Somnium VR1 - December 2024

Some UK customers orders were shipped

and eventually received, after sorting DHL tax collection issues

FCC requested one specific Somnium VR1 re-measurement.

Somnium delivered a VR1 to a German lab Monday for that;
FCC now needs no additional input from Somnium

Somnium began producing VR1s for U.S. customers.

VR1 Tool 1.0.3.43

1)Final fix for flashing black stripes while using SteamVR driver.
2) Fixed tracking initialization issues in OpenXR applications.
3) Added option to disable spacewarp functionality (Rendering page).
4) Added color enhancer option for mixed reality. (MR Exposure page).
  More flexibility for settings.
5) Improved default mixed reality exposure values.
6) Fix for OpenXR DirectX12 compatibility issues.

Somnium VR1 batch 4

Production complications preempted MR model production,
with some early July orders instead being fulfilled for Classic (VR only)
and other customers with only eye and/or hand tracking options.
Batch 4 was the largest and with highest yield to date,
with between 90 and 95% passing Artur's post-QA inspection.

18 Dec batch (5) is to be the last in 2024 and mostly MR units

no indication when FCC VR1 approval will be official
AMD GPU support seems unlikely for VR1 MR versions,
with support for other versions still problematic.
A test version of VR1 tool is being made available
to the single current VR1 owner with AMD GPU (and skills).

A software release next week may address microphone audio popping,
for which, being intermittent, fix confidence is problematic.
A major OpenXR upgrade is planned for January,
along with production reaching full capacity.

VR1 tool installation

after reading that actual hardware attachment is not required
- initial installation succeeded, but
  that version immediately detected and attempted to install updates.
-updating froze twice:

-Workaround was to restart Windows 11.
- for completeness, Nvidia (Studio) driver update (by NVIDIA App)
  also rarely goes well, requiring restart to get displays working correctly
- an unusual display configuration may be to blame

17 Dec - FCC approval granted... finally

18 Dec Artur confirms FCC certification, also

- U.S. shipments in January
- microphone and AMD issues still being worked
- batch 5 QA tomorrow
- final 2024 video and blogpost upcoming
- EDID range descriptor fix

Open source data planned for January with new Somnium SDK, 72 + 120 hz
and pipeline release;  local dimming will follow that.