Apple has released the long -awaited realistic headphones this month. Company Describe the deviceWhich is $ 3500, as a “spatial computer”, an alternative to a standard laptop or desktop. Apple ads have Show people who use The headphone to send emails and perform other dual -dimensional tasks, and June 2023 A press release from the company He said, “Apple Vision Pro is designed to use all day.” Early adopted enthusiasts They have already registered themselves Use it for tens of hours at the end – and even wearing it during sleep.
However, many experts are skeptical that this type of headphone can – or should – explore our physical screens, keyboards and mice. Some people are concerned that the use of such a device for long periods can lead to movement disease, new types of social isolation or other unintended consequences.
Jeremy Bellinson, the founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory of the University of Stanford, is looking at VR and AR psychology, says the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) is great tools for creating unique and overwhelming experiences. But this does not mean that such a headphone is always a useful tool. “We do not use it for daily things. You don’t need to put a headphone to read your email,” he says, or “inserting numbers in a spreadsheet.”
To support the scientific press
If you enjoy this article, think about supporting the award -winning press Subscribe. By buying a subscription, it helps ensure the future of influencing stories about the discoveries and ideas that make up our world today.
Apple glasses with 1.4 pounds use sensors, including a Lidar scanner and camera group, to place people in the so -called “mixed reality”. The cameras facing abroad provides a actual time to the vicinity of users, while two small screens-they were placed directly in front of the eyes-an interactive digital world. The Meta’s Quest 3 headphone, which was released in October 2023, also uses this style of “success” video technology. Mixed reality is not traditional VR, which completely prevents the real world, nor AR, which represents a digital overlap on transparent lenses. Instead, the success device translates a digital representation of the person’s environment (their hands and nearby creatures, for example) into a completely virtual space.
This means that the device mediates everything from the user experience. It is “the dream of technology companies because you are never [have to] She says, the world of social and cultural anthropology, Lisa Missiri of Yale University, who is the author of a book coming on virtual reality, says, In an unrealistic land. “They can always pay attention. They always know where to look. They always know what you are doing.”
Practic passes
For Bailenson, Vision Pro and Quest 3 are an exciting technological progress that improves VR graphics and the limited vision field for AR. However, passing technology also provides new risks. In a study published earlier this month, Pelinson and others Evaluating some of the mixed effects in the short term. They found that wearing headphones seriously restricts the visual user’s perception – and could also change social behavior and movement function. In addition, the success technique contains dodes that often cause visual delay and other abnormalities. The color saturation varies frequently. Feasts of light. Some organisms appear very close or fog. Although Vision Pro has impressive specifications, the accuracy of its images is still less than what human eyes use to perceive.
The research team is currently advised not to spend hours a day with these glasses. The authors wrote: “We recommend caution and restraint for companies that pressure the daily use of these headphones,” and urged a tougher study of the effects. A little long -term studies for the use of VR or AR exist. Bailenson currently monitors the participants who use mixed realistic headphones, but the results of that study are months of its publication.
“We don’t know what walking around the world means with a decrease in peripheral vision or visual distortions for hundreds of hours in one month,” says Rabindra Ratan, Associate Professor of Media and Information at Michigan State University and co -author. From the recently published study. “This is purely speculation, but there can be traces of the way your eyes move in space, and this may make your vision worse,” Ratan suggests. “We really don’t know what to do so to our mind.”
Previous research involved Privilege glasses Ratan says that glasses with passes that cause distortions and displacement) indicate that people can adapt to important visual disorders. But mitigating the changing vision requires initially a seizure period that can last for hours or even days, depending on the individual user and the strength of the disorder. Usually return to regular vision – such as turning the headphone – faster, in order of minutes. However, in each case, the gap between the mind and the body can make basic kinetic tasks such as pushing the elevators buttons, reaching the high crowd and moving on foot more difficult. It can also lead to serious safety concerns. When the researchers rode a bike while wearing headphones, they found it more difficult. In the worst scenario, if someone runs with headphones and died the battery, their vision suddenly will be completely withheld, as Bailenson notes. Mobility with a device connected to the attached internet on your face can be explicit.
People are already operating mobile vehicles publicly, including cars, while wearing mixed realistic headphones. Just four days after the Apple The Vision Pro, the National Traffic Safety Administration Make a statement People demand not to drive while wearing a VR device, in response to online clips of drivers wearing headphones. US Minister of Transport Beit Boujjj also Posted on social mediaNoting that all consumer cars are available-even those that have advanced driver assistance systems-still require human drivers who are completely involved.
The harsh reality of simulation
The AR, VR and mixed reality headphones often cause “simulation disease”, a group of uncomfortable symptoms that include nausea, headache, dizziness and fatigue. Bailenson and Ratan and its co -authors faced simulation disease in most of their devices, although the tests generally lasted less than an hour. The continuation of low levels of simulation disease may affect the quality of people’s lives, the level of activity and productivity-which is one of the reasons that Bellinson fears that people may try to rely on these devices for their daily work.
Then there are possible effects on memory. In one experience of 2014, Frank Steinnik, Professor of Human and Computer Interaction at Hamburg University in Germany, Server 24 hours Alternately, between two hours of use of virtual reality and separators for 10 minutes. Throughout the study, Steinick became not sure that he was real and not. “Several times during the experiment, the participant was confused about being in [virtual environment] Or in the real world and mixing some artifacts and events between both worlds, ”says the research paper. Likewise, one study of 2009 found that the use of VR could cause this Gain false memoriesDespite the accuracy of pictures and quality in virtual reality it was much worse 15 years ago.
“The audio and visual screen improves and better; therefore, I am sure that the default and real content will continue to integrate.” Despite the results of the 2014 experience, it imagines a more positive computing future as these tools replace the keyboards and useful touch tools.
Overdious digital worlds may also affect How users think Social communication, which is likely to affect how they work or learn. In the presence of a virtual human personality, people wear reinforced reality headphones Better performance in simple cognitive tasks– But the worse than that is the most challenge – with one study of 2019. In a separate experience in that same study, researchers found that people who wore an AR devices felt that they were less socially related to people around them who did not see headphones.
Mark Roman Miller, an assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, who studies the behavioral effects of augmented reality and virtual reality. Personal cooperation becomes more challenging when workers wear headphones because it is impossible to show anyone else to show them or to share a screen unless additional layers of software work as mediators, Miller adds.
Miller believes that these devices are unusual tools, but it warns that they also carry tremendous potential to cancel the reversal results. He says he “treats his smartphone like his shoes” by leaving him at the door when he returns home. He says that augmented and mixed reality devices can lead to an increase in the divided attention problem that many smart phone users are already facing.
Missiri says this is a common complaint about how to disrupt smartphones that disrupt our social reactions in real life only with mixed realistic headphones. It spent a year with a group of experts and technical artists in Los Angeles, where they developed projects with the aim of expanding human sympathy by creating experiences that will not be possible without VR. She says, but her work was exciting and showing openness to new possibilities. On the other hand, Messenger describes Meta and Apple marketing for mixed reality devices as “predictable”.
“Meta says that VR is just another game platform …. Apple says it’s your iPad but on your face – any other production device,” says. “So, in the next technological age, all we do is the same thing that we do on the screens now but on a screen a few inches in front of our eyes, this is not inspiring.”
*The editor’s note (2/23/24): This sentence was edited after it was published to correct the description of the period that was included in Lisa Missiri with a group of experts and artists in Los Angeles.