With the Apple Vision Pro, wearers navigate 3D environments via sophisticated eye-tracking and hand gestures – no hand-held controllers necessary. As such, Apple has figured out how to bring VR and spatial computing to the masses.
Janko Roettgers for Fast Company:
Andrew Eiche, for one, can’t wait for a controller-free future. Eiche is the CEO of Owlchemy Labs, a Google-owned VR studio best known for its Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator games. Owlchemy has been experimenting with hand tracking as an alternative to controllers, and Eiche believes that this approach is the only way to bring VR and spatial computing to the masses.
“To be perfectly blunt,” Eiche says, “it’s the future of the medium.”
Eiche believes that most headset manufacturers will eventually follow Apple’s example and ship their devices without controllers. He likens this transition to a controller-free future to the jump from early smartphones like the BlackBerry, with their integrated keyboards, to the touchscreen-only iPhone. “Controllers are a huge impediment if your goal is to get VR out to the masses,” he argues. “The second you remove controllers, it just removes a barrier.”
Eiche doesn’t discount controllers entirely; he believes that they could become an optional third-party accessory for future headsets. Whether these will include Apple products remains to be seen: The company did announce that Vision Pro owners will be able to use existing console game controllers for traditional gameplay, but reportedly has no intention of adding support for VR game controllers to its headset.
MacDailyNews Take: As the Apple Pencil is to iPad, an accessory for specific use cases, hand-held controllers will be to Apple Vision Pro.
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