[HN Gopher] Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset...
___________________________________________________________________
Simula One: an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top
of Linux
Author : sandebert
Score : 505 points
Date : 2021-09-29 08:04 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (simulavr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (simulavr.com)
| siva7 wrote:
| So is this the future? Hundreds of office workers wearing for 8
| hours a VR Headset in an open plan office?
| m4rtink wrote:
| So Ready Player One basically? :)
| lolspace wrote:
| We won't have offices in the future
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| No, they'll all be working remotely in their own matrix-style
| cocoons. The nutritional paste will be delivered by Doordash.
| planb wrote:
| I'm not sure the fullscreen video in the page background helps to
| promote working with a VR headset. It's lagging, tearing and
| blurry. If I get dizzy by just looking at the page, how on earth
| would I last more than 5 minutes in a VR office without throwing
| up?
| ansible wrote:
| This is nice and all, but since the dropping in price of larger
| monitors / TVs, it doesn't seem that practical.
|
| Right now I'm using a 42in LG 4K TV as my monitor, and I've
| mostly gotten used to it. One thing is that since I'm older, it
| is nice to push the monitor further away from me than I had in
| the past, so the monitor itself is on a file cabinet (with an
| adjustable stand) not sitting on my desk itself.
|
| TVs are _not_ monitors, and it took a bit of fiddling with the TV
| settings (game console mode, turn off overscan) and drivers on
| the desktop side, but I 'm fairly pleased with the setup these
| days. I really like having additional vertical space for editing
| windows.
| yiyus wrote:
| But you cannot take your 42in TV with you in a backpack. Mobile
| setups are more practical than fixed ones for most people.
| ansible wrote:
| That's true.
|
| Though with the power consumption required for a VR GPU
| display, you'll likely need a decent-sized battery pack
| (maybe on your belt), for this not to be tethered to a power
| outlet.
|
| For this product space, I think I personally would be happier
| with a AR style solution, though that comes with its own
| challenges.
|
| I've got to wonder if a CastAR / Tilt5 AR projection system
| would work better for working. You could certainly roll up
| the retro-reflective "screen" into your backpack.
| CRConrad wrote:
| There's a bunch of old guys from Norway here for you, complaining
| that your name was already taken.
| spindle wrote:
| inorite?! This is sacrilege! Use any other name!
| kanetw wrote:
| I actually tried to get us to rename but we never managed
| before we had to incorporate and, yeah, we're a bit stuck
| now.
|
| When I was interviewing for a programming language theory PhD
| program in... Bristol I think, back when this was purely
| software, I had probably a 20 min discussion on this because
| the prof thought it was related to the language.
| FrameworkFred wrote:
| I've tried VR with my phone and it looked promising to me WRT
| resolution and clarity. I like the idea of a camera to let me see
| my workspace and I suspect with a few iterations it'll be
| amazing.
|
| Given what I do to my posture as a desk worker, I'm thinking a
| little extra weight on my head might do good things for my back
| tbh.
|
| If the price is right, I'm down to try it anyway.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| For me personally, my main concern would be text readability. It
| was probably an older model, but on a Vive I played games on for
| a good while I was struggling to read text on the game's HUD
| (Elite Dangerous). Pixelation in the center was also an issue,
| but manageable.
|
| I get by my workday nowadays with minimal head movement, enough
| to avoid it getting stuck but I don't have to crane around too
| much. That's probably not an issue in a VR environment either
| though, since your primary thing will be in front of you as well.
|
| Comfort is another one, I think I'd like to be more reclined if I
| didn't have to look at a screen. But then I'm worried about
| muscle atrophy, I don't do enough sports and exercise as it is.
| tantony wrote:
| The Valve Index significantly improved on text readability. For
| example, I was able to easily read the blurb on the back of a
| random paperback in Half Life: Alyx.
| [deleted]
| kesor wrote:
| Isn't this just a Desktop implementation for the SteamVR? It is
| even open source right here -- https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula
|
| No headset in sight, other than just "any headset".
| tommica wrote:
| "Simula One Headset: We are also in the process of developing a
| (limited number of) portable VR headsets for sale which come
| with SimulaVR mounted on them by default. If you are interested
| in purchasing one, visit our website and join our waitlist to
| receive a place in line and/or periodic updates on its
| development."
| msk-lywenn wrote:
| Except for hololens, aren't they all built on top of Linux?
| moron4hire wrote:
| I mean, Android has the Linux Kernel in there somewhere, but
| can we really call it a Linux system?
| kleinsch wrote:
| From the wiki on their Github [1] and looking at Github
| contributors, this is a 3 person project (and no Github commits
| since June 2021). They're clearly not making their own VR
| headset, they're using something off the shelf (from other
| comments seems like an HTC Vive). Making the website ambiguous
| about this is just confusing.
|
| I saw a couple YC apps in there, so I'm sure they had to be
| ambitious, but thinking realistically there's a big difference
| between being:
|
| 1) A VR headset for work company
|
| 2) A VR operating system for work company
|
| 3) A window manager for VR for work company
|
| [1] https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/wiki/Simula-Master-Plan
| kanetw wrote:
| We're making our own headset. Nothing off-the-shelf was
| available or satisfactory.
|
| Most of the recent Github commits are in the dev branch, but
| right now it's 90% George working on the code. I'm busy on the
| hardware and wrangling vendors side, our third employee is the
| ME so no coding there.
| isatty wrote:
| I suppose it's a difficult field to enter? Idk if it's needed
| but my naive assumption is that I won't be able to contribute
| without having a VR headset.
|
| Speaking of, what's a good VR headset that I can purchase in
| '21 that does not have anything to do with FB? I enjoyed
| playing Alyx on the Index so that's my prime candidate for now,
| for both gaming and productivity.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Have you considered HP Reverb G2?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Pretty cool. Personally, I would love AR for office work. I
| actually investigated this for my company and got to meet with
| Microsoft to try the Hololens. Cool stuff. It was too expensive
| for us though.
|
| Here's a video from a different company.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0NogltmewmQ
| escot wrote:
| The main benefit of vr seems to have many "screens" for free, but
| the more years I've worked the more I've reduced the number/size
| of screens I use. I find it more ergonomic to not be looking
| around so much.
| plaidfuji wrote:
| I'll echo both the praise and the concerns here - awesome that
| somebody has made this, definitely has a long way to go before I
| would consider using it, but honestly my main question is... is
| all-day VR not terrible for your eyes?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It's a page about a VR headset, but neither this page nor the
| 'shop' page that lets you waitlist it has any pictures of the
| thing even by itself, let alone someone wearing it. What an
| absolutely bizarre choice.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| fwiw its supposed to be around 2k
| the-dude wrote:
| If you drop the assumption that it is bizarre, you can think
| about the actual reasons for the omission of said pictures.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, here.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, I want information about the hardware, not just the
| software (and I hope I can do more with it than just run a
| virtual window manager).
| martin_a wrote:
| Not sure if I should feel more safe about this than the usual
| Kickstarter scam or not. Those have at least some product
| images.
| spicybright wrote:
| EDIT: nvm
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Think you meant *wary, though yeah sometimes weary fits.
| bewuethr wrote:
| The video at the top eventually shows somebody in the bottom
| right corner wearing it.
| themanmaran wrote:
| That person is wearing the HTC Vive.
| evacchi wrote:
| Looks a lot like Project Looking Glass :-)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass
| xtracto wrote:
| Also like SphereXP (
| https://web.archive.org/web/20040130224608/http://www.hamar....
| ) . A pretty undervalued project from around the same time
| herbst wrote:
| Such a forgotten classic. I remember it took me hours to get
| the dependencies on my suse right and once it worked I was so
| overwhelmed by what's possible. It was so weird and beautiful
| at once.
|
| Compiz desktop cubes [1] and native zooming were all the rage
| back then as well.
|
| [1] https://heise.cloudimg.io/width/993/q75.png-lossy-75.webp-
| lo...
| alteracia wrote:
| Seems like tool for 3d designer
| prox wrote:
| Check the previous discussion link, it also allows you to
| create work environments and such.
| boomskats wrote:
| I've been following SimulaVR/Simula for a while now, but really
| did not want to buy a (legacy) HTC Vive headset. This idea of a
| standalone Linux machine in a headset is something I'd definitely
| put some money towards given a bit more detail and timelines.
|
| Also pretty excited by John Carmack's recent tweets on
| sideloading stuff to the Quest. It feels like that would provide
| a much bigger opportunity for this project (cameras and all),
| than building/shipping new hardware.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Sideloading to the Go, not Quest right?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| You're right, Caramack has been working on the Go.
|
| Sideloading does work on the Quest. The Go work has been a
| more open OS.
| MayeulC wrote:
| They're pretty cheap second hand. I recently got one for
| EUR200, including base stations (forward-compatible to a point)
| and "pro" audio strap. It's my first VR headset though, I
| understand not wanting to spend too much on something you
| already have a better version of.
|
| Also, the Valve Index is pretty much last (tethered) gen.
| swalsh wrote:
| The killer "corporate" app for VR in my opinion would be some
| kind of teleconference app. I absolutely HATE trying to have
| interactive brainstorming/collaborative design meeting remotely.
| There are various pancake tools, but none really compare to the
| experience of 2 people standing in front of a white board, and
| making wild motions with their arms that seemingly both people
| understand while drawing on a board.
|
| Some of the experiences I've had in VR are unrivaled by any
| pancake game i've ever played for that very reason.
|
| I'm not 100% sure I want to be in VR all day all the time. But VR
| should have a place in at the very least a remote workforce.
| rattray wrote:
| What is "pancake" in this context?
| lucky_cloud wrote:
| Pancake is 'not VR' i.e. a traditional flat monitor.
| vyrotek wrote:
| I absolutely agree. I'm very much a whiteboard hand-wavier guy.
| I explain with gestures as much as I do with the actual drawing
| (might be an Italian thing too).
|
| That said, this "pancake" problem reminded me of the old Wii
| head-tracking project.[1] There might be an interesting hybrid
| opportunity with that idea and 3d avatars. I feel like the
| head-tracking hack never really took off because it only worked
| as a solo experience. But since remote work is mostly us all
| individually sitting at a computer I could see it working
| better.
|
| Combine this idea with a large dedicated monitor/tv and now you
| have something that would literally just feel like a
| window/portal to the person you're talking to.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
| usrusr wrote:
| I'd expect conventional live footage of whiteboard hand-
| waving to wildly outdo VR for the entire foreseeable future.
| If you need two guys hand-waving in different rooms, focus
| the extra tech on the whiteboards, to somehow merge their
| content.
| kuroguro wrote:
| Are there any estimates on what would a unit cost?
| kanetw wrote:
| We're planning for 2k. Due to our low volumes etc going hard on
| optimizing the unit cost is difficult.
| moron4hire wrote:
| 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.
| chungus wrote:
| Fun note, almost all of it is written in Haskell. If I remember
| correctly they've also done a bunch of stuff that helps Godot, or
| at least something to do with the Haskell bindings. Very
| accessible guys, I once asked a question on the gitter, and got
| helpful replies almost immediately.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I often find myself wondering what the 'killer app' of purely
| functional programming languages is. For the longest time I
| assumed they would become much more popular as multi-core cpus
| proliferated, but pretty much every purely functional language
| out there is relegated to a dusty corner.
| kanetw wrote:
| The absolute killer app is compilers, static analyzers, and
| similar. Other languages don't even come close for anything
| in that space.
|
| However, I think that purely functional languages are useful
| for basically everything. Haskell is my general purpose
| language of choice, unless libraries or system constraints
| force me to another language.
| macando wrote:
| > The absolute killer app is compilers, static analyzers,
| and similar.
|
| In other words, those problems that don't involve users and
| the outside world.
|
| Pure languages for pure problems. Impure languages for
| impure problems. It computes.
| fouric wrote:
| If it's written in Haskell, it's highly likely that it'll be
| far harder to modify than something written in, well, not-
| Haskell.
|
| Haskell might be easy when you get the hang of it, but the vast
| majority of programmers haven't, and the language ideas are
| alien compared to the mainstream ones (Python, JS, C++, Lua).
|
| The design of Haskell also encourages users to be very clever,
| which only makes code harder to read.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Haskell reduces the size of the developer pool, but increases
| their productivity (the Haskell ecosystem is _enormous_ and
| astoundingly solid given the number of devs in that space),
| and also makes the docs a joy to read.
| go_elmo wrote:
| This. Im wondering how this is possible, high haskell
| reusability / easy to get familiar with codebases & extend
| them when familiar with hs or being a genius? I guess its
| the first
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Strict static types reduce a giant class of errors
| (including most of the footguns I'm always triggering in
| my dayjob with Python). Purity reduces another giant
| class: It makes it easy (indeed kind of forces you) to
| restrict your IO to a thin, top-level error, hence
| keeping the vast majority of the code purely functional
| and thus easy to test.
|
| Exactly how Haddock produces such wonderful automatic
| documentation, I don't know, but good God it does. The
| strict static types clearly help -- you can see exactly
| what every function inputs and outputs, what every data
| type needs, etc. And then you can jump to the definitions
| of any of those things, and if need be (almost never),
| the source code that defines them.
| darkwater wrote:
| And what if it was the other way round? A steeper
| learning curve means that only the brightest, more
| motivated individuals can enter the realm, and those
| individuals are capable of doing more than the average
| developer.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| You're right, that's clearly happening too.
| whateveracct wrote:
| > The design of Haskell also encourages users to be very
| clever, which only makes code harder to read.
|
| This is BS - find me some "clever" code in one of these
| Haskell projects and I bet it's not clever but simply using a
| set of abstractions there maintainers like and grok and the
| reader just doesn't understand.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Maybe I'm being overly pedantic but I think that's a
| textbook description for overly "clever" code in any
| language- it makes perfect sense to the authors but is
| nontrivial for the reader to understand
| whateveracct wrote:
| Except in Haskell, it's not just some pet bit of code by
| the authors. It's a shared abstraction with well
| understood laws and theoretical underpinning.
|
| What people call "clever" code in mainstream programming
| is not in any way similar to the Haskell being referred
| to.
|
| Luckily in the Haskell world, we don't ascribe negative
| attributes like "cleverness" to code that isn't outsider-
| friendly. We gain a lot by not requiring that all our
| code is understandable by a mainstream programmer.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I don't think writing Haskell ever gets easy, at least it
| hasn't for me over about ten years. Writing good code in any
| language is hard, but Haskell makes it harder to write bad
| code.
|
| I have to write object-oriented bullshit all day for my job,
| if I started a fun new project like this I'd happily choose
| Haskell. If people who only know JS and won't learn anything
| new can't contribute then that's a cost worth bearing.
| roganartu wrote:
| > If people who only know JS and won't learn anything new
| can't contribute then that's a cost worth bearing.
|
| I think this is an unfair and unnecessarily-snarky take.
|
| My list of languages is fairly long these days. I've
| written php, ruby, and go in reasonable volume for mostly
| personal projects. I used to teach embedded C at uni. I
| write python professionally every day. Recently I've even
| started playing with rust (and had some success thanks to
| the awesome book). The list is far longer, these are just
| the ones used the most. I've been writing code in some
| capacity for the last 20 or so years (first self-taught,
| then at university, and more recently professionally full-
| time).
|
| Despite all that, and not for lack of trying, for whatever
| reason purely functional languages are the only ones that
| elude me. Every couple of years I try Haskell or erlang
| again and I just get nowhere fast.
|
| Maybe it's because I was never very good at maths, maybe
| it's because I haven't had sufficient motivation, or maybe
| I just haven't found the right monad blog post to convert
| me. All I know is Haskell remains chronically out of reach
| to many experienced and inexperienced devs alike.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Yeah, I don't really see functional programming being
| that great of a fit for VR. I mean, the 3D environment is
| inherently object-oriented and stateful. And you're
| working in an extremely performance intensive task, such
| that pure immutability really starts to get in the way.
| Also, Haskell's lazy evaluation has a bad reputation for
| poor and/or unpredictable performance. It's better to
| have a higher mean execution time with an extremely
| narrow standard deviation so you can plan your frame
| budget and not occasionally blow it, dropping frames all
| over the floor.
|
| What you want is something that puts the movement of
| memory between processes and threads front-and-center.
| Half the difficulty of writing a 3D rendering engine is
| coming up with a good memory model for loading 3D models
| and textures to push them onto the GPU. That really
| sounds more like Rust's wheelhouse than Haskell.
| kanetw wrote:
| Today I'd definitely use Rust. Most of the rendering work
| is gone in Godot, which is C++.
|
| GC hasn't been an noticeable issue as a result.
| seanc wrote:
| I find Haskell to be absolutely impenetrable, but I run
| XMonad and work with my config file just fine.
|
| So users will probably be able to hack together what they
| want, but they may struggle to grow a large developer
| community. But that can still work out okay.
| zokier wrote:
| I see many comments about resolution, which I guess is fair. But
| there are high-resolution headsets available on the market right
| now: Varjo VR-3 afaik is the top dog currently
| https://varjo.com/products/vr-3/ and Pimax also has some high res
| models. So don't dismiss the idea too hastily based on
| experiences of old and/or cheap HW.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I've never seen a Varjo headset in person, so I can't say
| anything about it other than it's extremely expensive, both to
| buy and to operate (you have to agree to a yearly service
| contract).
|
| But everyone should avoid PiMax like the plague. Their hardware
| is super buggy with lots of weird lens distortions and colored
| static in the displays. Their drivers are weirdly front and
| present like a HP does with their printer drivers, making me
| wonder just what they hell they think they are doing (and also,
| very buggy as well). Whatever resolution advantage they claim
| is wasted on bad image compression and extremely bad optics.
|
| But the worst part of all is that the business side is really
| scammy. They'll gladly taking your money and sending you a
| shipping notification long before they ever have an actual
| headset they can send you. I get that manufacturing delays are
| a thing, but for PiMax they've always been a thing, long before
| the global pandemic and chip shortage. Don't tell me I'm going
| to get a headset "any day now, it's in the mail" for 3 months
| straight, only to finally get your act in gear when I threaten
| to reverse the credit card charge.
|
| Of all the people I've talked to who have eventually gotten
| their PiMax headset, only _one_ says he likes it, but he 's
| also super DPRC-nationalistic and has accused people of racism
| anytime they talk bad about PiMax.
| boomskats wrote:
| Previous discussion here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823891
| mettamage wrote:
| I'm super excited with posts like these and the recent [1]. I've
| never been a digital nomad, but with this stuff, there's now one
| hurdle less :)
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041
| awinter-py wrote:
| love that the email waitlist signup goes to wolframcloud
| kanetw wrote:
| I've been meaning to use a proper service but it works right
| now and once we're actually sending I'll import the emails and
| do an opt-in and such.
| awinter-py wrote:
| no I like it -- it feels like I'm interacting with a person
| who's using powerful tools
| kanetw wrote:
| both me and george are avid wolfram users. incredibly good
| stuff
| tifadg1 wrote:
| I sincerely hope VR will change the way we compute one day, but
| the wait will be decade or more, as the progress is small and
| incremental. Unless everything turns out to be proprietary, in
| which case it'll be never.
| jagger27 wrote:
| What's the FOV?
| kanetw wrote:
| We plan for at least 100deg DFOV.
| alex_smart wrote:
| Reminds me on ~2008 era Linux. Compiz, on steroids.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Simula One was the first version of the Simula programming
| language:
|
| https://portablesimula.github.io/github.io/doc/HiNC1-webvers...
| dhosek wrote:
| My thought exactly.
| nicholassmith wrote:
| It's the year of linux on your face.
|
| This looks like a really neat project, I think not having
| pictures of the headset front & centre makes it feel very
| vapourware though, even if it's a hacked together development
| unit we still want to see it. Arguably, we might even want to see
| that more.
|
| I struggle to envision this in my workflow though, my experience
| with VR headsets suggest that for a lot of text they might not be
| the best choice just yet. Excited to see where this goes though!
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| With steamdeck, I really think 2022 will be the year of linux.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm happy the hardware isn't locked down.
|
| I love my iPad, but it's ultimately an expensive content
| consumption device.
|
| The Steamdeck can run whatever you want on it, this opens it
| up to being useful even a decade from now.
| vyrotek wrote:
| I'm excited for the device and was able to reserve one. But
| honestly, I'll likely end up putting Windows 11 on mine.
| yewenjie wrote:
| Has anybody hacked regular consumer VR headsets for working with
| regular apps?
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| I have played around with it, and the resolution just isn't
| there. The desktop space in VR is ironically less than on a
| laptop, because every window has to be massive to be usable at
| all. In a future with 2x4K res or something in that ballpark,
| this might be interesting.
| andybak wrote:
| If you're anything like me, by your mid-forties you aren't
| going to need 4k per eye.
|
| The Quest 2 is already pretty much as sharp as my eyes can
| resolve - and that's with prescription glasses.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| I suppose that's an alternative use case for the tech - to
| simulate and get an understanding of how to build UX that
| is friendly towards those with poor eyesight. Haha.
| arc-in-space wrote:
| Well, the non-standalone ones can already do whatever you want
| them to since they're just a display
| newswasboring wrote:
| For oculus quest 2 there is already a focus on office work.
| From the start we've had Virtual Desktop and from v28 software
| update Oculus itself has had several office focused moves.
| moron4hire wrote:
| 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-baked and has had very
| little effort put into it (well, at least that was the case a
| year ago. I ended up selling my headset for lack of use).
|
| Being that I've been a Windows developer for 20 years, it's
| extremely frustrating to me that Microsoft won't make a
| standalone VR headset. They have all the technical capability to
| do it. The HoloLens 2 is a sufficiently powerful compute platform
| and runs the full Windows MR experience. The PC-tethered Windows
| MR headsets are very high resolution and some of them are even
| quite comfortable (I regularly use a Samsung Oddyssey+ for work).
| But they seem hell-bent on pushing difractive waveguide displays
| for any mobile devices, which I think by now have pretty handily
| proven to be straight up garbage.
|
| How a Linux headset could succeed here where others are really
| stagnating is to develop:
|
| A) Hotswappable batteries. You're not going to get all-day usage
| out of a single battery pack anytime soon (my Quest 2 with the
| Elite Strap doubles the battery life to a whole TWO HOURS OMG!),
| and having to connect a wire to a device that is supposed to be
| standalone just for power is kind of like playing with one of
| those line-tethered model airplanes: what you really want is an
| RC model airplane, so you're just stuck being disappointed all
| the time.
|
| B) A really good spatialized audio system. Spatialized audio is
| an often overlooked component of making a believable VR scene.
| All of the ambisonic audio drivers are platform-specific right
| now, and they each have their pros and cons. I really like
| Microsoft's HFRT as it seems more realistic than Oculus'. It'd be
| especially nice to have work put into Chromium and Firefox to
| upgrade the WebAudio system to use the system's spatializer
| rather than implement their own (Google's Resonance is
| particularly bad).
|
| C) Really big emphasis on accelerated 2D rendering. 3D rendering
| is great for games, but work is all text and text is all 2D
| rendering. Some of the most costly components of my VR projects
| are the text rendering. You can go a long way with low-fi 3D as
| an aesthetic, but 2D absolutely needs to be crisp and tight. And
| it's not just about the resolution of the display. Your 2D
| buffers aren't going to ever map one-to-one to the display's
| pixels, because your head is moving around, you'll be looking at
| things at slight angles and in motion, etc., and most mipmapping
| algorithms are designed for gradients, not sharp edges. So making
| clear text is really hard. Oculus has a hack where 2D quads can
| be rendered in a separate pass from the rest of the 3D
| environment, but there are issues with it regarding scene
| compositing and hit testing.
|
| D) A native scene graph, something akin to extending the desktop
| metaphor into 3-dimensions, not just for compositing 2D windows
| but for allowing 3D applications to mix and match objects.
| Windows MR and SteamVR are the only systems that really even
| attempt to do this, with neither really seeing enough emphasis.
| Every VR app right now runs in a completely exclusive, retained
| mode. That's fine for games, but it's completely unnecessary for
| things like teleconferencing apps. Why shouldn't you be able to
| "spaceshare" like we do screen-sharing? Then you'd be able to
| have your teleconferencing app separate from your whiteboard app.
| georgewsinger wrote:
| 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 point brought up by Forrest Reiling in his master's
| thesis on window managers (which influenced Simula's early
| founding). See [Toward General Purpose 3D User Interfaces:
| Extending Windowing Systems to Three Dimensions](https://github
| .com/evil0sheep/MastersThesis/blob/master/thes...).
| moron4hire wrote:
| 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.
| agentultra wrote:
| Compiling Haskell in the background? Sold.
|
| Jokes aside I've tried a few virtual desktops in VR and it
| _seems_ promising. The text clarity is a hard one, the weight of
| the headset for prolonged sessions would also be difficult.
|
| A whiteboard app that works with non-VR users w/o 3D would be
| nice. Something like Miro but with nice feel in VR.
| whateveracct wrote:
| The Simula VR window manager is actually written in Haskell ;)
| symmetricsaurus wrote:
| For a work VR headset to work I think you need a couple of
| things.
|
| One is that it needs to be comfortable enough to wear for long
| periods of time. I usually get quite warm when wearing one. You
| also often end up with impressions on your face. This is fine for
| gaming or shorter sessions but would be a distraction if trying
| to focus for longer periods of time.
|
| It would also need to have a higher resolution than most (all?)
| current VR headsets. Text needs to be huge so even though you can
| have lots of virtual screens you can't fit much on each.
|
| Finally, I imagine that there could be a more innovative
| interface than just screens in a virtual space. Something that
| embraces the close-to-physical-reality illusion of VR.
| mkmk2 wrote:
| The issues you're presenting seem real for some, but
| enthusiasts seem to be making it work[1: post from yesterday].
|
| I like the call in your last point, but personally I think an
| innovation like 360 degree resizable and movable windows is a
| reasonable step up from where we're currently at. It would be
| nice to integrate the work we do into physical space a bit more
| though. I've wondered about doing practical programming work in
| an infinifactory-type[2] interface. I don't think it's
| necessarily a good idea, but it'd be fun to see attempts at no-
| code tooling embedded in the space.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041 [2]
| https://www.zachtronics.com/infinifactory/
| XorNot wrote:
| Resolution is the killer. The distance I'm currently typing
| this on my 32" monitor is much larger then the virtual draw
| distance I can "see" in VR at current resolutions.
|
| Regarding comfort: I have been curious whether you could take
| the weight off the head by suspending the headset off the back
| of a chair so it "floats" at face level via a tether or
| something.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Finally, RSI for your neck!
| onion2k wrote:
| It's important to remember that this is on the way to being an
| MVP. It's not a finished, polished product. This is HN. Don't we
| _like_ people hacking on startups any more?
|
| I think it looks like a really positive first step. Yeah, the
| resolution is too low but that's solvable with a better headset.
| It's a bit laggy, but that's probably due to recording video of
| VR being hard. The windows are weird sizes, but that might be
| user choice. Heck, I personally don't want to code things
| floating in space, but that's just a matter of choosing a
| different background. All those problems are solvable.
|
| There are loads more problems that are also likely solvable too.
| And maybe some that aren't. We don't know yet. I'm glad someone
| is working on the problem to find out. That's far better than not
| having, _maybe, one day in the distant future_ , a VR option to
| use for work.
| shaneprrlt wrote:
| Makes sense to me. This is going to be sick once it's ready!
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think the conclusion is unfair. It IS an existing VR option
| for work right now if you have a compatible headset. No it's
| not perfect and many people will not want to stay in there for
| a long time with existing headsets. But that doesn't mean it's
| not an option.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| I think that viability of an "option" is assumed. It's not
| viable in general today. I'd be surprised if there is even a
| single person that has actually fully replaced their
| conventional workspace with a VR desktop like this.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I think you missed
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041 from a few
| days ago...
|
| To each their own. You might not be on the left of the S
| curve for that technology, that's all :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycl
| e
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Color me surprised then! I'm still not sure I'd call it
| viable in general. But I've moved from "convinced" to
| "uncertain".
|
| I'm at the tail of that S-curve for sure, so maybe I'm
| just get-off-my-lawning. Thanks for sharing.
| efsavage wrote:
| Agreed, I'm happy to see people working on this, but with VR
| there are so many limiting factors/dealbreakers that I don't
| envy anyone playing in this space without massive resources to
| tackle them all.
|
| For me, the MVP for working in VR is replacing my fairly
| standard monitor setup (3x24-27", 12-14px text size, 60hz). I
| don't really care about virtual meetings or whiteboards or
| environments, I just want to make the transition to having what
| would be unreasonable/impossible in hardware (dozens of
| resizable windows I can easily rearrange and fill my whole FoV
| with. Nail that and I will gladly drop a couple of grand on it.
| amelius wrote:
| > It's important to remember that this is on the way to being
| an MVP. It's not a finished, polished product. This is HN.
| Don't we like people hacking on startups any more?
|
| It doesn't need to be a finished product. Just give FOSS
| developers something to work with, and the finished product
| will automatically emerge ;)
| amelius wrote:
| And to add to this: hardware without software is a feature,
| not a flaw.
| codezero wrote:
| Sometimes true, but sometimes not, it depends on how the
| hardware is designed to integrate with software. The Leap
| Motion failed miserably (my opinion) at this by expecting
| software to figure out where it fit as a human interface
| device rather than having a strong opinion based on
| software/reference drivers.
| amelius wrote:
| Well, you know what they say: fail fast, fail often.
| toyg wrote:
| _> the finished product will automatically emerge_
|
| "Finished"? No. Somewhat usable and constantly being updated
| or rewritten? Probably.
| amelius wrote:
| At least the software never deliberately works _against_
| the user, and never is defective by design.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > At least the software never deliberately works against
| the user
|
| I look at some of the Gnome 3 design choices and I start
| to question that.
| simfree wrote:
| What do you expect from Red Hat/IBM? We've all seen how
| poorly they handled OpenOffice.
| tuco86 wrote:
| 10x more productivity. oh boy, can i work just an hour a day with
| this thing?
| Joker_vD wrote:
| No, you will still work 8 hours, maybe even 10; it's the great
| paradox of productivity increases: e.g., teachers had to write
| way fewer reports before the computers became ubiquitous but
| when they did, the amount of reports increased slightly out of
| proportion so that teachers now spend more time on reports than
| they used to. Progress!
| simmo9000 wrote:
| Hopefully it can autofill all these TPS reports that I have
| to fill out to show my productivity!
| eafkuor wrote:
| I'm glad someone pointed this out. What is it with this
| obsession to be 1000x productive all the time? I will not get
| paid more for it, will I? And how is this going to make me more
| productive anyway? By removing "distractions"? I doubt anything
| can make me solve problems twice as fast as I already do, let
| alone 10x. This is ridiculous.
| erikbye wrote:
| What's the resolution per eye?
| lallysingh wrote:
| Depends on the device you use. They seem to support a few
| different ones.
|
| From here: https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula it seems like
| anything that will run steamvr should do it.
| kanetw wrote:
| We're evaluating 2880x2880 displays right now. With our
| upcoming optics, we can get up to 45PPD in the foveal area if
| everything works out as planned (they're basically a variable
| magnification optic).
|
| Depending on vendor support we might have to go to 2.5k
| displays from another vendor, but hopefully we can get the
| support we need for the 3k displays.
| journey_16162 wrote:
| I don't like to see where it's going. I mean, there are good
| chances this is the future of desktop computing. And it's no good
| in my opinion. Computers already cut us out from our bodies and
| trap in head as is. Replacing the screen with VR will push this
| effect even further. Expect more anxiety, depression, social
| awkwardness.
|
| I feel lucky to be born in times where we have technology and
| abundance but it didn't yet turn to a sci-fi dystopia created by
| tech nerds.
|
| And even from a productivity perspective, a regular screen is
| enough if it's powered by a good window manager (i.e. i3wm).
| There's no reason to block the reality with a VR, unless you are
| living and working in a room with no windows, then maybe you can
| get yourself a nicer view and that's it.
| BlueDingo wrote:
| The ease and portability are what make me moderately
| interested. I had kids over the last few years and no longer
| have a home office. I might get a desk area at some point but
| the only option is right next to my wife and my time to code
| would be when she's asleep.
|
| So I plop on the couch with my laptop but the constraints of
| that setup quickly drain my energy. If I had a quality "multi
| monitor" setup that is ready any time, anywhere, my
| productivity would increase, even if the device/process itself
| isn't better than monitors + i3.
|
| And if that happens, I'll have a happier time coding, probably
| produce more code, and live a happier life (because currently I
| am unhappy with my lack of output and that feeds back into my
| family life). That isn't some magical hope either, the same
| would happen if I had a multi monitor office again, but buying
| a single device is easier.
|
| So don't despair, there will be plenty of good outcomes from
| stuff like this project.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Yo. I want! How about Oculus Go compatibility, especially since
| Facebook decided to be a step closer to "reasonable" when it
| comes to sideloading et al?
| butterisgood wrote:
| I would definitely try AR glasses as a monitor replacement but I
| find most VR headsets to make me feel pretty ill after less than
| one hour.
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| I feel the same. I'd be ready to pay good money for an AR
| headset focused on replacing external monitors (no gaming but
| very good text readability). AR and not VR because I don't want
| to be completely isolated from my surroundings.
|
| And, if luminosity would allow, working outside with it would
| be a dream come true to me!
| xtracto wrote:
| So much this!. I'm writing this while sitting in my desk, in
| front of it is my 27in monitor and to the left is my Mac's
| monitor in on a stand.
|
| Behind all of this is my room's white wall with an area of
| around 4x2 meters. Imagine if I could change my monitor with
| an AR version of it that mapped/projected the "desktop" to my
| wall.
|
| And then, let's say I want to get into a meeting with a
| colleague to do some diagrams, so we "map" some Whiteboard
| software into another wall in my room and a wall in my
| colleague's room. We will be looking at the same and could
| even "draw" with hand gestures or something.
|
| I have more hope for AR than for VR as well.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| The number one thing stopping this is resolution. Monitors need
| to be sharp and crisp. It's none of those things in VR.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Right, and it's most important that text be crisp. Maybe they
| could re-render all of the visible text every frame with the VR
| perspective matrix, so you could have helmet-pixel-sharp
| antialiasing and hinting.
|
| Maaayyyybe.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Comfort is a bigger blocker. Headsets with a high enough
| resolution already exist, but they are too large and
| uncomfortable to wear for more than a short session.
| georgewsinger wrote:
| One of the founders of Simula here.
|
| We're flattered that someone posted us to HN, but we were
| honestly not ready for this much publicity at this precise stage
| of our project. It would have been better had this happened a few
| weeks from now, when we have more accurate footage of our actual
| prototype to show. Let me explain:
|
| 1. *Video footage.* The video footage on the front page of
| www.simulavr.com is taken against an HTC Vive and an older
| prototype of our window manager. It doesn't showcase the higher
| resolution of the Simula One (more than 4x that of the Valve
| Index), or any of the new features we are intending on releasing
| with it (hand tracking, AR mode, environments, etc).
|
| 2. *Prototype pictures.* The website doesn't have any actual
| photos of our headset yet! That's because we are in the process
| of finalizing the design. We have printed parts and plenty of
| renderings, but they are still changing every week.
|
| 3. *Specs.* The specs are close to the final specs, but still
| placeholders. Between supply chain issues, stuff still under
| development, and issues getting support from manufacturers at our
| volumes, we might have to change things for the final prototype.
|
| One of the reasons we threw up this website in its current form
| was to get the ball rolling for manufacturers. They won't supply
| us with parts unless we have some sort of product interest, but
| we can't generate any sort of product interest unless we have
| some sort of website. It's very much a chicken and egg sort of
| problem.
|
| We appreciate everyone's kind words, yet also understand the
| skepticism. For people on the waitlist: expect updates to start
| to come from us in a few weeks, when we will show some previews
| of some of the actual goodies which makes our headset special.
| nynx wrote:
| How good is the battery life for the prototype headsets? If the
| headset is small enough and lasts long enough, I could totally
| see myself tossing it in my backpack instead of a laptop.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| > They won't supply us with parts unless we have some sort of
| product interest, but we can't generate any sort of product
| interest unless we have some sort of website. It's very much a
| chicken and egg sort of problem.
|
| Well I reckon that problem is now solved.
| chaps wrote:
| Thanks for posting here. I was getting ready to post something
| about the resolution, but... dang, now I'm excited. Good luck
| and god speed!
| edoceo wrote:
| Shut up and take my money!
| karlkloss wrote:
| Any price indication? $500, $1000, $2000?
| kanetw wrote:
| Tentatively 2k.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Your humility is endearing. Seriously.
| kanetw wrote:
| Another founder here, with some more comments on the tech side
| of things:
|
| 1. The software is relatively usable, and you can try it out
| right now on https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula
|
| 2. The hardware is still being worked on, and the website is
| kind of a list of expected specs/placeholder in that regard:
|
| 2.a. The compute unit is tested and works, but requires a
| custom carrier board to fit the form factor. This is a blocker
| for the final product, but relatively low priority for the
| prototype.
|
| 2.b. Lens system design is scheduled to be complete in early
| November, with first prototypes available in early December.
| We're planning to use Valve Index lenses as a stopgap right now
| for prototyping etc.
|
| 2.c. We're currently solving a few challenges in driving the
| displays, as we're pushing the boundaries of the available
| technology, and at our volumes support from manufacturers is
| like pulling teeth. BOE supplies the 2880x2880 panels and there
| aren't even enough docs to figure out how to drive the (non-
| trivial, local dimming based) backlight.
|
| 2.d. We're also experimenting with different approaches to
| tracking as our original plan (RealSense) became end-of-life
| recently. I'm interested in an mmwave based solution, but we
| might just use RGB cameras instead.
|
| 2.e. The mechanical design for the front part is reasonably
| advanced, but we're still working on the back part.
|
| There's a lot more going on right now that's probably not
| coming to mind immediately, but that should provide a good
| overview.
| billconan wrote:
| does the device have a cpu or it needs to connect to a pc?
|
| what is the predicted price point?
|
| how to fit prescription lens ?
| kanetw wrote:
| Compute module based on NUC will be included, and is
| pluggable on the back of the headset.
|
| About 2-2.5k predicted price point.
|
| Prescription lens we'll figure something out. We're trying
| to keep enough eye relief to support glasses, and we'll
| have _at least_ provisions for mounting prescription
| lenses.
|
| If we can, we'll be able to supply prescription lenses with
| the headset (for a surcharge) or collaborate with an
| existing vendor to provide lenses.
| denysvitali wrote:
| 2.5k price point, ouch.
|
| On a side note... are you on Kickstarter?
| kanetw wrote:
| We will be, once we've sorted out all the blocker issues
| and our prototype is complete.
| gfodor wrote:
| What's the best off the shelf inside-out tracking system you
| can get now? Does anything compete with Quest yet?
| kanetw wrote:
| 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's tempting to put the
| processing on the FPGA as well.
| gfodor wrote:
| Interesting - I guess I assumed the hurdle is both
| hardware and software. Oculus's hand tracking was a huge
| lift. Is there any commercially available software stack
| being worked on that is at least hardware generic? Or is
| everyone forced to build from scratch?
| kanetw wrote:
| There's a lot of research papers that I found, but
| nothing hardware generic unfortunately.
|
| Hand tracking is a difficult beast especially, and we
| would like to just use the new Ultraleap module for that,
| but they don't support Linux yet.
|
| Eye tracking is relatively simple because it's a
| closed/controlled environment. Just some IR LEDs, an IR
| camera, and some edge detection and math.
|
| SLAM (positional tracking) has a lot of different
| approaches . There's open source software, but it's
| generally running on a normal computer and that's not
| particularly efficient (especially with our GPU already
| loaded). Some research papers use a FPGA, but the code is
| rarely available so you just have a starting point.
|
| You could probably crib the software from DepthAI or
| similar? We could implement the AI coprocessor they're
| using and adapt the code. I haven't looked closely enough
| yet to see whether that's a good use of resources.
| gfodor wrote:
| Cool, that's helpful, thanks!
| alecdibble wrote:
| 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.
| kanetw wrote:
| Appreciated. FPGAs are something I've been aware of for a
| long while now but haven't used before, so recs are
| always good.
| Miraste wrote:
| What are the potential advantages of an mmwave tracking
| system? The only previous commercial application I can think
| of was the pixel 4, which was very range and accuracy limited
| and power hungry.
| kanetw wrote:
| You get position/velocity/angle data directly, and it's
| less power hungry than running high-res cameras
| specifically. Also some research papers show an increased
| tracking accuracy with mmwave+IMU than RGB+IMU.
|
| So less processing + potentially less power + better
| performance, in theory.
| cs702 wrote:
| Thank you for the clarification.
|
| Let me ask you a quick question that is surely on the minds of
| many other HNers:
|
| _Are you guys using the prototypes for day-to-day work (i.e.,
| are you dogfooding Simula hardware and software)?_
| georgewsinger wrote:
| 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.
| cs702 wrote:
| Awesome. That means more than any tech specs to me.
|
| Wait a sec, are you on HN via Simula _right now_?
| georgewsinger wrote:
| 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. *Headset bulkiness/portability.* Headsets are too bulky,
| and tethered ones are annoying to work with. While the
| Simula One won't be as light weight as headsets will become
| 10 years from now, it will at least be truly portable (not
| requiring you to tether to a PC with chords or over WiFi).
| We are also planning on using something like a halo strap
| to make flipping the headset up and down more easy (instead
| of requiring you to take the headset fully off or on).
|
| 3. *Real world stuff.* VR forces you to be very touch-type
| proficient. But sometimes you want to be able to see your
| keyboard, or see your surroundings, etc. We are planning on
| having an "AR mode" for our headset to help accommodate for
| this.
| emaginniss wrote:
| "because gaming doesn't require you to sustain focus on
| detailed text for long periods of time"
|
| Have you never played VR Zork? You haven't lived yet.
| cs702 wrote:
| 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?
| kanetw wrote:
| 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.
| suriyaG wrote:
| The video in the website is really bad quality. this one is
| better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWLuwG91HnI
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Do you have to air-guitar the keyboard?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I'm very keen for this market to open up, but we need to talk
| about the quality of the desktop before moving on.
|
| On the website, the demo has the person drinking coffee, the
| youtube window is the wrong ratio, the text is too tall. For me,
| I really want picture perfect rendering before jumping. I don't
| want to look at badly rendered stuff, its part of the reason
| linux was so hard back in the day, getting your text to render
| and screen resolution to work right.
|
| Now, for me, it looks like I can fit about as many terminals on
| "screen" as I can on two 1280x1024 screens. In all the demos,
| there are at most 5 windows open. On my current screen I have one
| browser, and 8 terminals, and there is still loads more space.
|
| The thing that makes me a little sad is that we still all appear
| to be stuck at rendering everything on the inside of a sphere. If
| we are in VR, then we don't have to limit our selves to laying
| out windows on a single primitive. Where are the virtual shelves?
| where is the quick change, what about hotspots to bring groups of
| windows back into near field.
|
| We have unlimited z depth, surely this is time to start using it?
| unlike a normal screen, we have parallax _and_ gaze sensors, we
| really need to start using them.
|
| (it looks like they don't have room tracking, so feels like they
| have limited 6dof source: coffee video, I'd expect much more
| sideways translation if they had proper headset tracking)
| dgellow wrote:
| What do you do with 8 terminal open at the same time? I can
| never focus on more than one or two at a time.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| good question!
|
| depending on the project, it'll normally be browser for
| reference (or if its web based testing as well, but thats
| rare)
|
| then I have about between 1/2 and 2/3rds of the screen space
| left to have terminals in.
|
| I'll have one/two long terminals open with vim for the main
| file(s) I'm working on, then 1-4 smaller terminals for
| running the program/tests. if its a big project, then more
| terminals for reference (ie library one, library two etc.).
|
| Think of it more as having a really big desk, with loads of
| copies of the same reference book open to different pages.
| Its quicker to glance than it is to alt-tab. For me (and i'm
| not claiming this is a universal trait) that flash of screens
| where we switch context from one full screen to the other
| makes me loose context on what I'm working on.
|
| I have virtual monitors as well, all split into contexts, so
| one will have email/slack/$messenger one will have "personal"
| internets (ie timewasting sites) and a professional browser,
| thats logged into company services. If I'm doing graphics,
| then drawing/editing screens as well.
|
| I used to be a proponent of many monitors. I bought a matrox
| parhelia new to support triple monitors when they came out.
| (yes I am that old). However due to the way my mind works, I
| found that with three screens I would end up in a spinlock
| with two browsers open, one in each monitor, and not do any
| work.
| thom wrote:
| Surely vim can manage its own display and you don't need
| multiple terminals each running their own instance?
| gpm wrote:
| Vim _can_ , but why in the world would I have vim do that
| itself when that means I have to learn/use both vims
| windowing system and my window managers windowing system?
| What advantage does it give me...
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| My eyesight is bad, and I use a 15" laptop with about 300
| views open at a time. I feel no need for a bigger screen.
|
| I keep one window on screen at any time, full screen. I use
| 2 sets of 16 virtual desktops, tmix, emacs and brave. Maybe
| 10 instances of each app, and of within each maybe ten
| tabs. So that's a total of about 300 windows. It gives me
| zero visibility problems. I much prefer using my hands to
| change whatn I'm looking at instead of my neck.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Same. I also stopped using two monitors because it was
| distracting.
| VortexDream wrote:
| Maintain context. I might have several terminals up, each
| ssh'd to a different server. At least one terminal per
| software project. It helps that I use a tiling manager, so I
| can keep them all visible at the same time.
| piaste wrote:
| "Microservices, son!"
| marco_craveiro wrote:
| In Emacs I have tens of eshells open, not to mention SSH
| sessions, etc! I use one shell per task and then context
| switch using Emacs buffer switching machinery.
| ansible wrote:
| I'm debugging a embedded system, and have three different
| minicom sessions going on, looking at the simultaneous output
| of the various consoles.
|
| In general, I often have up to 10 tabs open on Gnome
| terminal, and a GNU screen session in each with up to 10
| screens. Maintaining lots of context.
|
| Within a single GNU screen session, I'll often have a build
| window, some editing windows for code, editing windows for
| config files, etc.
| curryst wrote:
| I think they'll get there. This is still early, they're
| probably focusing on the core rendering right now.
|
| > If we are in VR, then we don't have to limit our selves to
| laying out windows on a single primitive. Where are the virtual
| shelves? where is the quick change, what about hotspots to
| bring groups of windows back into near field.
|
| From playing VR games, actually the best implementation of this
| I've seen is to put them on a "belt" of sorts. Like an
| oversized toolbelt (so they're away from your body) so you can
| simply look down and grab stuff.
|
| Spheres do work well, though. It keeps all the text at the same
| distance from you, so the edges aren't out of focus. I suspect
| it also makes zooming easier since you can just move the camera
| closer. If you have an actual 3D space, moving the camera can
| get weird, and the camera being weird in VR is really
| disorienting.
|
| > (it looks like they don't have room tracking, so feels like
| they have limited 6dof source: coffee video, I'd expect much
| more sideways translation if they had proper headset tracking)
|
| Not having room tracking doesn't prevent movement. You'd just
| move with wasd like before. Not having room tracking means you
| can move your chair 6 inches without all your windows getting
| shifted. Likewise, you can stand up in your standing desk
| without re-adjusting all the windows.
|
| Plus I'm sure it'll help keep the cost down.
| fudged71 wrote:
| I would love to see VR/AR work cross paths with the concept of
| the "Memory Palace". Maybe groups of folders, websites, screens
| etc could be set up to be in different rooms of your house.
| Home automations could be configured to be in sync with your
| movement around the house.
|
| Every time I stand up and walk to a different room the screens
| move to the periphery, and return when I sit. When a loud sound
| is heard, a notification identifies the sound and asks if you
| want to replay it. Etc.
| chinaev wrote:
| I'm so joining the wait list
| [deleted]
| n_time wrote:
| They should probably talk to someone who knows something about
| ergonomics-the way his neck was craning to look at those vertical
| "screens" looked painful
| dpflan wrote:
| This is what I started thinking about: what are the proper
| ergonomics for a VR-office, constantly rotated one's neck may
| not actually be good. It's like this would become like
| immersion in a curved display with a huge horizon for every
| subscreen you want, then a "window" into the real world when
| you completely turn around (180).
| GrigoriyMikh wrote:
| I have a question. Why? How it will improve my multi-monitor
| setup? I see only potential cons here. Wearing headset all day.
| It doesn't sound good for your neck and eyes, at all.
| mentos wrote:
| Yea I don't think its going to improve a multi-monitor setup.
| Having a real office illuminated by the trillions of ray traces
| from the free sun in the sky is always going to be better than
| VR. That's why I really think the future is going to be an AR
| display that lets you leverage 90% of the real world with 10%
| of a simulated overlay. But! the road to the AR future is paved
| with VR work like this so I dare not write it off as useless.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| My office is an interior room, no windows. VR is definitely
| better than my office.
| xtracto wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of SphereXP [1] A WindowsXP application
| that converted your desktop into a "spherical" desktop.
|
| I agree on the cons: Wearing a headset all day? Also I wonder
| how looking at a light-bulb at 5cm of your eyes all day long
| will feel like.
|
| OTOH for me one _advantage_ that these type of VR/AR
| technologies can bring is are "endless desktop space". Right
| now we have something like that with "multiple desktops" in
| Linux and OSX. But it will be cool to have just an endless
| space of screen real-estate to tile all open windows.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeHe-li-cZE
| fudged71 wrote:
| You might have it backwards about neck movement.
|
| Sitting at a desk looking at a monitor in one position sounds
| terrible for your neck.
|
| With VR you don't have physical (and cost) limitations of
| having screens above and below you, they could be all around
| you. You could even program the screen(s) to slowly rotate
| around you to induce motion so your neck/body isn't in the same
| place all day.
| Stevvo wrote:
| If you don't have the space for a multi monitor setup then
| virtual monitors could be an alternative.
| ldbooth wrote:
| 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.
| stemlord wrote:
| After about 2 or 3 visible windows at a given moment, I start
| becoming more distracted than productive, but this development
| still seems like an inevitability that I'm excited to try out.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Excited for this! I know it's early, but everything was early
| once - VR will definitely be one of the next big computing
| interfaces, and we need alternatives from the current options
| being put out by Big Tech.
| abrookewood wrote:
| One thing that worries me about wearing VR headsets for extended
| periods of time (whether for game or for work) is that your eyes
| are focusing at a single distance for so long. Not sure if there
| is any research to suggest extended usage is a problem, but it
| 'feels' like it could be. At least with a desktop or laptop, when
| you look around the room, you are actually changing your focal
| length.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| From experience, I can tell you that you aren't focused on a
| single point, and in fact your eyes will change focus to look
| at objects in the distance just like in real life. In my
| virtual office set up, when I want to relax my eyes, I can look
| over my right shoulder and look at the office wall, or out the
| window, and my focus shifts. You can also make your screens as
| big as you want and as far away as you want, there are a lot of
| options to keep your eyes from looking at a single focal length
| for extended periods of time. My YouTube screen is also pushed
| back a bit from my normal monitor so I can shift focus for a
| few minutes every hour or so.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Your eyes do move, and they point at other stuff, but the
| focal length afforded by the lenses is fixed (it makes as if
| everything was at a few meters IIRC).
|
| I also wonder what could happen if the ciliary muscle isn't
| used enough. Does it get weak and you rapidly get short-
| sightedness, or is occasional exercise enough?
|
| Edit: maybe an answer could come from looking at people who
| recovered from extended comas. Does their visual acuity
| degrade? If not, that's promising. If yes, it could also come
| from other causes like the light of light (lack of UV light,
| especially during teenage years, has also been linked to
| short-sightedness).
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| > but the focal length afforded by the lenses is fixed
|
| That seems weird to me because when I look at a screen at a
| different distance to the one I'm using I can see the other
| screens getting blurry just like in real life.
| krastanov wrote:
| My guess is that this has to do with stereoscopic vision,
| not focal distance. Does the other screen become simply
| washed-out blurry or is it double-vision-type of blurry?
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| ok that makes sense. I actually just did this one eyed,
| and you are absolutely correct everything is in focus. So
| it must be just stereoscopy that looks that made me feel
| I'm focusing differently.
|
| That said, it isn't any more or less strenuous on my eyes
| than IRL except when the text is too small. Font
| smoothing still isn't great, but if the screen is big
| enough you dont notice it.
| krastanov wrote:
| This statement does not make much sense to me. In VR
| everything is at the same focal distance, you just fake
| perspective/parallax/size/stereovision to make it feel 3D.
| You can not change the focal distance if you just have a
| screen and fixed lenses. Even actuated lenses would not be
| enough as they will change the focal distance for the entire
| scene.
|
| "Perceived distance/depth" has little to do with "focal
| distance" in this situation.
| macawfish wrote:
| My neck hurts already just watching that teaser video...
|
| Looks cool though!
| Vinnl wrote:
| See also a project member (allegedly) talking about it yesterday
| here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678541
| ilaksh wrote:
| Really interesting. And when I have a headset that is comfortable
| and has high enough resolution I may switch to working in VR.
| Right now the Quest 2 that I have is too low resolution and too
| uncomfortable.
|
| There are a few reallly high resolution VR headsets that I can't
| afford. But I just heard about a 200 gram (supposedly) on coming
| out of China. If it has good resolution thag might be a viable
| choice for this (as an alternative to whatever the hardware is
| which they didn't say).
|
| But what makes this stuff REALLY interesting to me are the
| possibilities for 3D widgets and interface elements and
| metaphors. That has been explored a little and generally
| discarded in flatland but I think in an environment that is
| always 3d with good hand tracking, it's a different ballgame.
|
| One thing to imagine would be, what could 3d "web browsing" be
| like if you knew that everyone looking at your site was in VR?
| Maybe something along the lines of JanusXR. Although I think they
| barely began to scratch the surface.
|
| To me the idea of working in VR could be a gateway to the
| 'metaverse'. It could start with people trying to make more
| interesting environments for their floating 2d windows. Then they
| add some physics and locomotion. Now they want to collaborate
| over the network.
|
| In three years, the most popular Linux distribution could be the
| one you run on your headset, and could come with multiplayer VR
| baked in.
|
| But anyway I would want to escape from the 2d windows. There
| might even be some interesting ways to represent code or
| codebases in 3d. Or even new ways to manipulate text with your
| hands.
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