At the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2023, Apple introduced
the Vision Pro. The Vision Pro is a Mixed Reality (MR) headset, more
specifically it is a Virtual Reality (VR) device with an additional Video
See-Through (VST) capability. The VST capability turns the Vision Pro also into
an Augmented Reality (AR) device. The AR feature is enabled by streaming the
real world via cameras to the (VR) screens in front of the user's eyes. This is
of course not unique and similar to other devices, like the Varjo XR-3.
Nevertheless, the Vision Pro has some interesting features, like an inside-out
screen that can show the headset wearers' eyes to "outsiders" or a button on
the top, called "Digital Crown", that allows you to seamlessly blend digital
content with your physical space by turning it. In addition, it is untethered,
except for the cable to the battery, which makes the headset more agile,
compared to the Varjo XR-3. This could actually come closer to the "Ultimate
Display", which Ivan Sutherland had already sketched in 1965. Not available to
the public yet, like the Ultimate Display, we want to take a look into the
crystal ball in this perspective to see if it can overcome some clinical
challenges that - especially - AR still faces in the medical domain, but also
go beyond and discuss if the Vision Pro could support clinicians in essential
tasks to spend more time with their patients.Comment: This is a Preprint under CC BY. This work was supported by NIH/NIAID
R01AI172875, NIH/NCATS UL1 TR001427, the REACT-EU project KITE and enFaced
2.0 (FWF KLI 1044). B. Puladi was funded by the Medical Faculty of the RWTH
Aachen University as part of the Clinician Scientist Program. C. Gsaxner was
funded by the Advanced Research Opportunities Program from the RWTH Aachen
Universit