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Show HN: Simula One – Portable Linux VR Computer

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

#261

Post by tomComb »

georgewsinger wrote: post #110
shafyy wrote: post #75

Awesome project! I'm a regular Quest 2 user, and also use it for work sometimes. For me, the biggest drawback of the Quest 2 is that it gets uncomfortable after a while. How do you address the ergonomics problem? Compared to a Quest 2, is it more comfortable? What about collaboration? Is there something like shared workspaces planned? Or does it support a virtual cam? When do you plan to ship it (maybe I missed it on…

We are aiming for a small batch of early units to ship in Q4 '22 (prioritizing Founders Edition units and early buyers). We aim to ship the bulk of our headsets in Q1 '23. RE ergonomics and comfort: our headset is shooting for a split weight distribution between the front and the year, with good thermal management. - Most of the components in the front of our headset are low-power, which helps against heat. - Our det…

That sounds good, particularly the "split weight distribution" but never-the-less I'm concerned about the weight of your unit.

I've seen designs that split off the main battery pack for added flexibility and weight management. The Vive Flow has other issues that will probably hold it back, but the way they handle the battery is great.

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

#262

Post by kanetw »

antattack wrote: post #252

Cool tech. Still, I don't understand how one can wear millimeter wave radio transmitters so close to the brain and not be concerned.

We haven't finalized on the mmWave yet, but there's standards for human body exposure that we will of course meet. IEC 62311, ICNIRP guidelines, and so on.

The mmWave transmitter is directional, and the basic restrictions for local exposure in ICNIRP for the general public is at 20W/m2. The transmitter EIRP is 15dBm, so you'd need to put the entire transmitter's EIRP into a 4cm * 4cm target to exceed those.

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

#263

Post by kanetw »

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.

The NUC is actually a bit subsidized compared to the tethered version.

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

#264

Post by forgotmyoldacc »

lhl wrote: post #184

I'm a bit torn, as on the one hand, I'm squarely in the target demo and appreciate the huge amount of work that has gone into the project, and the PPD is really exciting. (back in 2015 I actually started building my own VR workspace software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNtZmCDyEyU with an Oculus DK2 but shelved it for other projects waiting for better HMD hardware that never arrived). But sadly, I fear that if I…

> Panasonic's MeganeX, which uses 2560x2560 120Hz micro-OLEDs, is finally being released in the spring for The FoV is probably going to be worse than current gen headsets (Index, Quest 1/2, etc).

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

#265

Post by nsb1 »

nonplus wrote: post #56

I see a lot of comments on the pricing of this hardware. It's going to be more expensive (for the end user) to build a headset (and FOSS window manager) than a product like the quest. Meta has a suite of products bringing in capitol by selling user PII. Valve has a distribution platform to offset costs. If you want to see a product that is open end to end and is not part of an ecosystem selling your information, then…

I don't have a problem with the price - I have a problem with being sure what I'd be getting for that money. If it was guaranteed to live up to the claims that are being made then it's in the ballpark of a good laptop, which I have no problem dropping all sorts of money on. This device has several potential problems though, that can render it completely unusable rather than a laptop that mostly works fine except for a nit or two: - If it's too heavy/uncomfortable, you can't use it for long enough to warrant switching your compute medium to VR - If the battery doesn't last long enough, then you're tethered to a wall outlet. - If the display has distortion or artifacts, the eyestrain may render it unusable over time.

Some of which can be addressed by being able to try before you buy, and the rest will come out in the product reviews....but right now there are no product reviews, and signing up for a preorder at this price is taking a lot on faith.

I wish this team all the success in the world, but I'll probably wait for V2.

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

#267

Post by Stephen304 »

kanetw wrote: post #182
ansible wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Is there some useful interactions between 3D visualization and high-quality small-text rendering? If you have good VR/3D developer stories, then this can work.* Yes, I want to see a CAD application where the user is looking at a complex CAD model in 3D, with labeled parts and everything, and usefully interacting with it. Typing commands, grabbing and turning the model, etc.

That would be so, so cool. I don't see this happening for a while unless a CAD vendor works with us but definitely where I see this tech.

It might be lower hanging fruit to start with something like a VR renderer for openscad - it would be amazing to be able to type openscad code into a floating window and see a live updating floating render of the object I am building next to that. I suppose the bounding box of the output could be considered a 3D vr window of sorts.

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

#268

Post by nrp »

georgewsinger wrote: post #23
Freaken wrote: post #9

I see people have issues with the price tag, and while it is by no mean cheap, since it's actually a full blown computer AND a VR headset all in one, it is somewhat justified. The computer specs match my Framework laptop and the headset is, on paper, on par or better than other high-end VR headsets (and a miles ahead of my Meta Quest 2 and other consumer-grade VR headsets).

We pushed hard on our specs; I appreciate you noticing =] We actually compared the Simula One to the Framework Professional Edition in an earlier post, so the comparison is apt.[1] We have also created a $100 discount code ("DISCOUNT_HN") for this thread to help out somewhat on the price.[2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29923197 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30441454

It feels strange to be used as a reference point, but we’ll take it! Like other folks on this thread, I’m interested in seeing what you do with Simula One. I agree that it is the sort of ambitious though likely niche product that is worth testing the wide open future of VR with.

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

#269

Post by webmaven »

kanetw wrote: post #182
ansible wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Is there some useful interactions between 3D visualization and high-quality small-text rendering? If you have good VR/3D developer stories, then this can work.* Yes, I want to see a CAD application where the user is looking at a complex CAD model in 3D, with labeled parts and everything, and usefully interacting with it. Typing commands, grabbing and turning the model, etc.

That would be so, so cool. I don't see this happening for a while unless a CAD vendor works with us but definitely where I see this tech.

How about 3D modeling with something like Blender?

BTW, the key to making stuff like that work well isn't just the UI affordances, but latency. Head tracking, room tracking, video passthrough for AR, all highly sensitive to latency. You can see the effect even in the GIFs on your landing page: in the AR mode the floating windows slightly lag the external view when the user moves their head.

Latency is what makes many people nauseous (ie. Cybersickness), but as far as I know no one actually benchmarks it for VR or AR headsets or for VR games, and headset hardware makers keep chasing higher resolutions (and secondarily framerate). Everyone is familiar with resolution vs. framerate vs. scene complexity (eg. "polygon counts") tradeoffs, but latency figures in as well and no one makes the effort to benchmark it (and let's face it, it's pretty hard, even in a research context) despite the huge impact it has on consumer acceptance. It's the elephant in the room everyone ignores except to blame someone else (software people blame the hardware, hardware folks blame the software, etc.).

Now, you're trying to make this a general productivity environment, so resolution is more important than usual to be able to read text without eyestrain, but for immersive gaming the available hardware has been more than good enough resolution wise for at least two Moore's Law cycles, possibly as many as five. The same can't be said for latency.

And there are much better uses of the GPU than just pumping out more pixels and complexity, particularly for AR use cases: object detection and tracking, pose estimation, object masking and removal/replacement, etc., and all of those are even more sensitive to latency than resolution compared to VR.

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

#270

Post by kanetw »

nsb1 wrote: post #265
nonplus wrote: post #56

I see a lot of comments on the pricing of this hardware. It's going to be more expensive (for the end user) to build a headset (and FOSS window manager) than a product like the quest. Meta has a suite of products bringing in capitol by selling user PII. Valve has a distribution platform to offset costs. If you want to see a product that is open end to end and is not part of an ecosystem selling your information, then…

I don't have a problem with the price - I have a problem with being sure what I'd be getting for that money. If it was guaranteed to live up to the claims that are being made then it's in the ballpark of a good laptop, which I have no problem dropping all sorts of money on. This device has several potential problems though, that can render it completely unusable rather than a laptop that mostly works fine except for…

Yeah, unfortunately that's the annoying thing with preorder products. A fully integrated unit that would be representative of a final device will take a while for sure. My timeline is roughly 2 months for a reviewable VR-only unit, another 1-2 for VR+AR, and then integrate the compute pack.
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