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Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux

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Re: Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux

#171

Post by cs702 »

georgewsinger wrote: post #168
georgewsinger wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We're building the Simula One because we ourselves wanted to work all day in VR, using the best OS (Linux). Here's a fun video I made working on Simula, in Simula: https://youtu.be/FWLuwG91HnI And I love seeing the progress unfold on our own headset, because I can't wait to start working in it.

I should also say that when you work a lot in VR, you get intimately familiar with its improvement bottlenecks: 1. *Text quality.* Text quality is really important, especially to sustain long work sessions. This is why we're pushing as hard as we can on resolution. It's more important for work than it even is for gaming, because gaming doesn't require you to sustain focus on detailed text for long periods of time. 2.…

Points 1-3 make a lot sense to me.

What about 4. Impact on neck.?

Is there any risk of repetitive-stress neck injury from all the looking up and down?

Re: Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux

#172

Post by moron4hire »

georgewsinger wrote: post #163
moron4hire wrote: post #136

Their approach of having a desktop metaphor within the VR environment is one that I have argued for a long time is the "right" approach to eventually grow VR as a general purpose compute platform. The only two other examples of this going right now are Microsoft's Windows Mixed Reality platform with Windows Holographic and the Magic Leap One's interface. Windows MR works really well, Magic Leap is extremely half-bake…

Great points. - (A) is tractable, and will be placed on our queue. - RE (B): Simula has developed a special text filter to help improve its text quality. See https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula#text-quality for a demonstration. As you point out though, there are even deeper things that can be done. We have considered making a vector-based based terminal before (in which text is rendered on a vector basis). - (D) is a…

Jaron Lanier did a lot of writing on what a VR system interface might look like. He was (well, probably still is, though I take it he doesn't really program anymore) interested in cutting away from traditional process and window models entirely. Indeed, he argued that even something like interprocess communication should take place solely through the VR environment, as bot avatars interfacing with the same virtual control interfaces that a human avatar would have to do.

I think his main concern was mostly dog-fooding the VR environment, not building back-door interfaces that the bots could use that the humans could not. I don't know if it really has to go that far, but there is a lot that needs to be done to define common interfaces between objects.

Whenever I do my own thinking on how such interfaces would be built, I always end up with something akin to Bluetooth GATT profiles, which is... less than ideal. There's certainly a lot to like about GATT, in that it has a lot of different functionality pre-defined. The dream of device and software interoperability is certainly there. But at the same time, vendors in the wild seem to just shove everything into the public use space and vertically integrate with their own stand alone apps, so maybe Lanier was right.

It probably needs to be something more akin to how AR systems attempt to understand their surrounding world. AR apps also run exclusively, but they do have to consider the huge design challenge of not owning the entire environment. Perhaps a model of AR that can't differentiate between the real world and the virtual world that includes other AR apps is the way to go.

Re: Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux

#173

Post by kanetw »

cs702 wrote: post #171
georgewsinger wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should also say that when you work a lot in VR, you get intimately familiar with its improvement bottlenecks: 1. *Text quality.* Text quality is really important, especially to sustain long work sessions. This is why we're pushing as hard as we can on resolution. It's more important for work than it even is for gaming, because gaming doesn't require you to sustain focus on detailed text for long periods of time. 2.…

Points 1-3 make a lot sense to me. What about 4. Impact on neck. ? Is there any risk of repetitive-stress neck injury from all the looking up and down?

Good question. That's an open research area for this particular use case. Some research about flight helmets/night vision goggles indicate that a counterweight alleviates neck strain. But it doesn't have the specific up/down motion that'd be more common here.

Re: Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux

#175

Post by alecdibble »

kanetw wrote: post #150
gfodor wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the best off the shelf inside-out tracking system you can get now? Does anything compete with Quest yet?

Nothing that's satisfactory in one way or another. Probably Luxonis DepthAI? The main problem with off-the-shelf solutions is that they add another set of cameras, and afaik nothing exists that allows custom cameras. We're gonna need an FPGA anyway due to the large amount of IO (2 cameras for AR, 2 for eye tracking, IMU, whatever other sensors we need, plus potentially mmwave radar if we decide to go that way) so it'…

I recommend QP if you are going to do FPGA processing using a softcore or hardcore processor. It's an event-based state machine framework that handles IO really well. A hardcore processor would be more performant and take less LUTs but softcore will give you more flexibility as far as sourcing FPGAs.

Re: Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux

#176

Post by ldbooth »

The website states "10x more screens ... 10x more focus ... 10x more productivity"

That's a stretch! Or where to improve your pitch. Personally the only 10x productivity I get is by disconnecting from wifi.

I'd love to see the windows non-square, more like a POV or fisheye if that's possible. Cool product, I hope to use it soon.

Re: Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux

#177

Post by moron4hire »

kuroguro wrote: post #160

Are there any estimates on what would a unit cost?

Well, I can tell you from a lot of research in purchasing headsets to use in an adult education environment: it'll have to be round about $1000 all-in to be competitive. That's what Oculus Quest 2s with Elite Straps through Oculus for Business or Windows MR or HTC Vive headsets with min-spec VR laptops will cost you. Pico Neo 3 is a little cheaper, but it would have also come at signficant extra development cost for us.

Basically, any way I tried to slice the problem of "full VR system I can box up and send to people without having Facebook spy on them" came out to $1000/ea. We ultimately went with Oculus for Business to keep everything small and easy to setup.

Re: Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux

#178

Post by kanetw »

alecdibble wrote: post #175
kanetw wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing that's satisfactory in one way or another. Probably Luxonis DepthAI? The main problem with off-the-shelf solutions is that they add another set of cameras, and afaik nothing exists that allows custom cameras. We're gonna need an FPGA anyway due to the large amount of IO (2 cameras for AR, 2 for eye tracking, IMU, whatever other sensors we need, plus potentially mmwave radar if we decide to go that way) so it'…

I recommend QP if you are going to do FPGA processing using a softcore or hardcore processor. It's an event-based state machine framework that handles IO really well. A hardcore processor would be more performant and take less LUTs but softcore will give you more flexibility as far as sourcing FPGAs.

Appreciated. FPGAs are something I've been aware of for a long while now but haven't used before, so recs are always good.
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