Everything We Know About Apple AR/VR Headset

Most Awaited Apple’s product is its AR/VR Headset.

Apple is working on this project for a long time but every year it got delayed due to some issues.

Rumors say that Apple has a secret team of hundreds of employees working on this project. This can be true as new hiring at Apple has ramped up over the last several years.

Read more: WWDC 2022 – All You Need To Know

As far as we know, Apple is working on at least two AR projects,

AR/VR Headset
AR Glasses

Here is everything we know so far about Apple’s AR/VR Headset.

Outline:

It is suggested that this AR/VR Headset will be more similar to the Oculus than Google Glass in design. Its Virtual Reality part will make you feel as if you are actually experiencing what’s going on in the simulated world. Apple is designing this AR/VR Headset in a way that it’ll replace iPhone and Mac.

The Apple AR/VR Headset is suggested to have powerful A-series processors and two chips inside it, dozen of cameras, high-resolution displays, 3D sensing, and a sleek and lightweight design.

The Headset will support Wifi 6E, the latest wifi specification. It adds support for the 6GHz spectrum, plus faster wireless speed and lower latencies.

But we all know that with features like these, it’s not going to be cheap. Isn’t it?

Release Date:

Initially, it was suggested that Apple will unveil the Headset at some point in 2022, most likely at the WWDC event in June, chances are they will maybe. But now some reports say we won’t be able to see it until 2023.

Now Apple’s analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman both believes the unveiling of the Apple AR/VR Headset has been pushed back to the end of the year or the start of 2023.

Last month Apple had a meeting at which not many people were invited. As seen from several reports, in this meeting Apple demonstrated its AR/VR Headset to the board. If a demo is shown to the board then I guess it’s safe to assume that it is advancing towards its finishing product.

Design:

In design, it is more similar to the Oculus Quest using a lightweight fabric material. It is believed to have a curved eyeshade and soft netting that can easily fit on your face. The headbands in the Headset are swappable and a size adjustment option is available.

Both headbands have different features, one will provide you with spatial audio technology. and the other will provide additional battery life when you are on the go.

Its curved eyeshade design will prevent the light from leaking into the wearer’s view. It also features 3D sensing, which means it will be able to respond to the eye movement and hand gestures of the person wearing it.

Apple’s analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggests that the current models weigh between 200-300 grams but Apple has something different in mind, they are aiming for 100-200 grams but only if technical problems can be solved.

Apple always thinks differently, right?

Display & Cameras:

Three in total displays in the Headset where two will be of high resolution 4K micro OLED Display and the third one will be of a lower resolution AMOLED display on the back. The third display could be for the low-resolution peripheral vision.

According to the DSCC reports, Sony is making the 4K 4000×4000 displays with 1.4 inches diagonal for Apple’s Headset and three displays, two sony made displays, and one large lower resolution AMOLED display.

The use of pancake lenses [more expensive than the Fresnel Lens] made the design more thin and lightweight.

The AR/VR Headset will have dozen of cameras to feature different things like

Hand-tracking,
Gesture control,
See-through Augmented Reality experience for the user
Innovative biometrics
Environmental detection, and
Mapping of the environment

A set of cameras will make the Headset to be able to read the facial expressions and features.

Tracking Technology:

Apple is rumored to be making a wearable thimble-like device that a person can wear on the finger and it will be connected to the headset to track hand gestures, meanings it can open the possibility door of writing in the thin air. An eye-tracking system is also included which will facilitate control with eye movement.

Operating System:

The headset will be running on a new operating system called “realityOS“, and this name is even expected for the AR/VR Headset and Siri will be used to control the Headset.

An app store for the headset will be created by Apple whose main focus will be gaming, video content, and conferencing.

“#if TARGET_FEATURE_REALITYOS”

Well then. This at least confirms it 1) has its own OS & binaries, and 2) has a realityOS Simulator https://t.co/6a25kWshXR pic.twitter.com/RyF5O5gFjg
— Steve Troughton-Smith (Archived) (@stroughtonsmith) February 9, 2022

New technology in facetime will be added in which instead of seeing the person’s actual face, you might see a 3D Memoji version of them.

Processors:

Two Mac-level processors for exceptional computing power and will have a power adopter of 96W.

A high-end main processor is added to the AR/VR Headset that is similar to the M1 pro chip and for managing the sensor-related aspects of the device, a low-end processor is also added. One of the chips is of the latest TSMC technology, a 4-nanometer chip.

I’m very excited to see what this Apple’s upcoming AR/VR Headset will be filled with!