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posted by chromas on Wednesday February 20 2019, @10:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-look-down...or-up-or-left-or-right dept.

A new, business-oriented VR headset uses a tiny, high resolution display panel within a larger panel in order to display very high quality imagery to users looking straight ahead:

The VR-1 calls its center panel a "Bionic Display." It's a 1920 x 1080 "micro-OLED" display with a resolution of 3,000 pixels per inch. (For context, last year's high-resolution prototype display from Google and LG had 1443 ppi.) Within that central strip, images are supposed to roughly match the resolution of the human eye. As Ars Technica, which checked out the headset, puts it, that section looks "every bit as detailed as real life." Outside that super crisp panel, there's a 1440 x 1600 display that produces images of more average quality.

The VR-1's total 87-degree field of view is smaller than that of the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, let alone the 200 degrees offered by something like Pimax's more experimental VR headset. The Bionic Display only comprises a slice of it. Ars Technica describes great image quality while you're looking straight ahead, with a noticeable downgrade outside that. And rendering that high-resolution slice requires more processing power than you'd need for average VR headsets, which are already fairly demanding.

[...] The VR-1 uses standard SteamVR base stations for tracking, and it supports both the Unity and Unreal engines, so you could theoretically play games or use other consumer software. But the headset isn't priced for consumers. It costs $5,995 with an annual service fee of $995, and Varjo stresses that it's "only available for businesses and academic institutions." The company is already working with Airbus, Audi, Saab, Volkswagen, and Volvo, among others.

Human eye - Field of view.

Also at Road to VR.

Related: Virtual Reality Audiences Stare Straight Ahead 75% of the Time
Google Research Proposes New Foveated Rendering Techniques for VR
Google and LG to Show Off World's Highest Resolution OLED-on-Glass Display in May


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:13PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:13PM (#804080) Journal

    A VR headset can use a front-facing camera to simulate AR or simply allow you to see in front of you. 2 cameras would be preferable in order to recreate the VR180 experience [provideocoalition.com].

    Another option is to add a hinge to allow the display enclosure to be flipped up [roadtovr.com].

    One low tech option for AR would be to simply add a cover to block out light.

    However, all of these would pale in comparison to a glasses-like form factor that is switchably transparent and extremely flat (metamaterial lenses and other tricks might help achieve this for VR headsets, or...). If it looked like a pair of lab safety glasses [amazon.com], that would be ideal since you want it to cover a wide field of view. Plus maybe you can pretend to be professional if they look like lab glasses. Add a lab coat or hard hat.

    The "or..." above refers to beaming images onto the retina. This has been done with some AR glasses, but I'm not sure how far this can go with VR. Can 16K resolution, 240 Hz [soylentnews.org] be projected onto your eyes? If done right, nobody could see what you are looking at or distinguish the device from lab glasses or the same lab glasses looking like sunglasses.

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:32PM (1 child)

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:32PM (#804151)

    You can simulate a crappy AR experience with cameras, but I really don't see it becoming widely popular. For starters, unless the distance between cameras is *exactly* the same as your interpupilary distance, your depth perception will be off. The image quality will also be substantially lower than native vision, which can detect texture, etc. at far smaller scales than it can resolve individual details. Then there's the lag and lack of peripheral vision.

    A simple light-blocking cover to transform AR glasses into VR is certainly an option, and might well enhance the light exclusion for VR usage, but it wouldn't help with the fact that an AR display that you can see through would still suck. Imagine trying to do your daily work on a virtual monitor, if you could see through it as well. And really, programmably transparent displays aren't actually that big of a challenge - that's basically what LCDs are - you can see the effect easily in large-segment displays like digital watches, and your monitor does basically the same thing at a much smaller scale, with colored lights behind the segments. The hard part is making a decent transparent display in the first place, an LCD backplane would just be another layer of manufacturing cost and complexity.

    I do think lab-goggles would be a decent form factor, wrap-around sunglasses would be even better. And hey, with a variably transparent backplane they could even function as variable-darkness sunglasses.