back to the classic ideals of the View-Masters from the past, the new View-Master allows users to go on exciting new adventures. Utilizing a mix of augmented reality and virtual reality, these adventures are now taken to a whole new level. Taking advantage of Experience Packs, users can navigate space, various destinations, and wildlife through a mix of AR and VR.
Even though Apple has received a patent for a VR headset, doubt remains as to what the final product will look like. With Apple hiring hardware engineers to work on display and projection systems, it’s very well likely that their VR implementation has nothing to do with a headset. The View-Master is not the first iPhone-based headset out there, but it is the first and only VR headset that Apple is offering in their online-store.
Offering an approachable system like the View-Master can expose consumers to the new possibilities that virtual reality entails. Chance Miller recently wrote a piece discussing that although now is the time for Apple and VR, it shouldn’t necessarily do so all at once. It’s quite possible that the View-Master is a solid testing platform to understand consumer expectations and desires.
Be sure to explore the official View-Master site to see what’s possible.
The View-Master Virtual Reality Starter Pack is now available from the Apple online store for $29.95, or from Amazon for $17.74. Each Experience Pack (Space, National Geographic: Wildlife, and Destinations) is available for $14.99 in the Apple online store. Amazon is offering a View-Master Virtual Reality Bundle with all 3 Experience Packs for $84.99.
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The funny part is that video basically showcases how VR fits into a normal persons life outside of the porn and hardcore games industry. It’s a weird user experience where the payoff is going “ooOooooo wow – so cool” for a few minutes before you get bored. Basically perfect to entertain little kids!
At least for people with little imagination.
I’m game to be enlightened by your imagination. But first let me explain how I imagine it not fitting into people’s lives.
The iphone is used for personal entertainment and communication. They can be used almost anywhere at almost any time. It’s why they fit so well in our lives. So much value in one highly personal and mobile device.
Apple tv is for taking your personal entertainment and putting them up on the big screen for more immersion. It can only be used in the living room, which is where people gather to socialize, so a big part of the Apple tv’s experience is being able to share with people around you. The perfect example of this is how a single player game like Crossy Road is not only nicer looking big but also gains multiplayer on the tv.
From what I can tell, consumer VR headsets, as marketed today, are for taking personal entertainment and making it really really immersive. So immersive that it actually isn’t mobile (which is not the same as portable) anymore because you’d have to be someplace safe to use it. So I guess its place would be in the living room? The same social gathering place that the Apple tv covers except now you can’t be social with the people around you and you (subjectively) look like a dope.
Most people don’t have a lot of time to fully immerse themselves in a single experience and if they do it’s a shared one like watching a movie together or playing games together. Music is so broadly appealing because it can fit in our lives in so many places. You can share music with others and do other things at the same time – like cook or clean or just hang out and talk with people. You can’t do that with VR headsets. They demand all of your attention.
So why are big companies like Google and Facebook (oculus rift) trying to get people (and investors) so excited about VR and trying to get it out to the masses as cheaply as possible?
Ads…. VR is the future of Ads. A major source of income for both Google and Facebook but not one for Apple.
You can count how many eyeballs are watching it and exactly how engaged someone is because you are literally shoving it in front of their eyes. Of course they want VR to take off. It’s like a gold mine… or the nightmare portrayed by episode 2 of Black Mirror.
I’m pretty pessimistic but I wouldn’t say I lack imagination.
So how do you imagine this fitting into a day in the life of your average Joe/Jane?
You thought text neck was bad, wait until we all have an extra few pounds strapped to the front of our faces we have to support…..yall can keep your VR
Yes VR will forever be large heavy headsets. Haha.
Unless you plan on wiring the brain yes it will be….field of vision is too large. So by all means assume you can shrink VR down to glasses size…..but guess what, you can’t
Battery life alone renders them huge for indefinite future. Unless you want to VR for 3 minutes at a time
Well considering it’s scientifically plausible that one day humans could backup all of the information stored in their brain, and download it to a new, cloned brain and body, upon death, so as to be 100% immortal, I’d say the headsets might get a little lighter. Just saying.
I make it a habit to ignore 100% of what comes before the words “just sayin'”.
I wouldn’t type ‘just sayin” haha.
Isn’t their new Viewmaster using Google Cardboard?
I guarantee that this will be a crap experience compared to Samsung Gear VR. I’ve used Google cardboard and Gear VR and there is no contest. It’s more involved than just a headset. And don’t even compare this to oculus rift or HTC Vive.
These crappy products give VR a bad name. Don’t judge VR while using these cheap knockoffs.
This is true, but it doesn’t have to be. It won’t take much for someone to come out with a better container that includes a decent control scheme and SDK. I’m looking forward to that.
Not criticizing but there is an entire science to pull VR off correctly. Even Gear VR has faults because these tiny non-cooled processors have to maintain a constant 60 FPS (90 FPS is what you really want but Samsung does not make a mobile display capable of 90Hz) while pushing a high resolution display without throttling down. Once the phone gets so hot it screws up the experience. Today’s mobile processors can only do so much. And speaking of display’s we would need 4K maybe 8K to get rid of the screen door effect. I think that we will get there but not with half baked products like this viewfinder.
Personally I believe it’s a disservice to put these phone holders on the same level as Rift or Vive. The only other VR I would trust is Gear VR because of the people behind it and I’ve used it. But it doesn’t compare to Rift when you have tons of power with no thermal worries.
Crap!
Do they have the classic Flinstones, Scooby Doo, and Smurfs slides?
Yep. Already tired of reading “VR”.
Actually they’ve been selling this for months.
At first I thought I was looking at an Onion article
did they use NFC with the iPhone in the video ;)
This is an intentional canary for journalists and us fans. When these inexplicably disappear from all Apple Stores simultaneously, then we’ll know AppleVision is coming. :P
Nooaaah still not ready yet for me, wait Apple to see what are they doing for it
Already have one of these, is a experience for sure!
Do you have a strap so that you can wear it without always holding it ?
@kaplag so can you use this for those other purposes or not, every review I have read of this doesn’t specify that. “life outside of the porn and hardcore games “