Long term wearing of vr headsets might indeed be not all that good. Though, the article is light on actual information and is mostly speculation. Which for the Apple Vision Pro can only be the case as it hasn’t been out long enough to conduct anything more than a short term experiment. So that leaves very little data in the way of long term data points.

As far as the experiment they did, there was some information provided (although not much). From what was provided this bit did stand out to me.

The team wore Vision Pros and Quests around college campuses for a couple of weeks, trying to do all the things they would have done without them (with a minder nearby in case they tripped or walked into a wall).

I wonder why the Meta Oculus Quests were not included in the title. If it is the meta Quest 3, it is fairly capable as far as pass through goes. But, not nearly as good as I understand the Apple Vision Pro’s passthrough is. I am not saying the Apple Vision Pro is perfect, in fact it isn’t perfect if the reviews I have seen are any indicator. It is still very good, but there is still distortion around edges of vision, etc.

But given the price difference between the two I am wondering if the majority of the particpants actually used Quests as then I’d say that the next bit is basically a given:

They experienced “simulator sickness” — nausea, headaches, dizziness. That was weird, given how experienced they all were with headsets of all kinds.

VR Nausea is a known thing even experienced people will get. Truly walking around with these devices with the distorted views you get is bound to trigger that. Certainly with the distortion in pass through I have seen of Quests 3 videos. I’d assume there are no Quests 2 in play as the passthrough there is just grainy black and white video. :D

Even Apple with all their fancy promo videos mostly shows people using the Vision pro sitting down or in doors walking short distances.

So yeah, certainly with the current state of technology I am not surprised there are all sorts of weird side effects and distorted views of reality.

What I’d be more interested in, but what is not really possible to test yet, is what the effects will be when these devices become even better. To the point where there is barely a perceivable difference in having them on or off. That would be, I feel, the point where some speculated downsides from the article might actually come into play.