It's all in the eyes

I watched a video about the remarkable technological improvements in VR that are built into the Apple Vision Pro.   It does sound impressive - but I still have my doubts that this type of technology will ever be as widespread as Apple (or Meta) hopes.

Why?  Because I strongly suspect this is never going to be good for the eyes.   

I could be wrong about this, as now that I look it up, one short study done with a basic VR headset for 40 minute sessions in 2017 didn't come up with evidence that it would cause myopia - but it acknowledges that more study needs to be done.  

The problem is not only the risk of increasing myopia, especially in young people, but also the fact that once you need reading glasses, you have to get lens done that will allow you to use the VR headset clearly.  This is already a bit of an issue with me with using the cheapo phone headsets - because my eyes are different, although I could read clearly from one eye, the brain was still working overtime to deal with VR.   (It might be better now that I have had both eyes done for cataracts, and with the lens to allow for reading, rather than distance, without glasses; but one eye still is not quite as clear as the other.  It's fine for reading in bed, and even using my laptop, but with VR and the incredibly close distance the screen is to the eyes, I dunno...) 

Even apart from the issue of getting perfectly clear vision, I still doubt that using them for protracted periods, like all day at work, will ever not come without eyestrain.

I can imagine something like Google Glass being able to be used all day, as you are swapping all the time between near vision, and real distance vision (not the simulation of distance vision that Vision Pro will provide.)   (And also, glasses are just more comfortable in the way something bound to the face  like a ski mask isn't.)

So, I really have strong doubts about this...    

Update:  you can read a sceptical take on them by a journalist who tried them for half an hour, here.

As he says:

Over dinner, I talked to my wife about the Vision Pro. The Apple goggles, I said, looked and felt better than the competing headsets. But I wasn’t sure that mattered.

Other headsets from Meta and Sony PlayStation were much cheaper and already quite powerful and entertaining, especially for playing video games. But whenever we had guests over for dinner and they tried the goggles on, they lost interest after less than half an hour because the experience was exhausting and they felt socially disconnected from the group.

Would it matter if they could twist the dial on the front of the headset to see into the real world while wearing it? I suspect it would still feel isolating, because they would probably be the only person in a room wearing one.