Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics

Re:Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics by outworlder on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @05:11PM (#31103064)

For those that didn't know what this is:

> The Simula One is an office-focused, standalone VR headset built on top of Linux Desktop. It provides comparable functionality to any Linux laptop or PC, but with the power of VR.

> 2448x2448 per eye display resolution

That's a fair bit higher than a Quest 2. That might be enough for productivity based on my own subjective tests.

I hope they succeed. There's a lot of potential.

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Re:Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics by kanetw on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @08:27PM (#31104764)

We're 2448x2448 and use optics that magnify the center more than the edges, leading to even higher resolution (36 PPD, about equivalent to a 27" 1920x1080 monitor 60cm away)[1]

[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/

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Re:Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics by benoliver999 on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @05:48PM (#31103494)

I want it to succeed too, VR recently has become really quite impressive in many regards.

I do wonder if it's overly ambitious. There's a Linux distro to maintain as part of this project as well as a huge hardware project.

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Re:Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics by georgewsinger on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @08:38PM (#31104837)

Thanks for your support!

RE our ambition: the bulk of our work lies in hardware stuff going forward. Our VR compositor is already pretty stable, and people have been using it on older Linux compatible headsets (HTC Vive, Valve Index) for a few years now.[1] Our Linux distro will be a NixOS fork which uses nix as our package manager, and which bolts our VR compositor on top as the window manager. This choice will allow users to roll back to working configurations pretty easily if some sort of disaster ever occurs.

With that said, this is an ambitious project. We're posting weekly (mostly technical) updates to help build trust that this is a real project making progress towards its target ship date (Q4 2022 - Q1 2023; review units incoming in a month or two).

If there's a topic or question in the back of your mind of what's going on behind the scenes, let me know and I'll add it to our queue!

[1] https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula

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Re:Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics by Kerbonut on Thursday April 21, 2022 @01:18AM (#31106233)

While I love Linux and run it on my home stuff, at work it’s going to basically have to run Windows. Is that going to be an option ever?

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Re:Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics by kanetw on Thursday April 21, 2022 @03:11AM (#31106755)

If Microsoft decides to give us access to the APIs to implement a window manager (however you'd do that on Windows...), possible. As is, would require a significant redesign of our approach.

That being said, tethered mode will be Windows compatible.

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Re:Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics by outworlder on Thursday April 21, 2022 @03:34PM (#31114195)

By and large, having access to Windows APIs is rarely a problem. Since Vista they have locked down the OS a bit so you may have to ask for more permissions (or straight admin). More importantly is: are all APIs you need documented? You can still use undocumented calls but they won't be stable.

Replacement 'window managers' were a bit of a craze years ago. I remember running a version of OpenSTEP.

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Re:Simular VR: Lenses and Schematics by jphsnsir on Thursday April 21, 2022 @05:01PM (#31115123)

Why the need to fork NixOS? Why not contribute?

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