On a positive note, given a16z's feedback, I'm sure they can find another firm/partner that would be willing to back them at this stage. They are definitely in a hard position, though. Reading this I doubt I'd put money in as a consumer until they have the capital to execute. Sounds like they really need 3-5MM to hit their objectives even though they only say 1.2MM.
I've also seen a16z invest in far less (pitch decks and hand-wave demos). So my read on the feedback is they've made too much progress on one front (enough to show a16z that they're not a compelling seed investment) but not enough progress on the other front (enough to warrant a PMF A round). Doesn't seem like the most fun spot to be in, and I know how hard this part of the stretch is. Good luck!
We've tightened up the numbers a bit, but it's pretty close to a honest amount. 4m would put us well into profitable S1 production + enough runway to develop the next iteration territory.
> I've also seen a16z invest in far less (pitch decks and hand-wave demos). So my read on the feedback is they've made too much progress on one front (enough to show a16z that they're not a compelling seed investment) but not enough progress on the other front (enough to warrant a PMF A round). Doesn't seem like a fun spot to be in.
That's how I feel as well, given feedback from other VCs we've applied at. Amplify told us roughly "too big for a seed, too small for a series A" after five meetings or so.
Bummer I missed the SAFE round. I would consider chipping in as an investor even though I wouldn't feel comfortable purchasing a preorder as a consumer. Wonder if you can structure your next round to include spots for people that missed the train...
2448x2448 per eye display resolution is unfortunately not sufficient for a real desktop work. I doubt Apple's 3k will be sufficient either. Linux seems cool though and it's essentially a NUC wrapped around one's head.
You would be surprised. VR/AR can present 2D surfaces that appear to have a much higher resolution than what the LCD should be able to do natively. Because you (ideally) have two eyes (cameras/view frustums) and they're always moving slightly, the virtual canvas is sampling the source texture's pixels slightly different per eye and per frame (e.g. at 90Hz or higher). Between the images your eyes see and the high-frequency changes always happening, your brain pieces together all of the detail.
It's going to be more of a general computer than Apple's. There is a market for that, like how System76 and Framework sell laptops even though Macbooks exist and are arguably nicer for the money.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't want apple's nerfed consume based user experience with limited integrations in a desktop replacement headset. They'll deigns it releasable.only ship what actually works perfectly in the first revision. Like they did with the watch and the iphone. Yet android and linux exist so for some reason people want to have a slightly clunky future well before apple deigns it releasable.
There are refuseniks like me who will never buy into Apple's (or Meta's or Microsoft's) ecosystems for reasons of privacy and control. I'm F/OSS only. In some areas, that leads me to do without. Having options like SimulaVR is very exciting even if the value proposition is arguably less strong.
Whether their potential customer base is large enough for success is a question I have, too.
My fear is that they'll want to make the system as like commercial offerings as possible, which will actually make it less appealing for nerds like me.
Native applications for Apple's Vision OS are as limited as iPad apps. I can't imagine being productive on an iPad-like OS. Everything there feels like working in one-finger gloves.
Like I mentioned in a related thread [1], I really want to see simulavr succeed. They started working on this stuff before anyone else did but one of my worries is that Apple and other big names are going to come in and establish the VR Computing market before the Simula one is launched.
[1] SimulaVR: Headsets Delayed (simulavr.com)
8 points by Philpax 1 day ago
Appreciate your support. From our perspective, the Apple headset is more an "iPad replacement" than a "laptop replacement".[1]
The Vision Pro is based on their iOS (iPad/iPhone) ecosystem for their 2D apps, so you won't be able to use powerhouse office apps. It seems instead more geared towards the passive consumption of information, entertainment, and casual gaming, whereas we're trying to build something that can realistically replace a (Linux) laptop.
I'm not sure what Apple is thinking strategically, but they're structurally incentivized to cannibalize their iPad sales over their macbook sales (since their iPads are their weakest product in their lineup in terms of sales).
> It seems instead more geared towards the passive consumption of information, entertainment, and casual gaming, whereas we're trying to build something that can realistically replace a (Linux) laptop.
FWIW, it appears that Apple themselves don't see it as that. They are focusing on consumption for the initial release, but there are clear plans to bring "full" macos apps to Vision Pro.
They haven't released everything, but what you need to know is in the category they're placing AVP: computer. They refer to it as a computer, repeatedly. Not a mobile device. And, all of their computers run Xcode. I would be very surprised if we don't hear more about that by next year.
I was suspicious that they are stupid enough to think that this cannibalizing Macbook sales is a valid reason to gimp it like they do the iPad.
However, this tech (AR/VR) is much much bigger than traditional computing and is going to replace the aforementioned and more.
So I sincerely hope that I can do development, pull up a terminal, an so on within the device. That's going to be extremely important I think to use this as a remote working machine (which was my hope for years).
Changes like this go nowhere, then happen rapidly.
Price is too high, features too few, distinct advantages under compelling, and ergonomics too nomic ... until they aren't.
In other words, its a big change of form and function, not to mention the physics tradeoffs of these products, so it makes sense that the right combo is taking a while to fall into place.
If Apple customers, who have the shiny shells to shell out, fall in love with their devices, that will mean a lot.
provide tools that aid consumption is what apple does and does well... I think they lucked into create (software not creative) recently... linux gets there first every time. In a beautifully janky way.
but I'm sure I'll be downvoted into oblivion for daring question apple
Oh I agree that if headsets see any success in the next 5 years (I have my doubts after having owned and used many myself) then Apple will always be the "walled garden" alternative and capture a certain percentage of the market. But I think the "log into your laptop" feature they are pushing is not going to be a good experience, and is likely a feature they will never promote and will not invest any development effort into, after the initial launch.
For me personally, it’s appealing that it just provides a mirror to my existing MacBook. It gives me more flexibility on when to use glasses vs laptop screen, like if I need to take notes in a meeting/lecture hall.
Wow, I wish you all the best with this product, but your view of what apple intends with the vision pro is either intentionally naive or wishful thinking.
I see the vision pro 3-5 years from now being part of anyone's workflow that currently uses 3+ screens. And I don't see how this kickstarter competes. So just arguing "yeah but apple din't think of ..." is not encouraging.
Disagree, I think this is not a good read on Apple strategy and you may be heeding the wrong lessons in computing history.
1. The passive vs active framing applies primarily to non-Pro iPads. I don't think it can be reasonably argued the $3k Vision Pro is attempting to cannibalize low end iPads. iPad Pros are very different beasts that are designed for a particular type of creative output, and are very capable general purpose computing devices now.
2. There's no particular incentive to cannibalize iPad over Mac, its hard to fathom what dimension that makes sense on. They're happy to cannibalize any product, but their main MO is 'look what cool shit we can do with the latest tech' and Vision Pro is today's version of that. Apple is demonstrably way more interested in building out iOS/iPadOS and we've seen that over the past 10 years, to the point Mac users had to basically revolt to get attention.
3. Of course Vision Pro is based on iPad ecosystem, as its a far more modern set of conventions better suited to mixed modal input than Mac. That isn't a reflection of VP's purpose, but of engineering and design realities - it's far easier to grow iPad/iOS into a top tier spatial computing OS and ecosystem.
While MacOS is wonderful, it's really a product of a particular conception of computing, and shoehorning a 40 year old desktop OS paradigm into entirely new input modalities and ergonomic contexts makes little sense. The puck isn't going anywhere new, the desktop OS modality is baked. Apps will need to adapt to the wondrous new capabilities and constraints of the platform.
Looking at your presentation [1] it's clear the ergonomics are going to be a sticking point, which is a combined hardware & app ecosystem problem: the novelty of windows everywhere bumps up against the human factors / ergonomic fatigue constraints of moving one's head around around more than a few degrees (and whatever you do, don't optimize for looking up!), and app windows with tiny UI elements are going to be similarly fatiguing and unable to adapt to the promise and limitations in accuracy of gaze tracking.
There's a reason WinCE's desktop OS paradigms failed in PDAs whereas iOS succeeded - you need to reinvent the experience when you move modalities. I would argue the exact same thing will happen in AR/VR: sticking with a desktop OS paradigm is a losing proposition.
Just my 2c. Personally I really want to see a variety of offerings and possibilities in the market but I also want them to be based on sound reasoning and approach, which I go into a bit in this essay on category-defining products [2].
> There's a reason WinCE's desktop OS paradigms failed in PDAs whereas iOS succeeded - you need to reinvent the experience when you move modalities. I would argue the exact same thing will happen in AR/VR: sticking with a desktop OS paradigm is a losing proposition.
I think you've nailed it here. I never thought of it in those terms before, but now that I see it, it's obvious.
It reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story of Henry Ford saying that his customers didn't want cars - they wanted faster horses. I think there's something analogous here. If all you are offering is a Linux desktop in VR, you're making faster horses.
When I think about where a novel new VR mode is going to come from, it's either going to be Apple or a research team at a liberal arts college. Technologists can really only solve half the problem.
I dunno. this is a nice story, but at the end of the day an android phone is just a slightly tweaked linux box. The buttons are a little bigger, the small screen is optimized for one window at a time, and there's a pop up keyboard...
They are specifically designing a VR-based window manager here. And it's linux and a community of hackers, and open source. I think you'll see community imitations and tweaks and improvements on the apple formula as an option almost immediately.
speak of the devil, https://www.visor.com/ opened up pre-orders today, deliveries tbd 2024
Very close to the Vision Pro for 1/5 the price, acts more like a peripheral and works on the 3 major operating systems. It's (supposedly) also going to be side-loadable and maybe even more hackable, OpenXR compatible
I tried immersed... the latency is a killer (in the bad way)... the bandwidth is a killer... the compute required to re-encode the video is a killer... I gave up. It was easier to flat pack a monitor or now get a 4k 17" monitor...
I'm back to super pessimistic on this tech... I too want simula to ship but I keep also maxing out my laptop on ram and compute and cooling and battery...
I'm rooting for them but I can't help in a financially signifigant method
Using a usb-c cable right now to connect immersed directly to laptop. I have 1ms latency, using two 2k screens. I'm only limited to that resolution because more than that the pixel density on the quest 2 isn't quite good enough imo, but I can also do dual 4k.
I don't know your computer specs ofc. Mine are pretty beefy (11th gen i9, a 4lb p1 gen 4). But it runs smoothly even when I switch to battery saver and turn off my gpu (with 1 4k screen as a result).
I was trying to recreate my desktop, I have 4 2560x1440 monitors and 1 4k core monitor. Even with direct connect on my occulus to my laptop with a 2nd wifi, I was getting 5-30ms latency and lots of hiccups. It wasn't pleasent, definitely not as pleasent as just setting up a travel dell 2560x1440 monitor and nothing on the new 4k 17" I just picked up for $300 on amazon.
The gpu on my laptop was also on fire and the machine was sluggish due to gpu issues, thermal issues, network issues.
It was also a less pleasant and less quality experience than real physical monitors. I also tried it with my index on the beast desktop I have that has those physical monitors turning the monitors off and putting in dummy plugs (same as laptop).
It sucked, my neck hurt, it was laggy, hard to position monitors which I had to do every time I set it up, and the resolution sucked compared to a physical monitor, and don't get me started on fots let alon comparing it to 43" 4k monitor.
I spent a decent amount of time in discord with immersed trying to get it to work. It's just not meant to be currently. And for the same price as a occulus, same weight, smaller footprint (the occulus is huge in a backpack, a tablet monitor is just and extra half inch of laptop), I get a much better experience. Also my neck doesn't hurt, I can see the world, and it's much higher res.
Everyone's experience is different in VR, there are people working in immersed 8+ hours a day without issue. Sounds like you didn't enjoy it and want to blow off a little steam
The original links, if you look, are about their new hardware, which is ultra-lightweight, and higher res, 4k per eye
I'm not trying to travel with external monitors, hence why I'm looking for a virtual solution, and this looks quite promising
I'm not blowing off steam I'm sharing my lives experience with a previous versions on older hardware. I was about 10 seconds from buying the initial prototype kick start. I'm very aware of the proposed specs which they currently are not shipping due to supply and find constraints.
I don't have anything against immersed. I chatted with them several times and gave feedback every time. They're nice folks. I'm not sure they're gonna ship. And after that experience I'm also pessimistic on vr for desktop for several years at minimum.
And travel monitors are just gonna get better. My m2pro is already light, the externals I can see getting half the weight, 4k and possibly wireless. That'd be more compute in a smaller space and lighter weight than that Dell desktop replacement I plugged around in 2003, and smaller but heavier than the simula. I haven't had a chance to try foveated text on 8k but my math says it's lower density than 4k at arms length on a 17 or 27 monitor so but let's call that a win.
Nice, I wonder if this is like bird bath optics like the Xreals or VR-style with camera passthrough? I don't think they specify. I hadn't heard of it yet.
VR style passthrough, they want the pixels and FOV, think of this as an almost Apple Vision Pro for $750, assuming they can pull it off. Supposedly, the Visor was on stage at the intel event today, but I haven't looked to see yet.
The founder has tried them all and commented that similar AR tech is probably still 5 years away (at the price point and form factor the Visor is pushing)
Not disputing your claim per se, but Google had a project called Daydream back at least as early as 2017 (though seems earlier) and rolled that into Area 120 projects. They canned it at some point in 2021 I believe.
I own a daydream, you use it by putting your phone in the visor and using the phone as the headset. It was fun until they started dropping support for everything, and it started to happen much earlier than 2021z
SimulaVR is creating a full computer built into a VR headset for production work.
> While we expect consumers to be really excited about a VR takeoff in 2024
My guess is that there will indeed be a lot of excitement in 2024 (at least in Apple land) and then it's going to drop off again in 2025. That's not necessarily a terrible thing though.
Meta has sold something like 25 million headsets. The market is already bigger than many people realize and maybe it's big enough. It doesn't need to 10x and if it did, there's more than a small chance that kind of growth would end up being bad thing. Maybe a16z not biting means enshittification has been delayed.
Agreed that VR gaming is bigger than most people realize, but VR for productivity (to replace PCs & laptops) is still an untapped market. VR pixel density is now within one doubling of "human eye resolution", so it seems like now's the time for VR to be useful for this use case.
Apple's headset is really cool, but is being built over iOS for 2D apps, so isn't realistically going to replace someone's laptop as their primary computing device.[1]
Hey, nicely designed. A bit of a retro look but not tacky. I like the niche market you are aiming for (Linux hacker) and the work look impressive. I sound like an investor evaluating but I have no scratch to give. Just here to give encouragement and will root for your success
I don't know if this is strictly a "rule" but from the places I've worked, it's been the case that given the capital/batch/order constraints of hardware, it's very difficult to make break even on less than 10,000 units.
As someone involved in both the crypto and the VR space, why were the first testers crypto people rather than VR people?
It would have been a much easier pitch to those of us who already understand the caveats of this technology at present state, and we're already believers in the idea. Many VR people are using their current generation HMD's for productivity already despite the downsides.
It seems like it would have been a more obvious route to the type of people who are most likely to be your early adopters, and additionally avoids associating your operation with crypto which still carries a stigma.
I have a lot of respect for Vitalik, but I'd much rather hear the opinion of someone like Thrillseeker for a device like this.
Vitalik and Thor were both early preorderers of our headset (we had no connection to them prior). And we didn't have any explicit crypto angle here, but just reached out to them as vetted early enthusiasts, asking if they wanted to help test the headset as users. In a way, there's something pure about getting feedback from people who are interested in the product primarily as users (as opposed to them already being in the industry).
But we actually do have a discussion ongoing with ThrillSeeker about a headset test/video, and we hope it gets made :]
I can't speak about Thor as I don't know who that is, but Vitalik has never been an open supporter of the metaverse fad. He's one of the people in the space who are too busy being focused on improving the core technologies to pay attention to meaningless marketing hype.
I haven't been following SimulaVR and do see the appeal of an all-in-one platform. The costs of quality and performance do add up and I can't justify to myself investing in it. I would much prefer to separate the HMD like something closer to the Bigscreen Beyond form-factor and a CPU/battery that's independently upgradeable and not supported by my neck.
I bought in on the presale, and have been very happy with how you guys have been approaching this project. It's obviously an uphill battle to release this device, but I love the ambition and lack of compromise you guys have in creating a new form factor.
I think you are likely too early to market, making it a hard sell for a mass market in the short term. If you can survive long enough I think you can do well, however.
I remember running across simulavr a couple of years ago, and after Apple's announcement I went to check out what they are up to. I hope they get the funding they're looking for, because this is a product I'd love to see exist in the market.
The only thing I read out of this is that they have no idea for the interface side of things. The dismissal of critique by "we will fix it later, it's easy" never bodes well especially in regards to ui/ux and Linux.
No, we fully agree it's a hard problem. Which is why we wrote functional software first, and then went into hardware when the existing hardware couldn't support our use cases.
There's problems with the software that need to be solved before we ship, but it's not with the UI side of things. That's not to say that the UI is perfect (it really isn't), but it's functional and more importantly: can be changed at any time, unlike hardware.
If you have hardware and shitty software the only thing that will happen is that your users will be disappointed. You can't change the first reviews or hand-ons "any time". It's a one-shot.
these aren't normal users. linux users choose what others may see as sub-par UX every day because we value other things. and they'll fix it themselves; it's not an apple-style top-down relationship, and I expect it'll iterate fast.
I learned my lesson about gofundmysalary years ago but still would consider giving this company an order if they gave even the slightest impression that they were doing the kind of radiation testing that the lawyers are surely forcing the big players to undertake.
Four figure drop for an open source darling project? Maybe.. but it is too big of an ask for me to strap a bunch of dev boards and desktop components to my cranium.
Hardware is either niche and unachievable or commodity and widely available. Maybe you could consider pivoting to software for widely available non mainstream headsets until you make enough to fund the dedicated hardware.
I'm not sure I'm reading these numbers correctly, but is the project selling the units basically at material costs and taking a huge hit on everything else? What am I missing?
Nope, you've got it right. We're selling at a loss up until roughly the ~1,000th unit shipped.
More specifically: if we ship 125 units, we lose roughly ~$5K per headset. If we ship 250 units, we lose roughly ~$2K per headset. If we ship 1,250 units, we're operating at a slight profit with a couple of years of runway. If we ship 10,000 units, our margins approach 45% (at least on our pure hardware offering; we'd like to layer in some software offerings as well).
Unfortunately, the most costly part of the project is the very beginning. But we think these sales targets are doable if we're able to get our operation off the ground (with customers able to see shipped units being used to replace laptops in the wild).
The key factor is how fast units need to ship. In general, the scaling is sub-linear due to
1. reduced per-component costs (volume discounts)
2. less administrative/engineering overhead (ie the salaries/one-off costs get divided among more units)
3. more optimized assembly processes
Assembly labor expenses are directly proportional to how many units need to ship per timeframe. If an assembly worker can assemble 10 units a day, you're shipping 200 units/month. So you can ship 1000 units in 5 months or hire 5 people and ship 1000 units in 1 month.
This seems like an admirably honest, reflective and eloquent report of a pain point in a tough new field. I don't see the need for the sneery dismissal.
I hope they get the support they need and succeed.
I've also seen a16z invest in far less (pitch decks and hand-wave demos). So my read on the feedback is they've made too much progress on one front (enough to show a16z that they're not a compelling seed investment) but not enough progress on the other front (enough to warrant a PMF A round). Doesn't seem like the most fun spot to be in, and I know how hard this part of the stretch is. Good luck!