I want this sort of product. It is exactly the use case I have for VR but what I have heard is that existing VR is no good for office / programming work, as the text is not crisp enough. There are also complaints around the comfort of wearing such a device for a long time. They are reported to be too heavy and too hot. I can't wait for the reviews to come out to see if this product can overcome those shortcomings.
The resolution of 2448x2448 is promising. This is the upper end of headsets we should expect to see in the next 12 months or so. That said it takes a lot to make a good headset. I am most excited for a potential headset release from Valve, which has been rumored and featured in various small leaks for the last few years (Valve "Deckard"). The youtube channel "Sadly its Bradley" has a lot of great content about stuff like this.
Hah, never expected to see a Bradley shoutout on HN. Seconding the recommendation; he’s a diamond in a sea of mostly garbage clickbait that we call the VR YouTube niche.
And yeah, I think we might actually see an HMD this year with optics and a panel that can finally be useful for desktop usage[1]. My since-returned Quest Pro was maddening close: the optics are absolutely spectacular but the display resolution just doesn’t get there.
[1] Not counting the Apple HMD here. If it does get released this year and has the rumored display resolution it’ll leapfrog the entire industry by an even larger margin than the first retina devices. $3k is a helluva price tag though.
Ooh yeah, I’ve not actually seen the rumored specs of the apple HMD. I would love to see a leapfrog happen here. I assumed 2500x2500 was all we would see for a while.
Simula is pretty good. I tried the software with my HTC Vive (1st Gen!) and it is way more readable than any other VR text I saw. So maybe ultra-high resolution isn't strictly required.
If you have a VR headset that is compatible, why not give it a whirl? It's open source on GitHub.
> For optics, our headset will feature a custom 3-lens design which, in tandem with our displays, will provide 36.2 PPD, 100 degree FoV (monocular). For comparison, this PPD is 3.27x better than the Valve Index (11.07 PPD) and 1.76x better than a Quest 2 (20.58 PPD).[1] (Our original target was ~45 PPD, but we decided to trade off more FoV for less PPD). Bottom line: Simula's headset will offer significantly sharper text quality than existing headsets (offering higher PPD than any other portable headset on the market).
> We just received updated lenses from our optics suppliers and ran some QA tests on them. TLDR: We're pretty blown away by how good things look in person. Even without software distortion correction, text and other fine details are extremely crisp. We can't wait to show this quality off in our review units.
> Though it's very hard to convey in these videos, the most important thing we can confirm is that the image quality is absolutely incredible. We've been telling people that Simula One pixel density is more than 3x better than the Valve Index, and nearly 2x better than the Quest 2.
Though, this is their word. They've yet to get to a point where they can ship to third-parties for review. They've been very transparent on the development IMO, but it's quite a bit of money so people are cautious and skeptic.
