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.
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.
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.
Our solution to this is to make the compute modular. In a few years you can plug in a new (off-the-shelf) compute module and have a state of the art PC again.
The Hololens 2's PPD are largely fake. There was a writeup somewhere but it's way, way below the stated number.
Varjo is pretty high up there, and they're able to compete in the clarity department. But their headset is non-portable and only supports Nvidia+Windows (at least last time I checked).
Yeah. Your average U-CPU (what you'd get in a 13" or 15" ultrabook, and what we use) has a TDP of 9-28W. That's well within the range of what a modern phone can boost to.
It's probably safer than looking at a phone, but the most important reason is that your field of view/camera offset vs eyes is different than you're used to and it's easy to get into a dangerous situation.
(SimulaVR dev) It's not wrong to say that in most cases, tasks are better solved without an FPGA.
But when you need one you need one (or an ASIC if you have the volume and don't need reconfigurability)
Explaining it in detail requires more background in electronics, but that's ultimately what it boils down to.
High-end analog front ends can reach the three-digit GHz (non-silicon processes admittedly, but still).