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Steam's monthly hardware surveys suggest the proportion of PC players with a VR headset plugged in roughly doubled in 2018.
For those that own a VR headset, this is good news. A growing active user base means more interested publishers. It's not exponential growth, but it's definitely a good start. I only recently demoed my VR setup to extended family. Even my less tech savvy relatives were quite impressed. One of the things I demoed to each group was the Epic Roller Coaster demo. Really, I'd forgotten how impressive it is the first couple of times through. It's a sit down experience and all you're doing is looking around. It definitely cuts down on the whole getting used to the interface, etc and gets right to the fun part of VR. Here's hoping for at least another 2x increase of users in 2019.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/steam-survey-vr-headset-ownership-roughly-doubled-in-2018/
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DrkShadow on Friday January 04 2019, @02:17AM (5 children)
Back in 2002 I talked to my friends about these Muvo(?) glasses that would let you watch a movie. In glasses. I thought the 320x240 resolution would be plenty sufficient, that close to your eyes. Get two pairs, cut them in half, and in a gave like Quake 3 you could do _software_ rendering at 320x240 with two viewports and display true 3d in these glasses! ... it turns out that 320x240 up close would look just as bad as 320x240 farther away and larger in size.
Fast-forward, they've put these 8k displays into VR headsets. Cool! That's got all the resolution we need!! ... except they're stretching that resolution to be up, down, way to the sides, the corners, and all over the place. It looks like crap. WHY?!?
I want a virtual desktop. I want to be able to move my head left, and see more of the desktop. Move my head right, see _more_ of the desktop. One desktop, at high resolution. One _window_ onto the desktop, looking like a high-res monitor -- not the whole wall in front of me. Can we have that? Please? Or is it just too hard to get those pixels to be that small? Is the size of the pixels and the dot pitch the problem, where the sheer number of pixels is not the problem? (I still don't think 320x240 would be sufficient, though.)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by takyon on Friday January 04 2019, @03:09AM (4 children)
Who has? The Pimax 8K for instance uses two display panels, each with 3840×2160 (4K) resolution, for a total resolution of 7680×2160 (8K is 7680×4320).
You want a wide/tall field of view because your eyes can move around. Peripheral vision. The lenses should correct any warping/distortion so that it looks like you are looking at the real world.
My groundbreaking research [soylentnews.org] suggests that the target for VR headsets should be 15360×8640 (16K) over an approximately 220º horizontal, 150º vertical field of view. Yes, 220º is wider than what you can see by just locking your eyes straight forward and turning your head.
What was the last headset you've used? A 320×240 one? Because I don't think you or almost anybody on the planet has used a true 8K headset, much less 16K.
From here on the software is what matters. Obviously there are different ways you could arrange a desktop environment in VR. I don't expect the first attempts to the best.
If you don't want your entire field of vision to be filled with icons, it is entirely possible to create a virtual flat panel. It's similar to VR cinema applications that simulate a movie theater experience (where you are looking at a distant flat screen).
Pixel density / GPU performance shouldn't be a problem if foveated rendering is used.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday January 04 2019, @10:19PM (1 child)
I suspect the optics for a VR "retina" display limited only by our eyes is likely to be pretty complicated / heavy / expensive.
Strange interesting idea... my Grandma has astigmatism and a fancy enough VR optical system plus weird pre-distortion in the video card might be able to work around that.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 04 2019, @11:07PM
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=27400&page=1&cid=730212 [soylentnews.org]
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/23/17383990/google-lg-vr-display-high-res-headsets [theverge.com]
I don't think the lenses are such a huge problem but they can benefit from further improvements:
https://www.roadtovr.com/new-flat-lens-give-vr-headsets-better-image-quality-making-lighter-compact/ [roadtovr.com]
"Heavy" is the last thing we'll see. Instead we will see them get more compact and lighter. Potentially allowing for a VR form factor that is more like sunglasses than a brick. A pair of sunglasses with AR/VR capability would be ideal (for the on-board CPU+GPU, use something magic like this [soylentnews.org]).
I can't deny that it may be expensive. We'll see what happens. But we benefit from large companies like Facebookulus doing the kind of R&D that will eventually improve all VR headsets:
https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-patents-hybrid-fresnel-make-vr-optics-clear/ [roadtovr.com]
Here's some stuff about VR and eyesight adjustments:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/stanford-vr-adaptive/ [digitaltrends.com]
https://www.alphr.com/virtual-reality/1008932/vr-vision-loss-sight-blindness [alphr.com]
I guess the ultimate solutions for people with certain eye disorders would involve eye tracking (already a done deal since it is needed for foveated rendering), testing software that allows you to make personal adjustments, and some kind of adaptive optics. Again, Facebook is at the forefront:
https://uploadvr.com/display-week-half-dome-facebook/ [uploadvr.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Saturday January 05 2019, @02:09AM (1 child)
I used an Occulus of some sort. It looked like I was looking through a chain-link fence. It looked like crap.
The person was doing R&D for a small computer manufacturer and was evaluating VR headsets as a way to do an extended desktop, rather than using something like 6x 30-inch monitors. The VR headset could do that, but it was terrible for that task, and you wouldn't be able to read text well or see any sort of detailed data. Stretching 4k, as you say, to cover your _entire_ field of view is like looking at a 320x240 display. It's crap.
Maybe 8K is what I read about someone being "about to introduce" -- part of the article is that More is Better as far as pixels go.
It definitely does matter how dense your pixels are. My 1560 pixel tall monitor is about 14 inches tall, and I'm at 3 feet away. It's pretty nice. Stretching that to appear as though it's six feet tall.. and it would be pretty hellish. If you don't recall what 640x480 monitors were like, just think of trying to read a book where the font of the book in your hands is made of legos. It's terrible.
VR headsets are terrible for desktop replacements. Instead of trying to stretch things so much, if they just gave me a _screen_ that I could look at, like a monitor, it would probably work great. I don't need to move my eyes from one side of the room to the other. I want a _desktop_, a _workspace_, not a _world_.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 05 2019, @02:45AM
Early adopters are cursed. Everything you complained about will be ironed out in the ways I've specified, although it might take several years to accomplish. The "screen door effect" is a known problem with known solutions. With that fixed and a higher resolution, you can have your virtual desktop.
Instead of using the resolution numbers, you should just describe it in terms of pixels per inch. Eventually, this number will rise enough [roadtovr.com] to make your virtual desktop monitor look as good as what you can perceive in real life.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]