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Monthly Update: 2017.09.30

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George Singer edited this page Mar 23, 2018 · 2 revisions

(This email originally sent to friends 2017-09-24; the point was to get some feedback/accountability, and it eventually turned into a monthly tradition).

1 Preface

I’ve resolved to start emailing my friends approximately once a month about what’s going on with Trey and I’s project (“Simula”). If you’re on this list, it’s because I respect you as a thinker and care about your feedback.

2 Recap: What is Simula?

To recap, Trey and I are working on a software project called “Simula”. It’s a window manager that is meant to run on VR headsets (which, combined with Linux, can form an VR Operating System).

Simula is supposed to turn into the free and open source alternative to Microsoft Holograph — the Windows based VR Operating System that is going to start running on VR headsets in the coming months. From a business perspective, Simula is supposed to be for VR what Android was for Smartphones. The value propositions are as follows:

  • For consumers: Allows you to work in VR, which will eventually be 10x better than working on a laptop/PC.
  • For VR manufacturers: Allows them to have a free and modifiable VR OS to put on their headsets; this is 10x (actually, infinitely) cheaper than paying Microsoft a licensing fee.
  • For stakeholders: Allows us to monetize a platform through app stores and/or other proprietary bundles not yet determined.

3 What’s Happened in the Past Month or So

  1. Publicizing Code. Yesterday, we open-sourced our pre-alpha version to GitHub and made posts on /r/programming and /r/virtualreality and /r/haskell. All of our posts made “front-page” except for a Hacker News post (that we didn’t post) which didn’t do very well. After going public, we got 56 stars on GitHub and 7 new people cloned it. A couple of people tweeted about it. That’s it.
  2. Aurora. A few weeks ago we discovered a San Francisco startup called Aurora. Aurora is making a VR headset to be released by Christmas. Concurrent to making a headset, Aurora is also developing a Linux-based VR OS to ship with their hardware. When we discovered this, it was flattering because it meant we were right that headset manufacturers would be in need of something like Simula if it existed. Trey and I contacted Aurora and said “we should work together and share code, and if things works out, join efforts”. They agreed. Since then, we have shared some code and collaborated a bit.

4 Things I’m Worried About

  • We still don’t have a god damned working product (just open-sourced code that doesn’t fully run); me and some other programmers have been working on this for months but can’t crack it. Many people in the Linux VR community have given up because the support is so weak from hardware manufacturers.
  • We chose to use an exotic language called Haskell to make Simula with; this makes it more geek-cool and tremendously satisfying to work with, but it limits the number of people who can contribute to our codebase. I’m worried this was a stupid idea.
  • I don’t know how long we should persist (6 months? 12 months?) without much positive feedback from the world before throwing in the towel. What next? How do we know when to stop? I feel like if we can’t pick up a few contributors over the next few weeks, that’s a terrible sign this project will gain traction.

Thoughts?

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