Vitalik Buterin Has Invested 400 ETH into SimulaVR | Hacker News Reader

Vitalik Buterin Has Invested 400 ETH into SimulaVR

simulavr.com

38 pointsVinnl22 comments

I really had force myself not to preorder a SimulaVR back when they first put it online. I am very "in love with the idea of it" as V. Buterin writes. But I am too afraid it will fail like so many other VR projects (and this one is very ambitious) to invest 2.7K USD in a SimulaVR unit right now.

Love the idea, not so much that price unfortunately. It is out of reach for average people. It is set so high that even if you'll want to lower it you'll piss off the ones that paid that high price.

It's unfortunately an expensive device, but we like to argue that "first in kind" devices are often very expensive[1] before economies of scale and other efficiencies can drive them down. The Apple Vision Pro is set to retail for $3,500 (vs. our base unit at $2,700 right now).

[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/paying-for-productivity/

I was on the same boat and did not buy one either. As they seemed to have hit some funding issues (even with Vitalik's investment), maybe it was a self fulfilling prophecy...

I did pre-order one, but that involves accepting that the money might not end up being a waste.

I hope it comes to fruition! It's too bad that the computational parts aren't outside of the headset so the headset could be MUCH lighter, then I'd definitely be willing to get one. I'm a real VR nerd myself and play often, I've had the original Oculus, CV1, Vive and now Index - the next one will have to be super-light because it's frustrating to not be able to use VR for more than an hour due to neck and face pains.

Understood. We opted to make tradeoffs that optimize for VR pixel density over headset lightness (since we think pixel density/text readability is ultimately a bigger barrier for long sessions than weight).

With that said, our compute pack itself is detachable, so it can be offloaded from the head.

Hm, so the compute is at the back of the head?

What is the weight without the compute pack or with pack?

Couldn't find weight on your site

Hmm not a fan of cryptobros. But if this can help SimulaVR move forward, ok.. It's pretty clear they are on the right track as Apple is now following in their footsteps.

PS: I was a big fan of crypto back when it started due to the "sticking it to the system" possibilities. After all it came up out of the ashes of the financial disaster of 2007 which exposed the banking establishment as being corrupted to the core.

However it very quickly pivoted to "work within the system to get rich FAST!1111!" and I view ETH as part of that, this is where my sentiment comes from. Especially since we're heading for a new banking crisis and everything is back the way it was before 2007.

If someone considers this is hot take, my apologies, it's my opinion alone.

> and I view him as part of that, this is where my sentiment comes from.

I'm not sure where that view comes from. Vitalik has pushed back a against price speculation, called out scams, and refused to accept free money from people who were attempting to use an association with Vitalik as a way to scam others.he even has the famous quote of "have we earned it?"

When I look at people in the blockchain space, Vitalik is as far from "cryptobro" as you can get. Just because he created Ethereum doesn't mean he supports what many scammers use it for. He has no power to stop them beyond what he's already doing.

Ok I'm not really into the whole crypto thing anymore so I didn't know that. I actually changed my statement to "ETH" instead of "him" before reading this as I realised I don't know him as a person. I did look at ETH before mainly due to the environmentally friendly Proof of Stake approach and it's the only cryptocoin (besides Monero) I would support for this reason, but I have become a bit disillusioned with crypto in general.

That's good to hear though. I guess I just miss the whole "revolutionary" power to the people ideology about crypto. Sorry about my comment.

PS: The reason my view is as such is that ETH was only founded by the time the cryptobro movement was already in full swing. So I associated this with it.

Great idea, price point not compatible to my liking though.

I'm pretty sure having an alternative like this will help. I imagine the amount of spy/adware/monitoring Apple and Meta will sink to their own devices

So it's a monitor, but on your face

Technically it's two monitors on your face: one for each eye :)

I had this discussion with a friend who wants to buy whatever Apples new VR offering is, I believe it’s around £3,500. He swore it would increase his productivity because it offers virtual screens so he can have as many as he wants. It ‘suits the way he works’

He’s just got his first junior dev role, and loves going into the office as much as he can, and thinks that this bit of kit will be better than the monitors on his desk, which are the Apple Studio Displays.

I’ll let him make his own decisions on what hardware to buy, but I am very tempted to apply for my old role back just to witness some muppet sat at his assigned desk wearing a VR headset to code. What a time to be alive.

We wrote about our thoughts on Apple's planned VR offering.[1] Their headset looks really cool & polished, but we think people like your friend might not find it as productive as they'd wish since it only supports iOS (iPad/iPhone) applications natively.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36326677

Thanks for the link, I’ve had a read through your post and wish you the best for the SimulaVR unit, maybe that’ll give him the productivity boost he seeks!

It feels weird that Apple have chosen to go down the route of iOS over MacOS, with a price tag like that it surely must be targeted towards professionals who want to use it for work.

I suspect the reason might be related to Apple not wanting to cannibalize their MacBook revenue (which historically is almost always higher than their iPad revenue).

So they've opted to create an iPad replacement instead of a laptop replacement, which is still a step up (and very cool), but not ultimately what consumers can get the most utility out of, from our point of view.

Your suspicion makes sense to me, my tattoo artist designs on an iPad, maybe he’d be quite interested in this and actually get a productivity boost.

I agree it’s really cool, I’d be interested in a future iteration, if the price was right at the time.

I was tempted to email you regarding testing, but I’ll be honest I’m likely not your target market for a tester, I’m probably in the 1st percentile of technical knowledge on this site, but I’ll keep my eye on your product nonetheless.

Apple's primary revenue growth and stickiness is in controlling everything you can do with their hardware, and taking a cut of every transaction. If it ran macOS it could run any code the user wanted and there'd be no way to guarantee a 30% cut of every movie, game, song, or experience you have on it.

Apple went evil the day iTunes started being a non-negligible point of its revenue.

It feels like Stockholm syndrome for developers to wax poetic about the various ways they're abused and ignored.

If Apple has a choice between supporting developers or consumers, they aren't even going to think about it for a second.

So, 10 dollars in today's money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com