Simula: A VR window manager for Linux

Major hurdle would be porting Wayland/wlroots to MacOS I think.

I think in the mid-term, the big win would be ability to have 4-10 large monitors but with a cheaper, mobile, and compact solution with the eyes focused further away.

Headsets have improved almost ~2x in resolution and have halved in price and some have become wireless with better optics. A long ways from 4-5 years ago, but still need another doubling of resolution (or maybe more) and an increase in wearing comfort (lighter, more compact) plus an improvement in wireless latency and maybe a reduction from $400 to $300, and you’re looking at something that would be useful just as a replacement for multiple monitors.

Plus probably improvement with registering where your laptop and mouse are automatically. In principle that could be done with a software update to inside-out tracking software.

Additionally, some improvement is possible with similar to current resolution but with improved subpixel rendering and RGB pixel layout.

Seeing what has been done with the Oculus Quest since I last checked out VR like 3 years ago has left me pretty impressed. A lot of this stuff with multiple windows in this demo could be done natively and wirelessly with the Quest (which runs a kind of Linux). The inside-out tracking is impressively good. If combined with an insert you can put your tracked controllers on Bluetooth mouse and keyboard (so the Quest can register their positions in3D space to allow proper rendering in-headset), it could give you a high productivity workstation experience just about anywhere with WiFi (could be through phone). Hand-tracking (Which works already) could even allow gestures, although I’m not sure how important that is. Can the Quest do subpixel text rendering like ClearType but 3D?

Having spent some time in VR in the past, remapping inputs like "the mouse speed of your head" can be super disorienting when you return to the "real world," perhaps dangerously so if spent the majority of your workday in VR.

Your brain adapts, and starts to believe at a primal level that "things fall this speed when I drop them," "I move this fast when I walk", "when I point over there, it's at this angle," etc.

If anybody remembers playing GTA for too long, and later walking outside with the feeling like you ought to be able to jump in the nearest car and drive it a way, you have an inkling of how your brain gets remapped.

Remarkably quickly, moving around in the real-world can feel "off" to the same degree that it felt "off" when you first entered the VR world when you start messing with these primal feedback loops. Get ready to bump into things, and don't operate any heavy machinery if you've been in a non-1:1 VR mapping.

I love the idea of a VR workspace. There are so many limitations in our current workflows and tools that mainly just arise from being restricted to a small flat surface. Even just having your perfect setup anywhere you go would be amazing. All you need is a headset and a small portable cube computer - basically a laptop without a screen.

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But after watching your video, I feel like this really needs some tiling window manager (i3 etc) inspired way of easily creating workspaces with tiles, and effortlessly navigating between them. With relatively minimal head movement.

Also, does Simula support curved displays? It would seem very natural to arrange different curved screens around you instead of flat ones, which also potentially waste quite a bit of useful space.

There's something a little humorous about a new VR system whose primary feature is how well it can display VT100 emulators.

I don't know anyone who used MS Windows when their software was all still MS-DOS programs. Windows really took off when programmers started writing programs designed to take advantage of the native GUI paradigm.

Likewise, VR is never going to be accepted as a practical user interface until it moves beyond the concept of "windows". I fully believe it's possible to make a great VR user interface, but I can't believe it's going to look anything like some rectangles floating in space.

This could be a VR-fvwm. What we really need is a VR-GTK+.