Beyond Apple’s Vision Pro: Charting a New Course with Spatial Computing

Introduction

Enterprises are immensely enthusiastic about adopting AR/VR/XR solutions, and 80% plan to increase their investments in the next 12 months. Currently, most enterprises use AR/VR for remote training, collaboration, and on-the-job assistance. However, their interest in exploring innovative AR/VR/XR applications is set to rise significantly over the coming year. Despite this growing interest, AR/VR projects have declined from 30% in 2021 to 24% in 2023, as noted in our AR/VR/XR Services 2024 Market Insights™. This decline underscores the significant challenges enterprises face in unlocking the full potential of AR/VR, as the technology is still evolving to provide photorealistic virtual experiences. This disparity between technological maturity and enterprise enthusiasm reveals a critical gap that must be bridged for AR/VR to achieve its transformative promise.

Current Challenges

A primary obstacle has been creating immersive experiences that seamlessly integrate virtual content with the real world. This challenge spans multiple sectors and affects training simulations, remote assistance, and product visualization.

Traditional AR/VR/XR content creation approaches, such as 360-degree views, often fail to deliver the necessary interactivity and realism for effective user engagement. These complex and resource-intensive methods limit their scalability and practicality for widespread enterprise adoption. Hardware limitations further compound these issues, as many AR/VR devices struggle to support seamless 360-degree experiences efficiently.

Users also face navigation and viewpoint control difficulties, which make maintaining a smooth and engaging experience challenging. Ensuring consistently high-quality visuals across all viewing angles has proven particularly daunting. These hurdles collectively hinder the seamless and immersive experiences that AR/VR technology promises, posing a significant barrier to its broader adoption in enterprise settings.

Spatial Computing Steps In

Spatial computing emerges as the transformative solution to these challenges. By leveraging advanced algorithms and sensors, spatial computing meticulously maps physical environments, enabling seamless integration of virtual elements into the real world. Moreover, spatial computing platforms provide a range of content creation tools, including 3D modeling software and animation editors, enabling creators to customize virtual environments with greater precision and creativity.

This technological breakthrough revolutionizes interactivity and navigation by providing a three-dimensional interface to allow users to navigate using a combination of eye, hand, and head movements to deliver spatial experiences that seamlessly blend digital content with the physical world. Enhanced user navigation is facilitated through intuitive controls and AI-guided assistance. Furthermore, spatial computing implements adaptive streaming techniques, ensuring high-quality visuals across all viewing angles. This technological leap breathes new life into AR/VR, delivering the realistic, immersive experiences enterprises have long sought.

Democratization of Spatial Computing with the Launch of Apple Vision Pro

Apple has revolutionized spatial computing technology with the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro, akin to the impact of ChatGPT in democratizing generative AI. Launched in February 2024, the Vision Pro, powered by visionOS, presents digital content seamlessly integrated with the real world. Despite its groundbreaking capabilities, the device faced significant product returns due to its high price and the early stage of spatial computing technology, which lacks proven business use cases to justify the investment. Additional issues were also cited, including eyestrain caused by a narrow field of view and discomfort due to the device’s weight. However, enterprises remain optimistic, anticipating that future updates in the device will address these challenges. Businesses are now exploring practical applications of spatial computing in their operations. Here are five prominent use cases where spatial computing is gaining traction:

1. 1. Surgery Assistance: The healthcare sector has been a pioneer in adopting the Apple Vision Pro. Since its launch, it has been tested in multiple surgeries to assess its viability for surgical assistance. For instance, doctors at Pristyn Care in India have successfully performed bariatric surgeries using Vision Pro, which provides detailed views of complex anatomical structures, enhancing precision and safety.
   2. Employee Training: Immersive training is a key application area for AR/VR. Vision Pro enhances this experience with realistic 3D models of equipment. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines uses Vision Pro to offer technicians a high-fidelity, controller-free training experience for engine repairs, significantly reducing errors and improving efficiency.
   3. Immersive Collaboration: Vision Pro enhances immersive collaboration by overlaying information such as graphs, charts, and dashboards within the user’s environment. Porsche leverages Vision Pro for real-time collaboration, providing dynamic visualizations of car data, including speed, braking, positioning, and live video from the dashboard, facilitating real-time decision-making among race engineers.
   4. Customer Engagement: Traditionally, AR/VR devices required tethering to high-powered computing systems and sophisticated controls for navigation. Being wireless and hands-free, Vision Pro enhances immersive customer experiences using intuitive hand-gesture-based navigation. e.l.f. Cosmetics has developed an app utilizing Vision Pro’s 3D user interface, designed for natural hand and eye movements, to enhance customer engagement.
   5. Project Planning/Designing: Vision Pro’s spatial computing capabilities allow users to access detailed 3D models of plants and machinery, improving planning and design processes. Resolve uses Vision Pro to examine intricate details in architectural plans and 3D models, such as angles, dimensions, and material density. This facilitates better planning and layout of HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and fire sprinkler systems.

Tech Market Dynamics

Apple isn’t the only player in the market enabling spatial computing. Sony, AjnaLens, Meta, and Qualcomm are also advancing in this area. They are building an ecosystem for spatial computing by providing hardware support through head-mounted devices and software, especially for creating spatial content.

• • In March 2024, AjnaLens launched AjnaHPSC (High-Performance Spatial Computing), an XR streaming platform that eliminates the need for high-performance PC setups.
  • In January 2024, Sony announced the development of an immersive spatial content creation system, supported by an XR head-mounted display and controllers for intuitive interaction with 3D objects and precise pointing. This system enables creators to visualize and modify real-scale 3D models in an XR environment.
  • In September 2023, Qualcomm, in partnership with Meta, introduced two spatial computing platforms: Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 and Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1. The XR2 Gen 2 platform enhances immersive experiences for thinner MR and VR headsets, while the AR1 Gen 1 supports lightweight smart glasses for visual heads-up displays.

This market is nascent, with a lot of tech activity and investments. More such advancements in spatial computing to enhance AR/VR are expected.

Conclusion

These innovations signal a dramatic shift toward more accessible, immersive, and interactive spatial computing solutions. Existing spatial computing platforms are akin to the early mobile phones of the 1980s—bulky, expensive, and not particularly user-friendly. However, those clunky devices paved the way for the sleek, powerful smartphones we rely on today. Just as those early mobile phones laid the groundwork for transforming communication and connectivity, current spatial computing platforms are the precursors to a future where immersive, intuitive experiences become seamlessly integrated into our daily lives.

The market for spatial computing is evolving rapidly, with early enterprise adopters already experimenting with complex scenarios such as surgery and project planning, laying the groundwork for broader B2B applications. Despite the initial mismatch between expectations and reality with Apple Vision Pro, enterprises must persist in exploring and evaluating spatial computing. Future product upgrades and solutions promise enhanced functionality and feasibility, making spatial computing more accessible and user-friendly.

This current wave of developments is merely the beginning. We stand on the brink of groundbreaking advancements that will redefine spatial computing and its applications across various industries, heralding a new era of immersive and intuitive experiences.