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Comment by rcarmo | Hacker News Reader

I want one of these. I promise to take much better care of it than this other human, since it would be invaluable for me to have connectivity from the countryside :)

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I am already fantasizing about a future "workplace" where remote work is common and good satellite internet is everywhere so you can work from whatever corner of the world you wanted to.

I am hoping for high bandwidth on airplanes to enable a VR appliance.

I don’t think the regulators would particularly like the idea of people playing VR games on an airplane. Or do you mean something else?

That sounds like fun. I think the very limited per-passenger space would prevent enough useful movement for many VR games, though. Interacting with the stewardess would also be challenging without adding outward facing cameras.

The Quest 2 can deal with most of that (including passthrough), but yes, the movement range would be a challenge. You'd need to rely on close gestures or controls.

This isn’t necessary for VR because worst tolerated motion to photon latency of 20ms means you can’t be more than 6000km/3700mi from GPU physically assuming zero display and various processing latency, which realistically take 1/3rd each of total latency and eats into budgets accordingly

Also assuming you don't do any post processing tricks locally to accommodate recent movement. I don't think we've explored vr thoroughly enough to know what's actually possible.

Edit: An no reason we can't stick GPUs on an airplane, they aren't heavy.

You bring up an interesting point, independent of VR. Sounds like the incumbents' days might be numbered. I wonder if and how quickly airlines could shift to Starlink. And if so, how easy it would be to bet against the incumbent providers. Unlike government, industrial, and scientific customers where the incumbents might be able to compete on stronger, minimal service guarantees[1], passenger connectivity on airlines seems to have always been flaky and relatively poor. Switching to Starlink would be a win-win for them--cheaper and better quality.[2]

[1] Not that Starlink wouldn't suffice in practice, but I assume Starlink probably won't want to cater to those customers with fancy, bespoke contract terms.

[2] And perhaps simpler equipment and maintenance in terms of fleet commonality. AFAIU, currently domestic service is via cellular and international service, where it's provided, is via satellite.

I've done the whole digital nomad thing for the past 5-6 years. Believe me it's possible now with 4G internet access around the globe.

Yes you have to teether with your phone, but when 10GB only cost like $6 USD, you can make it work.

Same, but remotely working from a sailboat, bouncing from desolate anchorage to desolate anchorage.

A teardown like this is much more valuable than you (singular) having countryside access to HN. Teardowns and ifixits provide a large benefit to the environment (less waste) and just general learning.

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