IMO a big problem with Liquid Glass is that you're trying to recreate an effect that's highly reliant on the sense of depth we get from binocular vision in a 2D screen.
When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles. It might be minimal, but light refraction patterns can change a lot when looked at from slightly different distances. This is depth information our brains automatically interpret, and it makes easy to tell what is "the glass" vs what is "on the glass".
On a 2D screen both eyes see the same refraction pattern— your eyes are receiving no depth information. It's just up to color contrast and semantics to figure out what's part of the glass vs laid on top of it, so things that might look legible or easy to tell apart on physical glass will look messy on the screen.
The other problem is that the effect is so subtle everywhere until it gets in your way. Even on a system with actual binocular screens, the Liquid Glass effect is barely noticeable and has been since visionOS 1.0.
It's like a horrible compromise between the indulgences of early 10.2-era Aqua and the worst flat boring low contrast bullshit "mimimmumunlism" crap from iOS 7-18 and macOS from Big Sur onwards.
I would gladly take the indulgences of the 10.2 era where clickable things looked like clickable things instead of hobs and gobs of indistinguishable text.
What’s misunderstood about aqua was how most of the visual flair was for usability. Things looked like what they did. Windows XP famously ripped off how MS thought they looked without considering how they worked.
Totally agree. I have 10.2 on a G4 Cube on my workbench and it's just so wonderful to boot it up. Especially on the Studio Display CRT at 1600x1200@75. Just gorgeous, friendly, enticing, with just a few rough spots where they maybe overcooked some transparency or flair.
In addition to this, glass also reflects light from around you, thus there is not the slightest chance of realistically recreating a glass effect on any device without having some sort of ambient vision which is incorporated into a real time rendering.
This is wrong on so many levels and I sincerely hope there will be an option for not just choosing less transparency but an entire UI-skin that is mature, clean and above all: legible.
I'd love to see 3DS-style lenticular 3D display with the power of modern Apple hardware + FaceID hardware eye tracking. I bet they'd be able to do it seamlessly.
It was very tricky to get the effect on the 3DS but already way better on the New 3DS, so i can definitely think it would work flawlessly on such a powerful device as iPhone.
> When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles
But if you close one eye, you can still make out the depth. Brain is still able to tell what is glass, what is on top of glass or below it.
Only across time via parallax motion and depth refocusing, neither of which are available on the screen. And both of those signals are extremely secondary to binocular sight. There's a reason that people with strabismus lose depth perception. Their point stands.
(Though Apple could technically do a parallax effect by face tracking if they wanted)
> There's a reason that people with strabismus lose depth perception.
Still we don't stumble onto things nor do we fail recognise what is on a glass vs inside. Even if we do not have binocular depth perception, we actually perceive depth irl just fine.
And people with binocular vision also fall for depth illusions just fine, too. The brain does a lot of predictive processing. It would be too inefficient to be constantly relying on such details for basic tasks.
> Even if we do not have binocular depth perception, we actually perceive depth irl just fine.
I don't think it's everyone of us because I struggle somewhat with pouring things into small openings (eg refilling a small bottle from a bigger one) and most ball games (tennis, table tennis) are difficult.
I don't think it makes depth perception a problem, but I think it's unarguable mine isn't as good as the people I know with binocular vision.
I don't know about your experience or situation, but a confound is that usually people with strabismus have bad eyesight in other aspects in general too. Usually, developing strabismus is the result of other issues with eyesight. The obvious confound is basically having only one good eye to use at a time, and thus also less neural pathways developed and utilised than those who use 2 eyes. This could make visual perception tasks like tracking a fast moving ball harder regardless of the actual role of depth perception in it. There could be tasks where reliance on perceptual cues for depth perception is less effective, but I wouldn't think a moving ball is that kind of task.
You might well be right. My eyes are definitely not great on top of the strabismus and lack of binocular vision.
One of the main issues with tracking things is focus switching from one eye to another based on where it's moving.
That said I do think the issues with pouring things is more of a depth perception issue. I basically have to switch focus from one eye to another to be satisfied I'm aligned where I want to be.
Pouring things sounds more like sth that could be a depth perception issue, true, though I never actually noticed that for myself. I believe I find it harder than usual passing a thread through a needle though because of depth perception issues.
It's good that you don't have trouble getting through life, but "just fine" is not a measurement. Lacking binocular convergence inarguably diminishes perception even if not 100% gone completely.
Measurements actually support that [0]. I am pretty sure you could devise some scenarios where individuals with strabismus do not perform as well, but for most irl scenarios there is no difference. Compensatory mechanisms do the job just fine, and even those with normal eyesight do not rely solely on binocular convergence either. Our brains don't usually rely on a single signal to make sense of the world, and predictive processing plays a huge role for constructing the image of the world around us, which is also why depth illusions work. Even for those with normal binocular convergence, its contribution for making sense of depth is prob smaller compared to other perceptual cues.
[0] Zlatkute et al 2020, Unimpaired perception of relative depth from perspective cues in strabismus. R. Soc. Open Sci. 7: 200955. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200955
That article does not seem to support your point. They're not measuring depth perception, they're measuring whether people with strabismus have managed to learn perspective cues in 2D images, and, in fact, the article explicitly states agreement with the point you're arguing against.
> Strabismus disrupts sensory fusion, the cortical process of combining the images from the two eyes into a single binocular image [3–6]. The main perceptual consequences of lack of fused binocular images is diplopia (double vision) and a lack of binocular depth perception.
Just because those with strabismus can use monocular cues to inform them of relative depth does not mean that they have the same level of depth perception as those with normal binocular convergence.
The best example of this is sports, but as another example I'm legally disallowed from driving an articulated vehicle -- for what I personally think is a pretty good reason. Anecdotally, compared to friends and family my depth perception is dogshit.
> Strabismus disrupts sensory fusion, the cortical process of combining the images from the two eyes into a single binocular image [3–6]. The main perceptual consequences of lack of fused binocular images is diplopia (double vision) and a lack of binocular depth perception.
I am speaking specifically about whether people with strabismus have issues with depth perception or not. Obviously "strabismus disrupts sensory fusion" as you do not combine the input of the 2 eyes, and obviously this is a problem outside of depth perception. Moreover, most people with strabismus have bad eyesight more generally, as a common path to develop strabismus is having one eye much worse than the other. I am not saying strabismus is not an issue, I am saying that people with strabismus can still develop normal levels of depth perception in most irl situations by compensating with perceptual cues.
The article specifically tests whether people with strabismus had problems developing depth perception. If binocular depth perception was necessary for developing depth perception, they would have found that people with strabismus have impaired depth perception with 2d images. They didn't.
Again as I wrote to the other commenter before, I do not know about your situation, but I am curious about how you compare depth perception specifically with your friends and family. Having problems wrt visual perception does not mean that "lack of depth perception" is the issue. Using only one eye at the time is a huge issue by itself that makes vision harder, and a huge confound to control for in such comparisons.
Honestly, the effect I don’t really mind. I don’t really get it in the way I understood the idea behind skeuomorphism or the initial material design but then again I’m not sure I really got the grand concept behind the previous flat interface either.
What I do mind is some of the puzzling UX choice they made like the new Safari UX on iOS. It’s somehow even less discoverable than before and iOS was already doing pretty poorly.
I was planning to part way with Apple products for separate reasons but that surely doesn’t make me regret the decision.
When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles. It might be minimal, but light refraction patterns can change a lot when looked at from slightly different distances. This is depth information our brains automatically interpret, and it makes easy to tell what is "the glass" vs what is "on the glass".
On a 2D screen both eyes see the same refraction pattern— your eyes are receiving no depth information. It's just up to color contrast and semantics to figure out what's part of the glass vs laid on top of it, so things that might look legible or easy to tell apart on physical glass will look messy on the screen.