Apple Vision Pro Teardown Reveals How EyeSight Feature Displays Wearer's Eyes

Here's how the Apple Vision Pro can show a 3D view of your eyes with a stereoscopic effect.

Written by David Delima, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 5 February 2024 14:29 IST

Apple Vision Pro Teardown Reveals How EyeSight Feature Displays Wearer's Eyes

Photo Credit: Apple

The external display on the Apple Vision Pro features three layers

Highlights

Apple Vision Pro displays the wearer's eyes using the EyeSight feature
The Vision Pro uses three layers to achieve a 3D effect
These layers also result in a dimmer, blurrier view of the wearer's eyes

Apple Vision Pro — the company's advanced 'spatial computer' that went on sale in the US last week — is equipped with an advanced EyeSight display that uses several videos of the wearer's eyes simultaneously, a teardown of the headset has revealed. The headset's glass shell has three layers that allow the headset to show a 3D version of the wearer's eyes with a stereoscopic effect. The teardown also explains why EyeSight appears dimmer compared to Apple's videos showing off the headset.

In a detailed post that explores the components inside the Apple Vision pro, iFixit show how the front of the headset, that resembles a pair of ski goggles, is equipped with three layers. This means that in addition to the OLED screen on the front, the Vision Pro is equipped with a lenticular layer and a widening layer, and the combination of all three results in the 3D version of the wearer's eyes.

The two layers on top of the OLED display on the Apple Vision Pro
Photo Credit: iFixit

In order to achieve the stereoscopic effect for the 3D image of a person's eyes, Apple equipped the Vision Pro with a lenticular lens on top of the OLED display, that is designed to show different images from various angles. iFixit says that the Vision Pro can generate a "3D face via the stereoscopic effect" by using images of the face that are sliced, interpolated, and displayed from miniscule angles serving left and right eyes.

As a result of displaying both of the images on the same display, they must be shown at a reduced resolution that leads to a blurry result, the firm explains. Meanwhile, the second lens on top of the Apple Vision Pro expands the 3D view of the other lenticular layer so that the eyes don't appear too close to the wearer's nose.

The combination of these layers reduces the visibility of the wearer's eyes via the EyeSight feature, and the viewing angles are also reduced. iFixit has also shared a video that shows the OLED display under the two layers with what appears to be some artifacts displayed at the left and right edges of the screen — these are only visible when the other layers are removed. You can read more about the external display on the Vision Pro via the teardown post linked above.

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Further reading: Apple Vision Pro, EyeSight, Vision Pro teardown, Wearables, Apple

David Delima

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As a writer on technology with Gadgets 360, David Delima is interested in open-source technology, cybersecurity, consumer privacy, and loves to read and write about how the Internet works. David can be contacted via email at DavidD@ndtv.com, on Twitter at @DxDavey, and Mastodon at mstdn.social/@delima. More