These days, when you’re working on your car, you might have a YouTube video open on your phone, or a few webpages with diagrams for reference. What if you didn’t have to awkwardly fiddle with your smartphone, though, and that content could just neatly hover above where you’re working? Well, the Apple Vision Pro could offer just that.
The idea comes to us from TikTok user and YouTuber hotshottek. He posted a video in which he uses the Apple Vision Pro while installing a light bar on his Ford F-150 truck. As he works on the wiring in the engine bay, he references a YouTube video that he has hovering in the air over the radiator. He also has a reference table for the fuse box positioned neatly so he can check it against what he’s doing at a glance.
We haven’t seen a full video on the complete install at this time. It’s possible that it was shot more as a demo. We have some questions as to how well the Apple Vision Pro would work in low light for fine, close-up work like automotive wiring. I’m pretty convinced it’s legit, though. Fundamentally, what you see here is a very real and exciting use case for mixed reality headsets like the Apple Vision Pro.
@hotshottek 2024 is weird #applevisionpro #apple #public #raptor #ford
For my own projects, I’d love a set up like this. When I’m doing a dirty job, it can get annoying trying to use my smartphone to look things up. Back in the 1990s, family members used photocopies from repair manuals. They were great because you weren’t afraid to get them dirty. The problem is that copying a few pages out of a repair manual at the library only gives you limited information, versus the full wealth of the internet.
In contrast, the Apple Vision Pro, with its gesture controls, lets you look stuff up online with dirty hands, no problem. You can watch videos, flip through forums, and pull up diagrams and leave them right in your field of view while you work.
There is, of course, a caveat. I probably wouldn’t want to wear a $3,500 digital headset while I’m crawling under my car, getting covered in transmission fluid and coolant (more on that next week). The headset is expensive enough and delicate enough that it kind of self-limits its own use. I’d happily use one to wire up some lights on a clean, modern car, as seen here. I probably wouldn’t bring my Apple Vision Pro along if I was helping David with a big, greasy job on one of his adventures of oxidation.
Like a lot of other Apple Vision Pro content right now, this is just scratching the surface. There’s scope to go much farther with the right software. Here, we saw the user looking at a table explaining the fusebox layout, and they had it next to the fusebox itself for easy reference. But instead, what if the very fuses and wires themselves were highlighted, glowing in the field of view of the headset? No diagram required, just cut and splice into the wire that’s lit up, just like a video game.
To achieve such functionality, you would need software programmed to handle whatever you’re looking at. It’s hard to do in a general case, but if you’re working on something specific, it’s very achievable. For example, automakers could roll out headsets for their technicians that are able to highlight components, fasteners and connectors on their vehicles to speed up maintenance. This is already a thing in the world of electronics, where augmented reality systems can be used to highlight traces and components on circuit boards for easy identification.
“But wait,” you ask. “Wasn’t The Autopian ahead of the game on this?” We sure were. Our own Jason Torchinsky was already pontificating on the matter last year. Noting the use of augmented reality in Boeing’s aircraft production, he floated the idea of floating diagrams and live highlights as an aid to maintenance and installation work.
A tool like this can be of great value, and the more interactive it is, the better. Imagine the visual overlay highlighting all the fasteners you need to remove, and counting them as you go. Plus, it’s telling you what size tools you need for each operation. Then, when it comes time to put everything back together, it highlights each bolt hole until you install the fastener required. Maybe if Boeing had used that technology on that Alaska Airlines plane, their technicians would have remembered to install the bolts that were supposed to be holding the door plug on. I’m just saying!
I’m pretty excited about tech like the Apple Vision Pro, but more for the future than today. Right now, it’s simply too expensive to be accessible. Let us know whether you’d use a headset like the Apple Vision Pro for your shadetree tinkering sessions.
Image credits:hotshottek via screenshot
Fuck that apple shit.
Very insightful comment but this sort of thing is coming whether you bury your head in the sand or not.
There’s a pretty good video by Marques Brownlee running down what it’s like to actually use… no need to watch the whole thing but here’s the timestamp where he talks about the passthrough view. Evidently it’s good enough to play ping-pong! So it should be plenty good enough for wrenching. https://youtu.be/dtp6b76pMak?t=626
This is one of the more interesting potential uses for VR goggles that I’ve seen. You’re going to wear safety glasses while working anyway (right?) so the silliness of having this thing on your face isn’t as much of a factor. That said, price and size need to come down a lot before I can see this becoming mainstream. I won’t wear my $50 smartwatch when I work on cars because I don’t want to scratch it, there’s no way in hell I’m wearing a $3500 headset.
The Microsoft HoloLens has been able to do this stuff for years, and it meets ANSI Z87.1 safety glass requirements. It even fits over your glasses, so you don’t need to fiddle with the prescription lens inserts. Just ask Porche how it could be used.
You overestimate my commitment to safety, I really should wear safety glasses but never do and I’m guessing I’m not alone. I keep losing them and my 13mm sockets.
Our training department uses these to train on maintenance procedures.
You can do this with a $500 quest 3. Just making the world aware of the fact that it has about 80% of the features of the APV for like 1/8th the price.
This statement could be generalized to “You can do this with [non-Apple product]. Just making the world aware that it has [large percentage] of the features of the [Apple product] for [small fraction] of the price.” 😉
Sure… but I’ve been seeing a lot of these videos the past week or two, and it seems like most people don’t realize Quest 3s can do this same exact party trick. Before Apple did.
Sure, but counter-point: f*ck Facebook, Meta, and Zuck.
Yes….. but man I am blown away by this tech. This is the best $500 I’ve spent in a long time. It’s so polished…. and you no longer need to link to a facebook account.
Well, on the worst cars it would become a permanent attachment because you would keep working on it and never fix it…also a good way to add smoke to Lucas electronics AND have smoke coming out of your head
Only if the last instruction it gives you is “Installation is the reverse of removal.”
I thought of that the time I was removing a driveshaft and had beat the flanges to death and nothing was laying underneath swore at it and the damn thing fell on my face, I really didn’t want to use my face to reinstall
I’ve worked on nice shiny new cars with a laptop next to me with the full OEM CAD on it. Really handy when you’re shoulder deep in a body void you can’t see into and you need to undo the right nuts in the right order.
That data on some goggles would have been like wearing x-ray specs.
But not as convenient as working on a vehicle that’s actually designed for serviceability.
This tech will get widely used in some circles.
However, the wrenching community (and especially garages) also can be quite luddites. There are still garages out there using faxes and dot matrix printers and software from the 90s.
On the upside, the Apple Vision Pro would probably do a good job keeping rust flakes out of my eyes.
I think a lot of people in the comments missed this essential line in the article.
Like all new tech, solutions will likely come in time to address concerns. Maybe there could be an OtterBox automotive cover for the Apple Vision Pro 5 that comes with a warranty if anything gets damaged. Or, could projection mapping be the solution, with images beamed directly on the car you’re working on? The future is fun and I’m happy these options exist. Just now give me holographic Duel Monsters, please.
When I upgraded to a 4k TV in the house, I moved my old one to the garage on a wall mount and I’ve frequently used it for videos or pulling up information to reference during repairs. I typically just cast to it from my phone, using a firetv stick on the tv, but I have hooked a laptop up to it. It’s also nice to just stream movies, music, or shows. I have my “car couch and chair” (junkyard seats turned into furniture) out there too so sometimes I’ll just sit out there and watch something when the weather is nice.
What I really need to do is throw an old mouse and keyboard that I don’t care about out there, so I don’t have to clean off my hands before interfacing with the computer or my phone.
$3500 and 1.5lbs of weight on your head does not sound appealing to me in any application.
Only if it is programed to let virtual dirt fall in my eyes when I get underneath it.
It COULD be. But who wants to wear a $3500 piece of jewelry to work on a car? The point of this thing is to facilitate learning in a different manner. It’s not here to allow people to not learn and just follow it’s instruction.
Thinking back to the days when I wrenched on my cars with a paper shop manual on the workbench. I had two copies: a grubby one to use while actually working, another clean one in the house to read before tackling any jobs. With most of my cars, I mainly used them to get proper torque wrench settings and clearances. Life was good then.
Now I feel old.
I still do this, plus or minus the workbench. I don’t feel old so much as out of touch.
No, wait, come to think of it, also old.
Same here.. Oh I have the tech manual for my chrysler, (2012 T&C) and its all digital. I still print out what I need to have on hand as my fingers can flip faster than some PDF on an old latop.
Like Mike Harrell and R3vSteve, I still use my hard copy manuals! In fact, I even recently used the inside rear cover page in a Haynes (you know which one I mean) to diagnose a spark plug.
Though I have just a single copy, so I tend to review things first (on it and the internet) to minimize my grubby handling of it during. Especially my $100 Bentley manual for my 911.
But I do take notes along the way to afterward transcribe back into the manual at the appropriate place.
Like socket sizes, and often, fleshing out a little bit what “installation is the reverse of removal” actually entailed… 😉
Now this could change over the years if these get way way cheaper (certainly not via Apple but maybe from someone else) I could see the point. But if I’m spending $3500 on a face computer, I’d rather have my personal mechanic take care of whatever issue, while Jeeves brings me an assortment of caviar to sample upon my supervisory throne.
Overall, not seeing the point of the Vision Pro (Why you have to throw pro at the end of everything Apple? Where’s the Vision Amateur?) and if there’s anything that I’ve known to be true since I rented a Virtual Boy from a Blockbuster in the 90’s, is that people don’t fucking like ungainly tech strapped to their face. Every time I’m introduced to something like this, I and everyone around me says something like “That’s neat, I guess? Cool tech? But I would never use this regularly.”
I only wear $1 thrift store t-shirts and old ripped jeans to go wrenching on my vehicles because they will be absolute garbage by the time I’m done and you think it’s a good idea to strap a $3500 computer to my face? Nah, prolly not.
I’m waiting for the $200 Anker knockoffs. Perfect for garage use.
Oof. I might be tempted by that. Put a polycarbonate shell on it and I might not be able to resist.
“pages photocopied…”
Chuckled when I read that. When I changed the first clutch in one of my Subarus, I laboriously copied, cut down, and resized all the needed steps to do so out of my Chiltons Manual, then pasted them on standard paper & put those in plastic protectors & in a 3-ring binder. (You know: “go to chapter3, step11” sort of thing).
—almost didn’t need it after reading all the bits so many times 🙂
2nd time around (different Roo) I just had the various torque specs handy
The lesser-known ’90s Michael Crichton novel Airframe featured a fictional version of this/the Boeing system at a key plot moment. An enjoyable read…perhaps the world’s first industrial thriller.
Vision Pro’s passthrough view in low light is not very good – in fact, you get a warning that because of low light your hands won’t show. So you definitely need a well-lit area.
Vision Pro as-is won’t really be too useful for this sort of work, but remember this a version 1 product. As it gets cheaper and lighter and better, then I suspect you’ll see this type of thing get adopted.
Google Glass and HoloLens also had this potential but seem to have fallen out of favor. We’ll see if the same happens to Vision Pro.
The company I work for has industrial-grade Google Glass and other industrial-focused AR glasses equipment. We use it for real-time machine tool and robotic assembly machine setup and service in conjunction with vendor support staff halfway around the world.
The technology is already here, but it is still a bit of a niche only being used by companies that are willing to dive in and exploit it. The guys on the factory floors love it because it’s such a huge time-saver.
This.. there uses for the tech.
Yes, the Vision Pro is too expensive, now. Give this tech another 5 years, and it may be mainstream.
Lies nothing exists still apple “invents” it.
Microsoft said similar about the HoloLens (which I demoed, and it was mightily impressive) products, and google about Glass. These are still fairly niche products, and even relatively inexpensive VR/AR systems don’t have the expected adoption rate. Just because apple did it doesn’t mean it’ll take off.
A shop is more likely to spend on a newer scan tool or lighting upgrades than new (and likely-delicate and problematic) hardware that doesn’t give much more (if any) utility than existing systems (speaking from multiple decades in professional automotive work).
It’s just another case of Apple inventing something that already existed, it’s unobtanium, and even if I did have one I wouldn’t be getting it all scratched up doing the type of work it would excel at. You don’t need mixed reality to do clean work like a simple light bar or an air filter. TikTok dude could have just put a laptop on top of the engine and it wouldn’t have blocked half his vision with things he only needs to look at for a second, but that would have made a pretty boring video.
There is definitely value in something like this, imagine doing a timing job and it showing you where the chains go, but until I can pick something like this up for $100 and chuck it in my toolbox it may as well not exist.
In all the coverage of the Apple Vision Pro, this is the first thing I’ve seen that made me think I would actually want one (after it gets a 95% cost reduction).