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by BiteCode_dev 1595 days ago
For years I haven't been excited by anything in the VR space. I tried them, even with the running apparatus and the slippery shoes, and it was fun. But that's it.

Nor the Leap, the Quest or the Hololens interest me very much. It doesn't bring much into my life, but promise to take a lot from it. Besides, the fact it's backed by companies with a not so good track record at respecting their users, and some of them, at making closed proprietary platforms, doesn't make me want to dive in.

But recently, 2 projects started to get me excited:

- the Tilt 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzr-IeyWj40

- the Simula: https://simulavr.com/

They are both trying to be very good at a very specific use case, which I think is a better way to approach the problem right now since we don't have VR solved. The vibes their creators give is also much more human, in an "internet from the 90" kind of way.

The Tilt 5 already works well, and people using it all report that it's the best VR experience they had to date. They also make it easy to port games from existing platforms, and actually talk to communities such as war-hammer 40k players and board game lovers, instead of staying in their ivory tower wrapped in secret to finally come down as our lord and savior. Plus I love board games.

The Simula is only a concept, and it may very well end up being vaporware like many kickstarter projects. But I want it to succeed so badly. First, it's just linux. No proprietary platform BS. It tells me it wants me to use my current apps, and works with FOSS and standards instead of trying to spoon feed me some expensive locked down metaverse crap. And I can really see the value of unlimited screen space and a full immersion work experience, especially since the device is optimized for text readability.

4 comments

I have been super skeptical about VR since the 1990s, but I see your point about the Tilt 5. Board gamers are a serious market, one willing to spend. And designing for such a narrow use case lets them dodge a bunch of the hard things about VR. I'll be very interested to see if they can create a sufficiently large niche market to sustain the company.
Just added myself for notification when their kickstarter begins (Simula). I wish they went with an AMD APU, instead of Intel Xe graphics. The youtube gameplay comparisons seem to give AMD a big edge in well... everything. I'll definitely be backing this. I want to play Tabletop Simulator on all of my walls and ceilings. :-)

(Thanks for telling me!)

An APU is on the table for future iterations :)
The Simula webpage made me smile, if you spend too much time with your neck moved like it is shown, you'll regret it sorely at the end of the day.. It's probably much better for the neck to "move the world" than to move your head to look at another window!
The Tilt5 looks fun but seems like an expensive toy. But the simula I would actually buy. This was the exact usecase I wanted when the first headsets were coming to the market. Hope they succeed
Toy indeed, but that's what VR headsets have been until today anyway.

And actually 3 times less expensive than the competition.