Simula One – Linux VR Computer
shop.simulavr.com
shop.simulavr.com
The compute pack in the back of the headset is detachable (we plan to sell a VR dock for office desks to make docking it easier). But yes, this VR headset will definitely look large to future VR/AR headsets 10 years from now. We are excited to iterate its size downward over time (among other things).
If you are unsure about the headsets price, we have added a "partial deposit" option to the checkout which allows you to place a $1,499 deposit to reserve a headset. This allows you to lock in a headset now for less risk, and then receive it later on when its finished (you'll have to pay another $1,499 deposit then as well). If you have any other questions or feedback, let me know.
While this technology theoretically gives you "infinite" workspace(s), you are still limited by human physiology. Do I really want to have a virtual window that requires me to look upward and to the left? How long am I going to want to hold my head in that direction to do anything practical? So this creates a natural limitation of where I can look directly forward in a natural head-holding position, glancing slightly left or right. Which brings us right back to where we are today, dual side-by-side monitors. A human can only look in one direction at once anyway, so there are few advantages to having random windows floating around above or below us. A user could be better serviced by learning shortcuts to quickly switch windows (ie. alt-tab) on their desktop while continuing to look forward in a natural position.
I am all for change and progression, but this doesn't seem like we really gain anything. I don't want to be in a virtual "work" reality, that sounds horrible. I want to look at my monitors to work, then have other things around me. Maybe look out the window or pick up my guitar and play for 5 minutes between meetings. I don't want to see the barista virtually surrounded by my virtual monitors, I just want to see this human in real life. If my partner comes into my home office while I work I want to be able to look at them and have them see my eyes in return. When I am on a zoom call I want people to see a real human, not a virtual avatar.
I just struggle to see any advantages from a virtualized work world. Someone feel free to tell me what I am missing out on here. But as far as I see it, I would still need to work from a desk at home. I am still staring at windows containing spreadsheets/code/documents/files, they are just floating around in virtual space instead of displayed on monitors. I don't understand the point of going to a park when you are wearing a virtual headset. The reason people go to a park or a coffee shop to work is for a change in scenery. But if you are still in your virtual world, then why go to a park?
You could now take your workplace with you wherever you go. In the train, to the office, any room of your house. Always having a beautiful cleaned up working space with a lot of workspace.
I think the face/eye tracking camera's will help with realistic meetings. Furthermore with augmented reality you could grab a coffee or play some guitar without taking your headset off. Obviously when going to the park you would take the headset off. You probably would have to do so anyways as 8 hours of VR is though.
The capitalists dream - the workers nightmare.
But it's definitely more advantageous if you have cash to spare, and freedom in your work.
- you can use it in any luminosity. No reflection if you code, no big light to wake up people sleeping if you watch a movie.
- you can code in any posture, including on your back.
- you can go in nature and code, read, get into a meeting. I really want that. I miss the sun on my skin at the office.
- you can go in full immersion, with no visual distraction what so ever.
- you can have your big screen when traveling. Want to work near the beach in the south of France ? Sure your can, why wait for the holidays ? You can be productive in the hotel room with your full setup, and then enjoy a dip in the water then a lunch at the local cafe.
I wouldn't make it my only setup. It kills social interaction. I like my pen and paper. But the options are nice, if you can afford it.
It's definitely something to improve some aspects of work, not a shift. And you will enjoy it more if you are already fortunate to have money, and freedom in your work.
But there is a place for it.
You may be overestimating the state of vr lenses.
I'd rather have an long battery life arm pc with an e-ink screen.
But I could totally see myself going into the forest or the mountain in a remote area, and enjoy working remotely in nature. As long as I know there will be no humans around.
First, as you said, it's very awkward. It can already create social tensions to have hearphones on in public, so a whole mask...
But it's also dangerous. People are idiots, sometimes means, sometimes just clumsy. And I am an idiot. With my eyes free, I manage to do plenty of damage, breaking glasses, hitting people by mistake, pouring liquids in the wrong places. I know with a certainty I would cause trouble with a helmet on.
I routinely see people wearing not too dissimilar headsets as vision aids for severe myopia and macular degeneration.
"Origins: Simula is a reimplementation fork of motorcar. To read about motorcar, see Toward General Purpose 3D User Interfaces: Extending Windowing Systems to Three Dimensions"
I've got a pretty good record of getting things working with Winetricks and after about a week I gave up on getting my Quest 2 to work on Linux. To be honest, I feel like it barely works on Windows most days.
That's why i would be hesitant to put that much faith in the developers of the hardware to provide lasting support.
Also, the styling of the device itself is right up my alley.
Why aren't we all Programming in VR? - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dHBC-tOnh4
Using a VR Keyboard? - Immersed vs Logitech K830 vs Horizon Workrooms - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diIA9oFI3XM
(funny aside from the video ad: they didn't finish the clip showing the guy managing to take a sip from the cup with the headset on, haha.)
In tethered mode, totally possible.
The compute unit will be usable as a separate device, as well.
What can you really DO in VR here in the future?
- VR videos?
- VR gaming?
- VR art?
The linux desktop is the killer feature. Why recode 30 years of a rich ecosystem when you can benefit from it now ?
You can use a web browser with all your extensions, code with a real local vs code, issue git commands in a terminal, watch any video with vlc / download them with youtube-dl / torrent them, get your emails with thunderbird, in a huuuuuge screen, open all my 1000 of different chats, play on steam while voicing on discord, query a postgres db, render a scene in blender, ssh to my work server and enjoy my ebook collection using calibre.
Why would I want a limited, badly supported, barely developed system?
Since WebXR is not supported yet, this breaks the value proposition for me currently, as all VR content delivered via browser will not yet work. As I said, once this issue is solved (I think they are working on it), I'd reconsider.
Blender starts going there, but not yet for SVR: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.83/getting_started/conf...
I think, this would be a way to really differentiate from closed platforms (which I also expect Apple RealityOS to become).
Unfortunately, the expectation that easy to use apps and tools for creating and consuming VR content will only be available only on closed platforms is quite reasonable.
In tethered mode, I see no reason why it should interfere with the host OS.
Will we reach Varjo's level of polish? No way. But I'm confident we can get 80% of the way there at least.
I think you guys are making a mistake I once made, focusing on the hardware design for what is actually a software product. You’re building an Android phone, without Android.
We're not doing this lightly. Hardware design is expensive, and risky, and low margin. But we want a cultural victory, not necessarily a financial one. If that means doing it ourselves, then so we will.
Case 2, you build a window manager. Each window can be positioned individually and you can give specific windows custom handling, or even integrate 3D scenes. Problem is, now you're limited to Linux. Linux headset support is very limited. People don't have Linux installed, even.
How do you solve this? You build a Linux compatible headset. You minimize the friction. You allow people to put on the headset and get to work. Nobody cares that their Android phone is Linux based, after all.
That being said, right now this absolutely is an enthusiast, early adopter product. We'd like to get the costs down, but going into a costs battle when you're doing a new product type is insanity.
Respectful discourse is important and we strive for something better than the tone you're carrying here. I say "we" only because I like this little respectful discourse corner of the internet and because the site guidelines are fairly clear on the subject. It's the culmination of hard work, cool, and I too hope it finds a lower price point and ends up succeeding.
Fwiw I guess this xkcd applies to both of us :)
How exactly are they going to achieve the visual specs to achieve that at the price point you're expecting?
They are never going to sell something like this at high volume, not only because the market for it isn't there yet but because this goes beyond the specs of consumer level headsets - which means they wouldn't be able to source the required components to even address such a hypothetical demand.
I’m going to take it to the level above offensive tough love and just give up at this point. If you want a $5k headset to emulate a $100 1080p monitor, with a 3 hour battery life, and switches for every sensor so the secret service can’t see how messy your bedroom is, then this product is for you. Good luck
Elsewhere on this page, you literally said that you would have been happy to have paid 2000 for the quest 2 - which this device would utterly dogpile both in terms of optics and raw power.
Cute though that you feel the need to paint the completely normal aversion to having a corporation having the ability to depth scan your surroundings at all times as tin foil hat territory.
I'd rather you skip the hysterics and just "give up" if you have nothing constructive to say.
P.S. I own a Quest 2.
I just finished a 6 hour session on the OC2 with the elite strap w/extended battery
For the record, I’m sure I’m far from the only one who 1) never had a VR headset yet, 2) would not buy a Facebook product, and 3) could buy one for US$2k+ for experiments if that means no lock-in. It’s the price of a decent laptop. Weren’t the original Oculus prices in that ballpark, before FB came in with its billions?
"high-quality AR mode" -- do you have public SDK documentation for this and does it have a mixed passthru VR / AR mode like the Quest 2? The quest actually is a bit underpowered for doing this properly imo so I can see a higher price point potentially being necessary to pack it with the right hardware.
Not that I'll ever build it but somewhere along the line some cordless headset is going to have great passthru and the ability to replace the windows in my house with the beach or a beautiful mountain vista.
Also just an observation -- x86 on your face makes me think it probably gets quite hot :)
We have two wide-angle RGB cameras mechanically locked to the users' PD. The cameras itself are around 2k x 2k at 90 fps. For the standalone mode, the data is pushed over a PCIe gen 3x4 link so we can hit <12ms latency. Tethered is a bit more tricky as we can't count on the bandwidth being available, but we'll either compress it or do a reduced resolution.
The actual sensor is still TBD. I'd like to do this properly with a global shutter sensor (IMX547), but they're a bit too expensive. If we don't have the margin for it, something like a IMX715 is the fallback.
The compute pack will be on the back of your head, so a bit easier to cool and not as severely annoying. Also helps balance the headset.
Are you guys confident that your headset will be more comfortable than the Q2? If so, how much more?
* Main heat generation is on the back of the head and pointed away from you
* If it's still required, active airflow for the user in the front of the headset
* Weight will be balanced
* IPD is auto-adjusted, so there's no chance of having the wrong setting and hurting your eyes.
* Better optical quality leads to less eye strain
* Adjustable padding
That being said, I'm not a Quest 2 user. I don't know what things it does wrong, so it's possible I missed a feature that we have and didn't list.
Reclining can be a nice way to take a break from weight and pressure on head and face. Which can require modding a headset, to pad a back-of-head knob, etc. And hmd thermals aren't optimized for reclined. But here, perhaps this compute unit might be made detachable?
For the future, have you looked into micro LED displays with waveguide optics? It seems like the thing that is going to allow for glasses-style VR/AR.
To me it's a no-brainer to tether that type of display to a phone. Could just use a long cable going to a pocket or hang the phone around the neck etc.
uOLEDs with waveguides (for AR) or pancake lenses (for VR) are... really complicated. Both systems currently do not offer the visual quality that a traditional refractive system can offer due to low light transmission, ghost images, and so on.
The pixel size on a high-res uOLED is so small that getting the same PPD requires pancake optics to fit in the headset form factor. Otherwise your spot size (i.e. the minimum resolution of the optics) is too large and you lose the benefit of a high-res display.
Also, bandwidth is a big concern. Our double 2448x2448@90Hz displays require DSC to run even with a DisplayPort 4-lane HBR3 link. I don't think phones can drive that.
Like, I'm certain I cannot work in my Index, not for any prolonged time. It's awesome for games, but not for any text-heavy stuff. I've tried a few times, my take is that problem is the resolution is not good enough => I would need giant fonts => turning my head a lot => extra neck strain (as if headset, even with a counterweight not bad enough in this regard) => fatigue and headaches. If I could see a honest (simulated) rendering of what I'd see in an Index vs what I'd see in Simula One, that would be amazing.
I think the best bet actually would be for me to just take a camera and do a through-the-lenses shot through both. Our current optical train needs a second iteration for the mold, but once it meets our specs we'll do a blog post about it.
They need to sustain themselves and do that with something that facebook could not copy.
While OQ is way cheaper, it also forces you into using facebook accounts and you pay with your personal or even worse, with your company information, that is way more valuable than the cost of the simula.
A surveillance device with two cameras and microphone and eye tracking of your workers is something unacceptable for lots of companies.
The price is OK if they manage to offer something that improves productivity and make companies money. Juts a month of paying an engineer is way more than this price.
Our software won't phone home. The cameras will have a kill switch. If we include a microphone, so will the mic.
And for that to happen, the cost must go down. Just like the PinePhone is IMO the first practically obtainable phone designed to be hacked, we need something like this for VR. Otherwise we'll just end up with a bunch of Librems that only rich US engineers can enjoy.
Consumer VR headsets are nowhere close to that point. The Quest 2 is right at the edge of usably clear text for work - with a price point that is only possible through the backing of a giant corporation desperately gambling their future on their whole metaverse shtick.
Trying to do better means requiring optics and display technology that is going to drive that price point up, especially for a hackable headset that is automatically going to rule out monetisation through user data.
tldr: nobody should care about providing cheap hardware to entitled "hackers" at their own loss. Hardware doesn't grow on trees.
All I am saying is that:
A) certain conditions need to occur for a hackable home headset space to flourish
B) said conditions haven't occurred yet, and will not until the price comes down
Otherwise, I think we are in agreement.