Why is the Simula One so expensive?

Latency, bandwidth (and with that, packet loss).

Right now the closest tech to do this would be something like WiFi - but the latency is high, and the typical home's WiFi network bandwidth (practically due to the vagaries of radio) is not sufficient.

A few reasons this is important:

- latency in VR induces motion sickness and operates on a different scale than we're used to for regular network communications. A 50ms lag in a 2D video game is acceptable, a 50ms lag in VR will cause nausea and vomiting. This is a domain where single-digit milliseconds matter a great deal for user comfort.

- resolution and refresh rate is everything - VR's viability in large part hinges on the resolution of the screens, which right now are somewhere between "poor" and "mediocre" - nothing so far has come close to replicating 20/20 vision. Moreover you need those screens to refresh far more quickly than a regular monitor - 60Hz doesn't cut it, 90Hz is basically the minimum. Streaming an uncompressed 8K stream at 90Hz over wireless requires more bandwidth than any existing standard can deliver. It's at the edges of our wired capabilities.

Of course you can compress the streams, but that not only degrades image quality (which matters a great deal when the screens are replacing your eyesight) but also injects additional latency into the whole affair.

It's theoretically possible - but would require developing a lot of custom tech that doesn't exist yet. It would also likely be highly sensitive to the exact particulars of the physical environment - one user may have a perfect experience while the other experiences so much packet loss/reduction in bandwidth that the whole experience is unusable.

Latency and bandwidth.

We push about 3.4 GByte/s (or 27.5Gbit/s) to our displays. Even a 26Gbit/s DP1.4a HBR3 link needs display stream compression for that. So a wireless link will absolutely need strong compression.

H.265 can push that to maybe (ballpark) 200Mbit/s, which is fairly feasible. But that will need to be evaluated and optimized for text quality and latency. Some googling suggests 100ms end-to-end latency as good. That's pretty high for VR, IMO.

[Edit: fixed the DP1.4a bandwidth)

What little I know about the subject suggests it has to do with retention. It seems users of VR are much more likely to pick it back up after the initial honeymoon phase has worn off if the whole "picking it back up" process is just strapping on a headset rather than involving a second device, pairing it, etc. The less friction the better.

Latency of wireless communication is non-trivial. Those extra 100 ms to transfer a frame buf will make the experience less.

Because the PC or laptop required to run a dumb terminal well is more powerful than most people have. By selling an AIO unit you have a console like uniformity of hardware and ease of use experience for both the devs and the customers.

I'd still be okay with wearing the compute, just put it on my back or something. Having a ton of weight on my head is tiring.

The communicate via fiber or wire to a light headset.

>But I got myself a Quest 2 for Christmas, and now... maybe.

Let me know what you think in a month. The problem with current VR tech is that it's mindblowing and incredible for the first few days, then it quickly becomes too cumbersome and frustrating to deal with on a regular basis and you forget about it. Mass adoption really won't come until it's as seamless as putting on a pair of reading glasses.

It will be. We'll be demoing the AR mode in our Kickstarter ad, but basically the entire background will be replaced by passthrough.

No depth mapping yet, so it'll only be in the background, but first things first.

I spend most of my days working in the Quest 2 with Immersed. It can ofcourse be better but it works well now. AR would indeed be better. If it is possible to keep the screen dark enough to see with room light of course.

> How generalizable is this?

All the software is or will be open source, so much more than any other headset on the market. Ideally the FPGA code would be open source to, but I don't know if that's possible with licensed IPs

> Does it come with controllers?

No controllers.

> Can I hook in controllers from another system (vive, index, oculus, etc.)?

Any controller that's supported by OpenXR is supported, and we'll likely have SteamVR support as well.

> Can I play video games with this?

In tethered mode, absolutely. In standalone mode, only very light games, but might be doable.

> Can I stream a video feed from a real world camera (like with a raspberry pi) to the interior displays?

Yes. In fact, we'll have AR passthrough by default, but nothing's stopping you from using different cameras.

If you are not interested in the standalone capabilities, the headset without compute pack (i.e. tethered only) will be ~2k.

I wish most devices had a gradual fade option for volume and brightness, etc. I'd rather hit a button to increase the volume once an hour than realize I've had the volume way to high for the last hour, or realize I've been staring at a full brightness screen for no good reason.

A little late to answer, but yes, there is research suggesting that periodically looking long distances has health benefits, including preventing near-sightedness. One could reasonably expect mass adoption to accelerate rates of vision problems. Here's one high level summary/starting point: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/looking-to-the-dista...

There may be a way for VR headsets to help with this, depending on why this occurs. For example, if the benefit comes from focusing on a distant object, headset screens may be able to simulate this. If the benefit comes from looking at physical objects, headsets may need to make it easy to quickly move the screen out of the way of the eyes.

What would be best, though, would be for us to figure out how to get past this glut of required information work and digital entertainment so we can spend more time away from screens--my opinion, of course.

The heat should be fairly manageable. Most of the front side components are low-power and we'll be managing the climate in the face part so you don't get sweaty due to low circulation.

The compute pack will be at the back of your head with the airflow going away from you, so it shouldn't be too noticeable. Thermal design is definitely a priority for us.

Putting it on your head reduces the amount of cables on your person, so you don't accidentally tangle yourself or something. Also, it improves the balance so it might actually feel better than a front-heavy headset (compare a Vive with an Index for example).

The weight is actually very similar to the HTC Vive with the premium audio strap, which is 741g.

That as well, it actually feels better to have the audio strap which distributes the weight better than just the 470g headset alone.

Quest 2 is a bit under 600g I think, not 200

> Looking at the details of the article I still can't see what the breakout feature is that keeps me from just getting an Oculus Quest and using the Immersed app to do basically the same thing. The biggest "negative" the article seems to be focusing on is that you need a Facebook account to use Oculus Quest but I don't see many limits on the basic experience.

Compared to a Quest/Immersed combo:

* we offer significantly higher PPD (and better optics with no ghost images, Fresnel rings, etc.; but that's hard to quantify) than any other headset on the market except super-high end ones. You would not be able to read text on a Quest like you can on a normal 27" monitor; you can with our headset.

* Immersed does not do window management. We support unlimited, actual windows. Immersed only does a handful (up to 10 at reduced resolution? need to check) virtual displays, which is pretty annoying from a UX perspective.

* Immersed needs to be tethered, which is reduced quality and higher latency due to the WiFi connection.

I think 3 grand for an early adopter product is cheap. The Macintosh was $2500 in 80s dollars (5-6k today) when it launched.

If this is something that actually helps your work, a few hundred a month is well worth it.

Would make sense for them to have an easy and painless return and refund policy

Looks like there’s a cheaper tethered version available for $1999. Perhaps the computer is removable anyway?

I haven't tried this device, but I've tried HP's G2 (which is noticeable absent from Simula's comparison matrix). From personal experience, it's terrible for games that require controller tracking aside from driving and flying sims, but... it has a 2160 resolution per eye (text is very clear with no screen door effect) and it's $599 MSRP; it also frequently goes on sale for $399. Paired with Virtual Desktop software, you can work in VR now in Windows & MacOS if portability and Linux support isn't a necessity; though I imagine it could work on a high powered laptop

https://www.hp.com/us-en/vr/reverb-g2-vr-headset.html

https://www.vrdesktop.net/

On a side note, I don't notice the screen door effect in either the Index or Quest 2 while playing games. Are you saying you notice it while playing games, or while reading text?

The Simula One has more than 3x the PPD/pixel density over a Valve Index, and we also have a special text filter we use in our rendering which is specifically optimized for text clarity. If you're interested in the Simula One, you should see a pretty immense difference between these two headsets.

RE peripherals: Simula itself (e.g. the VR window manager on our headset) is designed to work best with just a keyboard (obviating the need for peripherals/controllers). You control the mouse cursor with your eye gaze, and can move/resize windows with keyboard shortcuts and eye gaze as well (we plan on supporting hand tracking in the Simula One, but I think in practice it won't be used as much as people think).

I'm sorry we gave you that impression.

After several years, there's been nothing more humbling than trying to get Simula off the ground (first developing the software, and now the hardware). We've been smacked in the face so many times. So we don't feel very arrogant, at least.

Maybe our tone isn't quite right. We're just trying to convey to people that our headset has a different use case/is designed for something different than portable gaming/entertainment.

I don't consider ARM better unless you have billions to spend on custom silicon like Apple.

The power consumption is inline with any other ultra-low-power x86 (~15W TDP for the CPU). That's pretty comparable to a Snapdragon XR2 with ~10W TDP and worse performance.

Users would want to use proprietary apps that are only compiled for x86. Emulation for those on ARM is not particularly feasible for any acceptable performance. If you're buying a laptop now, you would not buy an ARM device.

That being said, I'm not married to x86. But I don't think ARM is the future, either.

It's really hard to say without actually using the device.

If this can genuinely make reading text about as easy as it is on a current hiDPI screen - I don't think this price is unreasonable.

My issue is that - having gone through several VR headsets (Oculus, Oculus Quest, Vive, Vive Cosmos, and Valve index) None of them are even close.

Reading text in any of them is basically a non-starter outside of maybe game menus, and even then it's annoying.

Index is closest, but it doesn't support a wireless mode - so I end up using the vive cosmos with the external tracking faceplate and the wireless adapter the most.

Basically - I don't think anything around ~3k is really a deal breaker if you can get the latency/resolution to a point where text is easy. But if reading text gives me a headache after 30 minutes... it's a toy still, and competes with oculus at the ~300 price point.

I actually think the (backer) price is about what I would expect for what you get. My issue is that it's a big investment for something that's really cool, but not necessary, so my current finances don't justify me getting one. A professor I work with is big on buying every bit of AR/VR tech that comes out, I'll have to see what he thinks of it.