SimulaVR Blog

I’ve also been following development of the Simula One[0], but it will be really hard to compete with Apple’s design and technical execution, and I’m afraid it could stay in the same category as Linux Desktop. In this light, having a company as Valve put their weight and resources behind the importance of more open ecosystems, would be amazing. [0] https://simulavr.com/

The Simula One (https://simulavr.com) has been targeting similar productivity use cases for a while. I've been following it from a distance; I have to wear reading glasses for computer work now, and I would love to be able to focus on a virtual screen 2 meters or so away for coding etc. Whether I could stand wearing the headset all day is another question. The Simula folks think that there's a lower limit of about 30 pixels per degree for something to be useful as a low-eye-fatigue virtual desktop. Their device meets that threshold but really nothing else currently on the market does. I haven't seen PPD info for the Apple device yet but I am interested to see where it falls. The Simula is at a pretty similar price point ($2700 for the preorder, but it's not shipping yet and has a way to go before it's a reality).

If you're interested in VR in general, the Quest 2 is a great option today. However, I can't recommend any current option specifically as a monitor replacement when traveling. https://simulavr.com/ will be interesting, when it eventually becomes available.

Really love the detailed specs, schematics, and board shots. Open hardware projects have an aesthetic all to their own, and understanding how hardware is built and works together somehow makes these products more enjoyable (at least this is a principle we've adhered to while building the Simula One[1]). [1] https://simulavr.com/

> GNOME is ahead of them because of the progress on high dynamic range color, non-fullscreen/partial scanouts, variable refresh rates, and the hidden work in GNOME extensions enabling things like PaperWM. Wait... all of this is a lot to take in. HDR progress has gone great on Red Hat's side, but KDE has been working on it just as long (with arguably further progress). VRR has existed on KDE for a while as "Adaptive Sync" and the work that goes into updating GNOME extensions exists mostly because the GNOME developers refuse to make a stable API for it. GNOME and Red Hat obviously do great work for the community, but these seem like weird examples. To the contrary, with GNOME's fractured extensibility and now-missing system tray, a lot of Windows and MacOS users will probably feel confused booting up GNOME 40. I say all this from a GNOME system myself =P > Once both DEs support these things, we can then recognize we're so far behind the curve with "spatial computing" Holy whiplash, Batman! I disagree so hard my head is spinning. For one, "the curve" of Spatial Computing is so-far relegated to cheap Android SDKs and $3,500 iPad-killers. Nobody is shipping Johnny-Mnemonic style hardware today, and probably won't be for another decade. Focusing on developing that technology is not only a waste of time, but entirely tangential to the work that goes into making the modern desktop usable. GNOME and KDE's efforts shouldn't be dedicated to a hypothetical userbase that might never…

For years I haven't been excited by anything in the VR space. I tried them, even with the running apparatus and the slippery shoes, and it was fun. But that's it. Nor the Leap, the Quest or the Hololens interest me very much. It doesn't bring much into my life, but promise to take a lot from it. Besides, the fact it's backed by companies with a not so good track record at respecting their users, and some of them, at making closed proprietary platforms, doesn't make me want to dive in. But recently, 2 projects started to get me excited: - the Tilt 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzr-IeyWj40 - the Simula: https://simulavr.com/ They are both trying to be very good at a very specific use case, which I think is a better way to approach the problem right now since we don't have VR solved. The vibes their creators give is also much more human, in an "internet from the 90" kind of way. The Tilt 5 already works well, and people using it all report that it's the best VR experience they had to date. They also make it easy to port games from existing platforms, and actually talk to communities such as war-hammer 40k players and board game lovers, instead of staying in their ivory tower wrapped in secret to finally come down as our lord and savior. Plus I love board games. The Simula is only a concept, and it may very well end up being vaporware like many kickstarter projects. But I want it to succeed so badly. First, it's just linux. No proprietary platform BS. It tells me it…

A resolution of 2160@110° is kind of low normally, effectively being around 20 pixels per degree. I wonder if they could pull off something like what the engineers behind the Simula VR headset did, where they shift the outer resolution to the centre of the lens, up to 35.5 PPD, higher than the Apple Vision Pro. Last I checked, it was difficult to find off-the-shelf VR displays suitable for pancake lenses with a resolution above 2160, so this might be the best option. https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/

When the VisionPro first went public I wondered if I should regret pre-ordering a SimulaVR[1] but it seems like for productivity at least I probably made a good choice. We'll see when it actually arrives though. [1]https://simulavr.com/

> Apple is the first company that has put a full on laptop chip into the device That's not entirely true. SimulaVR has been working on a full-PC-power, standalone, Linux-based heart for quite a while now. They're just small and don't have Apple's "move the world" money. https://simulavr.com/

For what it's worth I think of lot of guesstimates of PPD are likely a bit low. You can play games with lenses to increase it near the centre of the display where it actually matters (because your eyes don't travel that far away from straight forwards, so you can have much lower resolution in your peripheral FOV). SimulaVR, a competitor with roughly half the number of pixels (2x2448x2448 = 11,985,408 vs 23 million), claims to go from 24.48 PPD naively calculated to 35.5 PPD near the centre of the display using this. https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/

I'm in the same boat- I just want a simple headset that overlays a big, high-resolution monitor on my normal vision. The closest thing I know of is the [Simula One](https://www.simulavr.com/), which seems to be a VR "virtual monitor". VR instead of AR is a dealbreaker for me though- I want AR virtual monitors that overlay the displays on my actual vision. Even VR which uses a camera to pass through to the display isn't really what I want. My ideal hardware would just be a "dumb" AR display with wide FOV and an HDMI input that just overlays the video data onto my normal vision. From what I understand a big challenge is the wide FOV though, but I don't know enough about optics to really understand why this is the case.

I would say it competes with https://simulavr.com/ at $2700 and a 30% Apple premium puts it in at $3500.

Well, Apple is doing the same old time, because there is one before it, https://simulavr.com/ .

Why? Because if well done I get my reasonable high multi monitor like setup everywhere I want, no matter weather I'm sitting or lying or on the train or at home. Fun thing is if you just skim the article it looks as if they copied https://simulavr.com/ :=) (They didn't this was developed independent of each other and Apple put some tweaks in it which they claim no one else did and gave it a new name and claim they are the first, like always.)

Not a big company, but someone is trying this angle: https://simulavr.com/

I don't think there's been a review yet. They plan to deliver review units to YouTubers in April[1]. [1] https://simulavr.com/#timeline

As a side note, has anyone seen a test/review of the simula one (https://simulavr.com/)? I think they actually have the correct ideas about making a business/developer headset and I'm seriously considering pre-ordering (but have had quite bad experiences with pre-ordering in the past, so have been holding off for now).

> Simula looks like it’s pre-order only, do you know if they have actually shipped units? Not yet, you can follow their progress at their blog (https://simulavr.com/blog/).

One headset I’ve heard of that is aimed at more office focused usage is the SimulaVR[1]. However, it’s still a work in progress and you’d have to preorder. [1]: https://simulavr.com/

This is the reason I backed the Lynx R1[0] headset instead of buying an Oculus - no way in hell I'm going to sign in to a Facebook account on a device with bazillion cameras for inside out tracking! I'm sure many of the supporters of other independent VR hardware project (such as Simula VR[1]) are of the same opinion. [0] https://www.lynx-r.com/ [1] https://simulavr.com/

Would you spend all day working in VR? A few months ago, I would say no. But I got myself a Quest 2 for Christmas, and now... maybe. AR would make it better though, so I'm not just floating disconnected in digital space. I see in their homepage hero banner background[0] you get a floating window with video of your hands. It would be nice if the whole background is a passthrough to reality, and then you float your OS windows on top of that. [0] https://simulavr.com/

If you dig the idea of using VR for productivity then you should check out the SimulaVR project, which brings wayland/X support to Linux VR. https://simulavr.com/

SimulaVR is the leading project in that direction I think: https://simulavr.com With a Oculus Quest 2 - which has the highest resolution of the affordable VR headsets - it's still a little too grainy for prolonged coding sessions. But I think they'll get there in 1-2 generations.

There's SimulaVR. https://simulavr.com/

Disagree, I think this is not a good read on Apple strategy and you may be heeding the wrong lessons in computing history. 1. The passive vs active framing applies primarily to non-Pro iPads. I don't think it can be reasonably argued the $3k Vision Pro is attempting to cannibalize low end iPads. iPad Pros are very different beasts that are designed for a particular type of creative output, and are very capable general purpose computing devices now. 2. There's no particular incentive to cannibalize iPad over Mac, its hard to fathom what dimension that makes sense on. They're happy to cannibalize any product, but their main MO is 'look what cool shit we can do with the latest tech' and Vision Pro is today's version of that. Apple is demonstrably way more interested in building out iOS/iPadOS and we've seen that over the past 10 years, to the point Mac users had to basically revolt to get attention. 3. Of course Vision Pro is based on iPad ecosystem, as its a far more modern set of conventions better suited to mixed modal input than Mac. That isn't a reflection of VP's purpose, but of engineering and design realities - it's far easier to grow iPad/iOS into a top tier spatial computing OS and ecosystem. While MacOS is wonderful, it's really a product of a particular conception of computing, and shoehorning a 40 year old desktop OS paradigm into entirely new input modalities and ergonomic contexts makes little sense. The puck isn't going anywhere new, the desktop OS modality…

Simula is targeting that use case: https://simulavr.com

TLDR: I found things, yes. But they weren’t a fit for me. Things I found: ### SimulaVR [1] A linux native VR headset with an entire open ecosystem of software. On the plus side: they actually have an open source VR native window manager!!! Cons include: The hardware hasn’t shipped yet. The hardware is already multiple generations behind. (11th gen intel NUC). For productivity – I think video pass-through is essential. Which both this and the Aero lack. Tragically, the software stack for developed by Simula is not compatible with the Aero. Because the Simula Window Manager is linux native, and the Aero is Windows Native… (damn, I bought the wrong hardware.) ### Immersed [2] This is a software solution that basically lets you remote into a desktop running an appropriate server to sling pixels at your VR headset. It’s heavily oriented towards FB headsets. The Aero isn’t supported. So I’ve never tried it. Also, it’s required that you are serving up actual screen pixels… so If you want to run headless there are wierd display port dongle hacks… ### UltraTerm / CyberGem There is a developer that has a terminal running in the unreal game engine. In this case you can essentially design a level that is your workspace… It feels weird to even be talking about this, but if you just want linux terminals in VR… this can get you there in a very unique way. I have to say there’s a part of me that’s super into the idea of designing a virtual scene with embedded…

I believe I'll be able to replace my monitors to do my desk job with a VR headset within 10 years. Rather than having 2 monitors of different sizes and resolutions on a desk, why not just have as many virtual monitors with exactly the size, position, and distance I want? In fact, why have monitors at all? Just position the windows in arbitrary space in front of me. Desktop computing with a VR headset is somewhat possible right now, but I am not quite able to stomach the resolution limitations of the Quest 2. I'm looking forward to devices like SimulaVR [0], which intend to fully replace desktop computing with a self-contained VR headset (plus a mouse and keyboard). In my mind, there are two and a half problems to solve to make it possible. One is pixel density. It has to at least be equivalent (or very close) to our own eyes. Two is comfort, both physical (ventilation, weight) and health-wise (eye strain). Two and a half is being able to navigate without a mouse and keyboard, and preferably no peripherals, but I think I'm able to wait for that. [0] https://simulavr.com/

SimulaVR [1] is introducing a new class of products (virtual reality computer or VRC) that aims to develop a full linux desktop in a headset. I'm excited about using this with Stardust XR [2] and my NixOS configuration. We're obviously in a very early stage of consumer VR hardware and I agree with most people that AR (passthrough or glasses) would be preferable to VR. There are a lot of open problems in this space - a lot of these problems spoil the user experience, right now. But, engineers are solving them slowly over time and I don't predict a future (say 50 years from now) where people are still using their fingers to peck at keys and are still stuck with a 25" monitor (at least in the majority of cases). Happy to be an early adopter - maybe I'll even discover some problems that I can solve and benefit from the inevitable deluge of capital. [1]: https://simulavr.com/ [2]: https://stardustxr.org/