SimulaVR $1.2M short of the project's total cost

Re:SimulaVR $1.2M short of the project's total cost by p1esk on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:54PM (#37580201)

The market for the entire VR industry is not that great to begin with. Apple might change this eventually or it might not. I just don't see how a small player today could hope to succeed where all existing big players struggle and even Apple might fail.

Also, I'm guessing it's much easier to put together a laptop from off-the-shelf components than to create a VR headset.

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Re:SimulaVR $1.2M short of the project's total cost by 1123581321 on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @12:23AM (#37580357)

It's significantly harder to make the headsets. They wouldn't need to place this complicated order with Sharp, for example. But, it's also why reason they have an opportunity as a new manufacturer and have taken orders at a premium price. They need to ship this and grow to place successive parts orders, but I'd think they could sustain the business at a few thousand sales annually. That's already a small percentage of the VR market and awareness should grow significantly next year.

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Re:SimulaVR $1.2M short of the project's total cost by p1esk on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @01:32AM (#37580699)

But who exactly would want to buy it? I make good money as a software developer, but there's no way I'd drop 3 grand on some unproven beta quality headset with modest specs just to see how well it could serve as a laptop + 4k monitor replacement. I could see myself potentially paying that much for a 2nd or 3rd generation Vision Pro, provided everyone raves about the experience, but even then, I'd double check the return policy.

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Re:SimulaVR $1.2M short of the project's total cost by fintip on Thursday September 21, 2023 @07:24AM (#37596042)

Most people would agree, but some people are early adopters and have different risk profiles. I'm typing this from a virtual desktop experience using a quest 2 looking at 2 giant VR 2k displays, 1ms latency connected to my laptop through a usb-c cable (if you have good wifi the latency is good enough for wireless, but my airbnb wifi is meh, and the wired doesn't bother me).

I worked like this for more than 12 hours yesterday, too.

I strongly considered their product and found it very tempting. Not a perfect fit for me, so I didn't go for it in the end, but you have to realize the world is not full of a bunch of clones of you.

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Re:SimulaVR $1.2M short of the project's total cost by 1123581321 on Thursday September 21, 2023 @10:42AM (#37598344)

Right now all VR headset sales are about 7% of laptop sales in the US, about 20 million units a year vs 280 million. You're in the uninterested 93% which is quite normal, but you can see that there's some demand.

The size of the premium headset market is a big question mark, but we know Apple's conservative order for 2024 is 300-400k units and they are planning an inconvenient sales process to slow demand.

Linux is around 1% of desktop market share so perhaps 1% of that 400k would want a premium Linux headset: 4k for Simula to serve. Then we'll find out if headsets grow as a market or they fade out like a fad or transition product category.

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Re:SimulaVR $1.2M short of the project's total cost by p1esk on Thursday September 21, 2023 @12:00PM (#37599625)

VR headset sales are about 7% of laptop sales in the US, about 20 million units a year vs 280 million

There's no way 280M laptops are being sold in US every year. Where did you get that data?

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Re:SimulaVR $1.2M short of the project's total cost by 1123581321 on Thursday September 21, 2023 @01:05PM (#37600607)

You're right. Those are both global numbers, not US. Sorry about that. If the rest holds it means Simula is going to have to sell multinationally to be a going concern, which seems difficult although the broad trend for electronics to become more accessible is in their favor.

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