Simula One – office-focused, standalone VR headset based on the Linux Desktop
simulavr.com
simulavr.com
Looking at their README [1], it looks to be texture filtering done a little more properly (many implementation cheaps out with bilinear interpolation, I guess). It does get rid of the aliasing artifacts, but it's still very blurry, and the look is a bit underwhelming.
What I really look forward to is getting text and vector rendering done directly in the perspective transformed space, something Pathfinder [2] has demonstrated before.
[1] https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula#text-quality [2] https://blog.mozvr.com/pathfinder-a-first-look/
(I am supposing here the "item" will e.g. represent pages of text and similar data.)
The one thing WMR gets wrong is the blasted pop-up keyboard that you couldn't turn off (even explicit use of 'desktop mode').
While a lot of the stuff on Simula One's website is a bit fluffy (10x immersion? Really?), I hope it continues to get refined.
I do hope that Simula One keeps refining their approach though. It's an interesting approach.
You will probably be able to spend more time "healthily" with a superimpression of information on the normal perception of the environment, than fully "in a virtual box of perception".
I’m surprised at how well the stereo rendering actually works. Responsive and works better with eye hand coordination than I would have thought. Really interesting possibilities for rendering different wavelengths, night vision, etc.
But I have to say that my eyes are equally picky with the 2D traditional monitors, so feel free to discount my biased opinion.
In VR there is a rather large disconnect between eye convergence and focus distance that doesn't happen in real life. Eyes are converging to something far away but focusing to ~1m. Another common issue is large interpupillary distance and not being in the lenses sweet spot. But if you also have the issue on regular monitors without stereo it might be something else.
"VR fuzzy" gave me 28,100,000 results just now on google, so.. maybe not that strange or abnormal.
Another thing I find annoying is that you cannot move your eyes to look around, you must move your head or you will see blurriness.
So yes, long way to go, but it's technology and it will eventually be good enough I believe.
Agreed that high resolution is extremely important for reading text, emails, spreadsheets (etc) all day in a VR. There are other techniques we are employing which optimize rendering for text clarity.
Simula, Facebook's virtual office meetings, all of this virtual office stuff ... ISTR we loudly declared the death of skeumorphism and yet here we are. "Put this dumb thing on your head just to have an office call" is such a bizarre over-correction to something, and I can't figure what it is. Are some people just really not coping with the shift to remote-first work life?
Who would actually want to do this? What benefit does this provide me over just ... having an extra monitor? Is this just throwing cash after a fad?
We're about to update our website (www.simulavr.com) with pictures of our prototype, pricing information, and a blog.
The first blog post's working title is "We don’t want to socialize in a Metaverse; we just want a productive VR computer". Here's a draft of it: https://gist.github.com/georgewsinger/611767c7a5dd63a12f1d93...
TLDR: The Metaverse is jamming VR through the framing of "giant social network". Maybe this isn't entirely bad, but to us what's exciting about the technology is its potential as a "Tool for Thought", or something which can help us create new things and get more stuff done in ways previously unimaginable.
Have you ever tried to browse the web on a headset? I have. Even with the highest resolution available it was still a dismal, squinty experience, and actually trying to so much as type a URL was an exercise in frustration.
After all the 'desktop' itself was a transitional paradigm for the office workers that came before the age of the computer. It simulates a messy desk. We're taking yet another step away from this and it doesn't make sense to hold on to these concepts.
I think if we liberate ourselves from these artifical constraints and go back to the drawing board, we could come up with something great. I was thinking about a virtual brainstorming room where you could hang up scraps and connect them. A bit like the serial killers do in movies :D But without the killing though ;)
I've also done detailed trials with VR meeting software for work and I have to say, they're on to something. It feels way more like actually meeting people than it does staring at a bunch of choppy videos in Teams.
And I was always a fan of skeuomorphism by the way... I think computers have become really boring with the flat design phase. Even though I agree it holds us back, there were ways in which it would really shine. Like turning a page in iBooks. It was beautiful and intuitive. When done in a minimalistic way it can work well. It's just when it becomes overblown (like iOS Notes and Game Center) that it becomes a burden.
The idea of a whiteboard can go away and be replaced with a 3D structure I can walk/zoom through - which for complicated systems design is actually a much better solution anyway (short version: you basically never need to have linking lines overlapping or colliding).
My desk can then basically go away - all I need is a chair with a keyboard support so I can spin around, and that means I don't need to dedicate a wall to "office space" at all.
Dashboards, alerts, "control centers" - all these things can be implemented in optimally efficient ways in a virtual office, shared amongst team mates, overlaid or augmented in different ways.
Probably a bit more than we would in real life, due to the narrow FOV I agree.. But I think this will be resolved in newer-gen headsets. It looks like Pimax has already got this covered technically. Though I've never tried them, I wonder how well it works.
I agree with you generally, but I think the people who are big on this space are overstating this point in particular. The existing VR hardware still feels like a prototype of what will eventually "work" here. It's too big, too expensive, too low-resolution, and too dim, and it relies a lot on our brain's willingness to accept and accommodate sub-par imagery. Similar to the AR space, I genuinely do not believe that the technology we're building with has enough of a performance ceiling to get us where we want to be - I think that "LCD screens + funky optics" is getting us close enough to trial some VR experiences and play around with the interaction models, but I think it's got too many compromises (shitty resolution and no differential focus, among them) to really be the technology that takes us to the "promise land" here.
I want all of it (except the bit where any of it comes from Facebo^H^H^H^H^H^H Meta.
I am convinced AR/VR will eventually give a miles better working experience than PCs. Even sooner for mobile where you're severely limited in screen real estate already. It's nearly there now. Can't imagine it'll be more than 2 years.
I am convinced that group audio/video calls are a totally different (and usually much inferior) experience to face to face meetings, even with the best 2D collaboration tools, and that VR/AR can and will (does already, to an extent) make remote face to face meetings possible for the first time. I have had some great meetings in Walkabout Mini Golf on the Quest 2 — try it! Sometimes being together is what counts, and after a while it really does _begin_ to feel that way.
Even if it were only equal in experience, a desktop class experience in AR/VR will soon take up way less space than the smallest useful laptop and have all the screen space I get when sat at home. I love to travel. This will be great!
And that's not to mention games (VR "toys" already often feel more immersive and compelling than most AAA games to me — on a $250 all-in-one headset that costs less than a Nintendo switch), media (ever tried watching a movie or live sport with friends in BigScreen? …it's great!), etc.
I expect a lot of people will be really surprised how far this goes in the next few years, as costs come down and hardware shrinks. A lot of people get surprised by every new tech…
One thing I wonder about is whether VR hardware will evolve like mobile hardware did back in 2005-2006. In 2004, Microsoft and RIM were the leaders in the emerging “smartphone” category, which was focused on business users. In the next 2 years, Apple set a new standard with a consumer-grade device that easily ate up the business market as well.
Will the winners in the VR hardware category win with consumer first, and subsequently take over “work” scenarios? Or will these split into different hardware modalities?
The current market leader, the Oculus Quest 2, is close but not quite good enough; the lenses and panels are not quite good enough to make small fonts readable, so while a VR desktop gets you lots of monitors, all the gains are lost by needing to use huge fonts everywhere.
In order to make a good laptop replacement, Simula One would need to beat the Quest 2. It's not necessarily impossible--targeting a higher price point might let them use better panels and lenses, for example--but it's definitely not easy.
Looking at their website, it seems as though they're not really focused on hardware/optics, but instead are focused on the window manager. That seems like a mistake to me. If there's a headset that's actually good enough, from an optical perspective, that people want to use it as a desktop, I expect lots of highly-skilled developers to come fill in those parts of the software for free.
It's a challenging task, but by focusing on productivity applications and a higher price point we can go a long way.
We're working with a specialized VR optics design firm to get variable resolution lenses that will give us ~40 PPD in the foveal area at 90deg monocular FOV, or ~35 PPD with 100deg. Currently finalizing the spec and we expect the design to be finished by December.
Our panels are going to be 2.5k x 2.5k Sharp LCDs, so towards the higher end of what's available on the market right now.
The original plan was 2880x2880 BOE LCDs, but we ran into issues with them (lack of support and then the entire product line was tossed into dev limbo due to an ECN from their main customer) so we tossed them and worked with Sharp to get something suitable.
The mechanical parts are probably the most "visually" advanced at this point, and we're planning to update with our first prototype soon.
having spent many hours working (in some way) with an AR headset (Epson Moverio, 1280x720 Si-OLED displaying with transparent black an Android system), I can say the experience can be very rewarding - of course if you use the tool for what it can be good for -, but among the evident shortcomings is the lack of a good input method. If you were dictating through a microphone and had an excellent speech-to-text system, and if there existed a more precise and comfortable pointer than the touchpad (maybe gesticulating in the air - but would that be less straining than a mouse device?), it would probably be a greater revolution with many more usage cases.
But without an input system that rivals a keyboard, the main use to me is that of reading and of using software which I optimized for the use of the embedded dpad.
Not something like: I am floating mid air on my skidive and I'll fix a couple of bugs :)
While air diving I would enjoy it with focus while it lasts, but while walking in open nature I consult my informational, "virtual", displayed material and take a break from time to time to switch focus and enjoy the colours of the season :) ...Which by the way, are quite nice to enjoy as the background of the material you have in front. Also because with the AR headset you will keep your head oriented towards spots that enhance the readability of the foreground, so somehow you are dealing with nature even more.
Instead, if you were at a coffee shop - are you sure you would not be more comfortable and efficient with a laptop? Because the optimal case I can think of is: AR (transparency-based) eyeset, big between sunglasses and skiing goggles, that you do not remove but wear also while walking - so, something always-on, something you do not alternatively extract and put away... The main control (dpad, mousepad, buttons - and the SOC and power of course) in your pocket. But you need a good input method for text.
Always-on with good input method for text seems better than laptop. Otherwise, if you remain keyboard dependent, the laptop is probably better.
Edit: Ahh, they are making a headset too.
I think that's not a smart business decision IMO. There's many companies with big financial reserves and lots of experience with hardware doing just that already. They can afford to deep-discount to gain marketshare (like I'm pretty sure Meta does with the Quest). While the software side (VR desktops!) is hardly explored at all. There's also much less barriers to get into that, no production setup, no supply chain...
I wish them well of course :D Just don't know if this is the best idea... The time for garage-startup hardware for VR was when Palmer Luckey did his kickstarter.
They literally have to make their own hardware. The only VR hardware that supports Linux officially is the Valve Index and the HTV Vive line. Everything else barely functions, with the only hope being from community efforts (which are not stable experiences yet at all, far from it). The Index and the Vive aren't suitable for people that just want to use this software, because they're expensive and bulky.
But the headset they're proposing is twice the price of those :)
Sure, it has better resolution but not that much better. And it'll be a really tough sell, competing with the big vendors and targeting a niche platform. I would see more in developing a software layer like Virtual Desktop does for Windows on the Oculus ecosystem. Really innovate with the concept of PC usage in VR (simulating touch, floating windows etc). And then aiming for an acquisition or something.
But anyway I'm not an entrepreneur (and never would wish to be one!) so don't take my word for it. It just struck me as odd. Hardware is hard if you're not geared for it and particularly hard in the current supply-constrained times where the big vendors buy up everything they see. They'll be fighting for scraps at highly volatile prices.
Agreed it's definitely stressful from a financial/business standpoint (hardware is really tough), and unfortunately the first iteration of our headset will be really expensive (since we have no leverage to bring unit costs down from our suppliers).
That being said: https://imgur.com/RMktWuj.png
You have to deal with resolution as an issue. So you may want to use flat surfaces, position fixed with the eyes, to get the crispest vision when working on an item, and reserve things like space navigation to item navigation only.
I might be extremely out of touch, but I'm still struggling to understand who is asking for this. In other words, who expects to be more productive with a VR device, rather than a regular laptop or desktop?
Someone not "sitting at a desk", e.g. moving around. Better phrased: e.g. someone who wants to make more use of timeframes in which they cannot be "at the desk".
Your eyes are very good at removing all that jittering and the jankyness of your own head movements. Not so much when the movement comes from other heads...
(Of course I don't know if the product discussed is adding _additional_ jitter of some kind)
As far as I understood it, it was more of a front-end for local processing. Like the Quest does to power its wifi and local rendering when using Virtual Desktop, but the actual programs are streamed from the computer?
As I understand it, the headset on its own is not meant as a computing device as-is but needs to be paired with a Linux PC.
That makes the price a lot more palatable indeed.