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posted by martyb on Friday March 16 2018, @09:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the moar-faster-pixels dept.

Google and LG will show off an OLED display for virtual reality headsets that could have a resolution of around 5500×3000:

Google and LG are set to present an 18-megapixel 4.3-inch OLED headset display with 1443 ppi and a higher refresh rate of 120Hz during the Display Week 2018 trade show in late May. The display will have a wide field of view and high acuity. The advanced program for the expo was spotted by Android Police via OLED-Info.

Those specs make the forthcoming headset better than most of what's on the market. Screens like the new HTC Vive Pro and Oculus Rift only boast total resolutions of 2880 x 1600 and 2160 x 1200, respectively.

From the Display Week 2018 Symposium Program:

The world's highest resolution (18 megapixel, 1443 ppi) OLED-on-glass display was developed. White OLED with color filter structure was used for high-density pixelization, and an n-type LTPS backplane was chosen for higher electron mobility compared to mobile phone displays. A custom high bandwidth driver IC was fabricated. Foveated driving logic for VR and AR applications was implemented.

The competing "Pimax 8K" uses two 3840×2160 panels to hit 7680×2160 with a 200° field of view. Shipments of that headset have been delayed to April or later. A 2017 StarVR headset used two 2560×1440 panels for a 210° field of view. Two of the panels from Google and LG could add up to around 11000×3000 (based on The Verge's guess), 12000×3000 (36 megapixels), or 11314×3182 (36 megapixels, 32:9 aspect ratio).

Recall that AMD has envisioned VR resolution reaching 16K per eye (a grand total of 30720×8640, or over 265 megapixels).

List of common resolutions.

Also at UploadVR and Android Authority.

Related: Is Screen Resolution Good Enough Considering the Fovea Centralis of the Eye?
AU Optronics to Ship 8K Panels to TV Manufacturers in H1 2018


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 16 2018, @11:59PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday March 16 2018, @11:59PM (#653855) Journal

    Is that a joke? Because I don't see your point.

    It seems to me that foveated rendering could easily decrease the required transmission bandwidth and possibly graphics (T)FLOPS by an order of magnitude. The effect can be clearly demonstrated even when I look at this ~740x493 image [theverge.com] on a laptop screen a couple feet away from me. If I was wearing a 200° field of view headset, there would be a much larger percentage of an image that I am not focusing on at any given moment. I think paracentral vision [wikipedia.org], where the most pixels would need to be rendered, is under 5% of the human FOV (plz fact check if you can).

    The bandwidth matters only if the graphics processing is done externally. A DisplayPort cable can move a lot of pixels per second, and if foveated rendering reduces that to 10-20%, you won't even need the unreleased DisplayPort 1.5 or whatever. But cables are kind of stupid. We would like to see WiGig/802.11ad [wikipedia.org] or something similar [wikipedia.org] to wirelessly connect the headset to a desktop.

    If less GPU performance is necessary with foveated rendering, that could be a boon for standalone headsets that use an internal SoC instead of an external GPU. For example, the Lenovo Mirage Solo [tomshardware.com] will use a Snapdragon 835 (rather than the faster Snapdragon 845 [anandtech.com]) with a 2560x1440 75Hz display. It does that without using eye tracking or foveated rendering, as far as I can tell. 11314×3182 @ 120 Hz is just under 16 times more pixels per second. With a few more years of advancement in mobile GPUs, combined with foveated rendering, maybe it will be possible to make a standalone headset capable of that. Any further GPU improvements can go directly into increasing the level of detail.

    For audio, some AMD GPUs include a TrueAudio [wikipedia.org] coprocessor, and the newest ones have switched to True Audio Next, which can use the GPU to "simulate audio physics". I take this to mean the effect of sounds "bouncing" off of virtual objects, walls, floors, etc. Real-time sound and speech synthesis may also become a standard feature in future games.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday March 17 2018, @12:08AM (1 child)

    by bob_super (1357) on Saturday March 17 2018, @12:08AM (#653861)

    A machine that computes this 20MP scene, runs the foveated algorithms, and outputs your 18G stream is, as of today, pretty f___ing loud, and not even liquid cooling is gonna make it silent. A headset receiving that much data and using it to drive a screen is also likely to need some active cooling.
    So your eyes may be in heaven, but your total immersion into your game/porn may be hindered by the noise of all the fans making it possible.

    Sure, in a few years, it will be better. For now,16x a few watts equals a lot of heat.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 17 2018, @12:26AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday March 17 2018, @12:26AM (#653872) Journal

      It's a problem desktop gamers already face with certain big, hot GPUs. I don't think VR makes the problem that much worse. AMD and Nvidia will still put out hot and loud GPUs, and some gamers will buy them and put them in SLI.

      However, if we are able to go the 802.11ad/ay route, you would at least be able to sit or stand a few more meters away from the desktop (ie. the opposite end of a room). And you would also be more immersed due to lack of tether, could lay down, spin around, fall and hit your head on the coffee table, killing yourself in minutes, etc.

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