Then I stand corrected. If you’ve already tried it then you should know. I didn’t realise CAD software was already available for the Apple product, or that there were existing VR devices (Windows compatible, of course) that had overcome the challenges of eye tracking, and had mastered the hand gesture controls that the AVP reviewers gave the thumbs up to (no pun intended).
The thing one can do now with Rhino on Apple’s new AR product is to use it to view applications running on a desktop. This isn’t the experience one would have with an app designed for an AR product, it’s just regular Rhino with a different monitor.
Not the same thing.
What you’d want to do with an AR product would be to add models to one’s physical environment, or use the AR tools to model a physical environment (model a room before proposing a redesign, for example) and then allow someone to experience the room both ways in AR even if they’re not present. Naturally the UI should allow use in the AR environment, which means potentially virtual controls or virtual knobs or something for adjusting all the variables with which one ordinarily tinkers by dragging or typing values (Apple’s voice recognition could be leveraged for some of the values boxes, or cut-and-paste from calculator, spreadsheet, or other sources of numbers that could be available in an AR).
A Rhino version for an AR environment would not be a trivial thing to port, largely because of the UI work. Potentially a firm with AR expertise might be worth consulting to do that right. I’m expecting it to take some time before the AR developers’ expertise catches up with the hardware, which until this year wasn’t good enough to convincingly replace a physical environment in real time and could not plausibly have handled real-time interactions with users to produce real-time AR effects. Still, I would be unsirprised to discover that a 3D mouse offers more fine-tuned control than from an AR product surveilling the user’s hands.
Given the hardware available on OTHER Apple products, I would think the wave of the future is likely to be Rhino on a more robust processor than ships on the AR product, to which one may when useful interface with via the AR product.
On a side note, I’d expect the majority of design work would be in the VR space rather than AR, so that should be less demanding.
Two ways I can think of going with Rhino on AVP short term: porting the iPad version might be “trivial” as the UI is already in place. The other way is to have the Mac running the software, but (if it’s possible) simply output two video streams for the stereoscopic effect in the visor. UI would still be through the keyboard and mouse with the visor just being a stereo monitor. I’ve not read anything about Apple having options for doing that though.
Which environment gets more use surely varies dramatically with the use case. Designing jewelry from scratch, or a piece of furniture, may be happily done in VR. A home remodel plan might more easily be done in AR, unless someone has a tool to map a real environment into Rhino first.
I kind of expect the biggest use to be product demos, though, not design, so starting with the iOS app isn’t a crazy idea. But showing the building ON THE SITE would be really cool, especially for additions or remodels. So I do see AR having some attractiveness even just for read-only uses.