Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

shop.simulavr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 409 posts

Re: Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

#251

Post by kanetw »

bee_rider wrote: post #248
georgewsinger wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for signing up for our newsletter. RE the text input issue: I've thought about this a lot. Options: 1. BCI. This is the holy grail. Ideally, something which could absorb 20,000 inputs (or approximately the number of words in the English language) with extremely high accuracy. 2. Voice control. Some hackers have gotten voice programming to work with sophisticated setups. Not ideal when you need to be quiet. 3.…

In particular, I think lots of people who think they are touch-proficient will be in for a surprised when they try using a keyboard in VR and can never look at the keyboard. I certainly was. It turns out I mostly don't look, but glance occasionally, and the glances were actually pretty important. Although your passthrough would certainly help there!

Funny anecdote, we had no AR mode planned originally. Both me and George were completely fine without looking at the keyboard, so it didn't occur to us.

Then our ME demo'd the software and couldn't type. We went "oh, fuck, what if someone needs to actually see their keyboard."

And, well, we don't do things by half measures, so proper AR passthrough it is.

Re: Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

#253

Post by thinkyfish »

I'm actually really hyped for this, I was thinking I would have to get the ultra-proprietary Varjo headsets to get a really good headset in 2022, but I'm really looking hard at the Tethered version and building my own RDNA2 based compute unit. I'd much rather give 2k to an open source project.

Re: Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

#254

Post by 4ggr0 »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #90
4ggr0 wrote: post #37

I know, people are already talking about a price, but I want to add my perspective as well. I was subscribed to the Newsletter, read every blog post and generally was pretty hyped for the Simula One. Up until I read the blog post about the pricing. That's when I unsubscribed the newsletter and forgot about SimulaVR. Sure, other AR/VR headsets cost as much, but for me its just too expensive. I can't spend nearly $3k f…

You're getting downvoted, but you shouldn't be. Only SV salaries mean that 3k is a reasonable amount of money to take a gamble on a headset you haven't tried. I also love Simula One and would love to get the 2nd or 3rd gen version, but at the moment it's simply too expensive because of the low manufacturing volumes. The price is bound to reduce if it becomes popular, and I'm counting on that.

> The price is bound to reduce if it becomes popular

That's what I'm hoping for, because I do actually really like the product. I just can't afford it, sadly.

Re: Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

#255

Post by mtsr »

roughly wrote: post #245
georgewsinger wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the kind words. Even if VR computers aren't for everyone, we promise to keep things weird.

So one thing that may help the sales pitch to the hacker demographic here - I think we've all seen a bunch of promising hardware companies come and go. I know you guys are going to survive for the next century, but if you made a point of being extremely open with the hardware design, especially around the compute module, I think that would make a difference in people's value calculations. The closer you can make this…

Indeed, but maybe the NUC-included-model is important for the margin? Although from the price difference between the models that might not even be the case.

Re: Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

#256

Post by kanetw »

thinkyfish wrote: post #253

I'm actually really hyped for this, I was thinking I would have to get the ultra-proprietary Varjo headsets to get a really good headset in 2022, but I'm really looking hard at the Tethered version and building my own RDNA2 based compute unit. I'd much rather give 2k to an open source project.

Nice! Fair warning, you'll probably have reduced AR mode fidelity in tethered mode unless you have a Thunderbolt/PCIe link. Our compute pack uses a PCIe Gen3 x4 link to the front FPGA to get uncompressed image data (compression is something I want to avoid due to latency and memory bandwidth issues).

Ideally we would have a way to compose the AR image in the front, but that's a massive engineering challenge.

Re: Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

#257

Post by roughly »

mtsr wrote: post #255
roughly wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one thing that may help the sales pitch to the hacker demographic here - I think we've all seen a bunch of promising hardware companies come and go. I know you guys are going to survive for the next century, but if you made a point of being extremely open with the hardware design, especially around the compute module, I think that would make a difference in people's value calculations. The closer you can make this…

Indeed, but maybe the NUC-included-model is important for the margin? Although from the price difference between the models that might not even be the case.

I'm not talking about going full "BYOC" - I think they should still sell the whole kit - but I think it'd make it easier to see the long-term value proposition if I know I _can_ build my own compute module in the future - that I'm not wholly reliant on their corporate solvency to use the hardware going forward. Effectively, they've got an all-in-one computer with a really novel/interesting display, and the issue with many all-in-one computers is that the computer guts usually age faster and less gracefully than the displays. They're showing the compute part as modular, but that's not useful if the company isn't around in ~3 years unless I can build my own.

Re: Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

#258

Post by mtsr »

Filligree wrote: post #158
georgewsinger wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted for the excellent feedback. 1. We'll do a better job defining the term "VR Computer" in our sales page. 2. We'll consider adding a keyboard/mouse as optional add-ons. We have thought about including a "keyboard apron" as an item add-on that is actually differentiated from other keyboards, and one that would be particularly useful for VR computing (with the added freedom of movement).[1] Would something like t…

> 2. We'll consider adding a keyboard/mouse as optional add-ons. We have thought about including a "keyboard apron" as an item add-on that is actually differentiated from other keyboards, and one that would be particularly useful for VR computing (with the added freedom of movement).[1] Would something like this interest you? Note that we'd use a more accessible keyboard than the 40% "Corne keyboard" one shown in the…

Many of the target users are probably perfect touch typists.

But according to the product comparison the SimulaVR also has handtracking. I wonder if it'd be possible to track hands and keyboard accurately enough for those who are not perfect touch typists.

Re: Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

#259

Post by losvedir »

kanetw wrote: post #94
d--b wrote: post #89

The gif with the guy keeping the device on while being handed his coffee made me cringe. AR mode why not, but not at the expense of actual human interactions!

We were discussing a way to flip up the headset a while ago. I'm not sure if we have the resources to put it in right now, but it would be cool.

Just gotta put googly eyes on the front.
Post reply on HN