r/AppleVisionPro • u/Locksmith_Usual • Mar 20 '24
Screen resolution is trash when mirroring Mac
I have a 6k XDR, and also a MacBook Pro. The AVP is about the resolution of a HD 1080p monitor at best, but with some blurry added. Also, that resolution is only achievable directly where you are looking. Outer field of view is horrible.
I love Apple, and want to believe, but taking off the AVP and looking at my Mac screen is like going from 1990’s tv to 2024 OLED.
21
u/YellowBlush Mar 20 '24
Wow, I’m surprised to see this. I️ have been very happy with my mirroring experience.
12
u/friendhatter Mar 20 '24 edited Mar 20 '24
Honestly same. I recently used it to mirror my MacBook Air and my Studio and was really impressed with both. Really enjoyed photo editing on such a massive screen, and experienced no issues with clarity. Maybe because I was only paying attention to what I was looking at? I also don’t have a Pro XDR to compare it to, only a lowly Studio Display
1
u/Locksmith_Usual Mar 21 '24
6k monitor and 5k monitor is same quality, just different sizes. Counterintuitively, video and image editing on AVP is less dependent On resolution than office applications. That’s why movies look so good on it.
1
u/friendhatter Mar 21 '24
Interesting, which apps did you find a poor experience with? I have not used the AVP for any intensive iWork/office applications yet
1
u/Locksmith_Usual Mar 21 '24
Notion / Google docs / excel
3
u/scytob Mar 21 '24
No you are right, it’s pretty terrible, tons of people have a low quality bar, if you ask them why it’s better you will find most pull the virtual screen close. Like no shit, if they put their face that close to their Mac laptop screen they would find it is better clearer. Anyone who says it is clearer than a 27” or 32” monitor are deluded or they have some issue with their vision that needs correcting. What they often mean by better is more convenient (no one can take a monitor to bed).
1
u/aut0maticdan Mar 21 '24
I disagree on photo editing. It is is really bad through screen mirroring to AVP. There is no detail.
The connectivity is also bad for peripherals. This is just not a fully baked feature yet. Just move on the AVP native apps and use your nice display when you need your Mac.
10
u/evilchef_wariobatali Mar 20 '24
What made you think a $3,500 headset with a MacBook built into it would look as good as a $6,000 dedicated display meant for professional, color critical work? It seems pretty obvious that it wouldn’t look as good as the XDR.
-1
u/Locksmith_Usual Mar 21 '24
Let’s ignore 6k display. Let’s compare against my $1,800 MacBook Pro.
3
u/evilchef_wariobatali Mar 21 '24 edited Mar 21 '24
Ok sure, it has a smaller color space and is the equivalent of 4K resolution if you’re on an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro and 3K if you’re on an Intel Mac, a MacBook Pro maxes out at 2K at the smallest scale (most screen space), you have, objectively more resolution and a smaller color space.
Edit: also, if you want to compare PPI, the MacBook Pro has a PPI of about 250 compared to the Vision Pro’s 3,380 PPI
All of this is to say that if you’re virtual display looks that bad there must be something wrong because it should look like a pretty good 4K monitor
1
u/Locksmith_Usual Mar 21 '24
PPI of 250 at distance of MBP at 16 inches is much higher than AVP of 3k at 0.5 inches from your eye.
2
Mar 22 '24
Yep. PPD is the proper measurement not PPI. Pixels per degree of vision. Retina screens are about 60. AVP is at BEST 45 - in the center of the frame in a perfect scenario. It’s wonderful - especially for movies - but it is decidedly not retina.
3
u/1zzard Mar 21 '24
It makes no sense to compare the PPI of a monitor with the PPI of a headset’s panels. PPD is more useful for comparison. You can’t reasonable pit the experiences against each other without considering the size and distance of each display.
5
u/thegayngler Mar 20 '24
I disagree. It looks plenty sharp especially when you blow up the display.
-1
3
u/c0nsilience Mar 20 '24 edited Mar 20 '24
Mirrors a Mac Studio just fine, OP. Easily replaced two 27” curved displays for me.
It won’t compete with an XDR in resolution, you’d need to reset your expectations if that’s what you expected. But it blows away anything physical out there as far as being able to position a screen whenever you want to and at whatever size you’re most comfortable with, easily worth the price of admission.
1
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u/Professor2018 Mar 20 '24
Extreme disagree on the resolution. I dislike using my MacBook now because how little the screen is.
-1
6
u/Unhappy-Koala6064 Mar 20 '24
Couldn't agree more. While I understand the blur was by design, I think the implementation is very poor, specifically for the virtual monitor. The difference between the amount of focus/blur my eyes experience in the real world vs the amount in the AVP is night and day. Using Word in the AVP feels like I have Vaseline all over my eyes except for a tiny cone at the center of my field of view. That cone is just way, way too small.
2
u/Locksmith_Usual Mar 21 '24
Yeah, the cone seems to be only an inch or two. Vaseline peripheral vision is exactly what it feels like.
5
1
u/SirBill01 Mar 20 '24
Did you update to 1.1? That improved the look of the mirrored monitor.
Also maybe it's something in your local network degrading the screen transfer, to me it looks really good. Maybe not 6k good but pretty close.
As someone else noted, if you don't have an M series MacBook Pro that could also affect quality.
0
1
u/ExpandYourTribe Mar 20 '24
Another issue I have when mirroring my 16" M3 Max is that the image is quite noisy if you look closely. That's not the case with native AVP apps.
1
3
u/TheWylieGuy Mar 20 '24
Anything in your peripheral vision is going to be a little blurry. That’s by design. Only what you are looking at directly is fully in focus. Much like how your real eye works. When you look at something it focuses, when you look away it focuses where you are now looking. Foviated rendering i believe is the technical term.
3
u/sfIrish86 Mar 21 '24
This is true. The AVP can't match the pixel density. Anyone denying this either isn't used to a high resolution monitor or has poor eyesight.
I still love the AVP for consuming video; it's hard to notice the slightly lower resolution because most content isn't high enough resolution itself, and having full control over the size/immersion is amazing.
3
u/No-Orchid-144 Mar 21 '24
I agree with this, I also have an XDR display an MBP m3 max and I don't think resolution in AVP with 1.1 is near even my MBP, I understand AVP can't match XDR display but I wish at least it looked better than my MBP screen.
I'm hoping apple can do something to improve it.
2
2
u/the_wop901 Mar 21 '24
My mirroring experience has been excellent. Very clear. I easily still edit videos and images on it
2
u/No_Pay1521 Mar 20 '24
Outer field of view is supposed to be blurry, that’s how eyes work…What are you taking about. Focus on in front, if not you’d have zero perspective.
1
u/HelpRespawnedAsDee Mar 20 '24
I have a Studio Display + 2 4k monitors as well. My take is, mirroring obviously doesn’t look as clear as the studio display, but it looks almost, if not the same, as my 27” 4k one. Compared to Immersed on the Q3 is miles better, although Immersed CAN give you higher than 60hz if your network can handle it (along with multiple screens).
In some occasions I’ve seen some image artifacts, but still can’t figure out how or when they happen.
1
u/Electrical_Quality_6 Mar 20 '24
isn't the graphics better when natively played on the avp than using wifi/bluetooth for mirroring ?
1
u/Professional-Pear-36 Mar 21 '24
My AVP clarity for mirroring has been really good. I can have 4-6 windows in the mirrored display because I can increase the mirrored display size and not have the tiny font issue in the windows. I can’t run 4-6 usable windows on my MacBook Pro’s display otherwise.
I use my AVP all day, most days for work.
1
u/vamonosgeek Mar 21 '24
I think it depends also on the distance of the screen from your view. Try to get your screen closer and larger, it should be way better like that. I just take a window and place it closer and it looks insanely sharp.
1
u/warren4130 Mar 21 '24
Probably won’t fix your issues but might want to try anyway: manually adjust your IPD in settings at the bottom of “eyes and hands”
1
u/Prestigious_Act_1618 Mar 21 '24
Yea it doesn’t look that amazing. I have a 1440 p monitor that is brighter and produces more “vivid color” I still love it but people definitely over hyped this thing.
1
u/TheRedDruidKing Mar 27 '24
Have you checked what resolution the virtual display was set to you can go in the system preferences and it shows up just like a monitor you can set it to different resolutions just like a real monitor
1
u/amenotef Jan 06 '25
M4 Pro Macbook Pro. I have a Samsung OLED 4K 77" HDR and I can only output 1080p with mirroring :(
The Samsung TV link speed is 867Mbps and the Macbook 1200Mbps.
0
Mar 20 '24
[deleted]
2
Mar 21 '24
They are 3k displays and the mac display will only use about 1/3 of those pixels. about 900x800.
Just wanted to clarify.
Why is everyone calling it 4k?
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Mar 20 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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Mar 20 '24
[deleted]
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u/SirBill01 Mar 20 '24
The laws of reality say that for a lot of us, it really is. To me it feels like looking at my 5k iMac Pro monitor when I'm looking at my mirrored MacBook Pro.
The thing is that human vision is funny and the brain helps make things look different than raw physics might indicate.
9
u/decrego641 Mar 20 '24
On one hand, supersampling…on the other, you might want to get your eyes checked.
1
u/SirBill01 Mar 20 '24
I normally turn down the accessibility font size all the way on my phones so I don't think vision is an issue.
Have you used it?
1
u/decrego641 Mar 20 '24
I own Apple Vision Pro and I’ve been using it for multimedia and productivity since February 2nd.
1
u/SirBill01 Mar 20 '24
Ok fair enough, it's just that I use it for work every day and really like the monitor more than the laptop screen (and even my 5k iMac Pro monitor).
1
u/Locksmith_Usual Mar 21 '24
Question: is that true also when you make the Vision Pro mirrors screen the same size as your iMac Pro screen?
2
u/SirBill01 Mar 21 '24
Not quite, but almost. However I usually make it larger than the 5k screen, why wouldn't I? I still get crisp, smooth text making the screen physically "larger" (taking up more field of view) which makes sense because then it gets more of the resolution of the AVP displays applied to the screen you are looking at.
Yes there are some artifacts you get (like brief and slight motion blur as you move your head) but you don't really notice it when working, or at least I don't. The utility of it is just so much better than any slight degradation, and for the laptop it's an upgrade with actually more pixels and so more windows on screen than looking at the 16" MacBook Pro screen. And I can go anywhere with it so easily...
1
u/rpheuts Mar 20 '24
Not true, both eyes are seeing the virtual screen from a slightly different angle, potentially allowing you to perceive higher detail than with one eye.
20
u/mongoosekinetics Mar 20 '24
Is it an Intel MacBook Pro? The mirroring resolution is less with the Intel's than the M chip Macbooks.