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Immersive Display Creates Panoramic Virtual Screens
Immersive displays generally either involve giant screens à la IMAX, virtual reality (VR), or augmented reality (AR) headsets that place tiny screens and lenses close to a person's eyes to simulate large screens that encompass most of a user's field of view. Engaging as immersive displays are, electrical engineer Barmak Heshmat and his colleagues at an AR startup, "realized the bitter reality that people don't want to wear headgear; it's just too much friction to have something on your face. I think people can talk volumes about that, considering that now everyone has to wear masks.
"Just imagine wearing a 200-gram object on your face for 6.5 hours," Heshmat says. "It is really exhausting, but 6.5 hours is the average time we spend in front of computers, easily, every day."
[...] The 13-by-30-inch pilot displays Brelyon is developing will have a perceived screen 122 inches large, as seen from 55 inches away, says Heshmat, who is Brelyon's CEO. The displays will each provide an immersive 101-degree field of view, with a 4K to 8K resolution and high frame rate, he adds. "We can replace six 32-inch monitors with the size of one," Heshmat says.
The company says that, whereas conventional displays direct flat images at viewers, its light-field display creates a window-like 3-D scene by recreating the field of light rays that might travel from every point and in every direction within a 3-D space.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2020, @02:06AM (9 children)
I see it as more of a monitor killer than a VR headset killer. But I'm sure it will be very expensive at launch.
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 28 2020, @02:31AM (1 child)
It sounds to me like another 3D TV.
It almost sounds great, except no-one wants to pay extra for it, then no-one actually wants it, then it goes away.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2020, @03:41AM
3D as an unused gimmick is not the point of this. Having a compact multi-monitor replacement is. If the price is right and it works as claimed (could be shown off at a Best Buy, Micro Center, Costco, etc.) then it can be viable.
The PC monitor is already full of overpriced LCD trash that seems to keep selling, even though TVs can be a better option. But the miniaturization is part of the appeal, and this potentially does much better at that than a curved desktop monitor.
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(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday July 28 2020, @03:26AM (4 children)
The idea that it's even remotely comparable to VR headsets is ludicrous. The guy they quote in that article says it "gives you some level of immersion of a headset but also provides the comfort and image accuracy of a monitor" but that's complete bullshit. It's a box on a desk. Even if it can trick your brain into thinking it's a much bigger box than it really is, it's still just a box on a desk.
You don't buy VR headsets just so you can fake having a big TV, and mentioning this tech as a VR alternative is insane. VR headsets are interesting because they're immersive and let you move around a 3d space. Games often do gimmicky things like make you interact with virtual objects like a mime, but those aren't what makes VR interesting. What makes VR impressive is being able to stand "inside" a 3d space and be able to look and move around naturally, getting a proper sense of scale in a way you can't do looking at a world through a box.
The hype about headsets being a big deal to people is overblown as well. VR gets a bad rep on this because the technology just wasn't there for a long time despite people really wanting it to be a thing (remember those massive Virtuality headsets?) but it's finally hit the point where it's actually viable, comfortable, and affordable, and it's going to continue to improve, with headsets getting even lighter and smaller. All that's left is to get rid of the cable tethering you to a PC, and third-party software (virtual desktop, ALVR) for the Oculus Quest shows that's already on the way out, too.
With that said, I'll admit the Quest is still a bit cumbersome for long use out-of-the-box. It's not particularly heavy, despite being (I think) the heaviest headset available right now, but the weight of it is entirely on the front, which makes it a bit odd to wear. What I did (and what many others have done) to alleviate this was to attach a decently sized USB power bank to the back of the headset to act as a counterweight. (As a bonus, you can use the battery to keep the headset charged for longer play.) It ends up more comfortable despite adding weight because the distribution is better, and is really easy to wear for long periods of time this way. I was recently over four hours into getting lost in Skyrim VR and could have gone hours more if I hadn't noticed the time and stopped because "oh fuck I only meant to play an hour". Anyway, the point I'm getting at here is that the comment about not being able to wear a headset for hours at a time is overblown because the guy wants to hype up his 3d box by talking shit about competition.
Of course, VR's biggest draw (the immersion) is also a drawback at the same time. Strapping an enclosed box to your face is immersive because you completely lose visual contact with the real world, which is something I've noticed freaks some people out at first until they get used to it. Especially if there are other people around, because they get self-concious and wondering if the other people present are doing anything to them. It seems like the people at Oculus understand this, though, because they added a feature to the Quest where you can tap the headset twice and it switches to the IR cameras, giving you a way to instantly see what's going on around you if needed, so you keep a link to the real world handy. It's an after-the-fact addition there, but maybe future headsets will use a real camera for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @03:42AM (2 children)
You meant to say it gets a bad rap, not a bad rep.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday July 28 2020, @12:02PM
I just read up on this and it seems both are permissible, although your version is by far the more common since about 1970.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday July 28 2020, @03:13PM
Usually a bad rap would be referring to someone who got the short end of the stick. I.E. something bad happend to them that they didn't deserve.
Getting a bad rep would be someone doing something that negatively affected their own reputation. Either that or the above, just misspelled.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Kell on Tuesday July 28 2020, @08:00AM
An interesting point raised in the TEDx talk is that if you tile the interior of a room with these panels you can emulate arbitrary spaces holodeck-style, no HMD required. Now, I'll believe that when I see it, but as a competing 'simulated environment' technology it's a valid approach and worthy of exploring.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday July 28 2020, @02:26PM (1 child)
I'm sitting in front of a 4k, 55 inch display, with serval smaller aux monitors off to the side. The main monitor provides a broad desktop where I can comfortably edit high resolution DSLR images, PCB CAD data, manage lots of windows, palettes, etc. without running out of space — particularly with some of the random stuff thrown off onto the aux monitors. If I was a gamer-on-computer, it'd be pretty nice. I prefer dedicated consoles for that, though.
And the kicker is that 55 inch 4k display — it's just a "smart" TV with the smarts unused (no network connection) — only cost $300. I could even add another; the display card will drive two of them no problem. But I sort of run out of viewing angle at that point. The aux monitors, which are only about 23" diagonal, are already at pretty much the max distance from my central seating position that I'm comfortable with. I have to turn my head slightly to really look at them directly as it is. So a second 55" monitor... probably not in my future.
VR... well, we have an early-ish Oculus, and resolution aside, the media isn't really anywhere near what would motivate me to put serious $ into VR as yet. I'm up for it, but it's still so niche that the pickings are, at least for me, very slim. What the world needs here is a bunch of really great VR porn to drive the market. 😊
Also, I see no reason why a standard monitor couldn't do some pretty sweet VR, particularly a large one like mine. An on-desk head/eye position monitor would be the thing to make that work, and certainly that's already a practical bit of hardware from the engineering POV. These people are definitely right about the whole "wearing a headset is annoying" thing though. Until/unless smart contacts are a thing, that's a pretty severe downside of how things generally work now.
--
What I if told you
you read the previous line wrong
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2020, @03:27PM
I covered that in another comment. The PC monitor market is fleecing people with inflated prices for mediocre specs. The only justification I can thing of is that the panels might have higher pixel density than larger TVs.
The way the product in TFA is described makes it seem like it will be expensive. "4K to 8K resolution and high frame rate" when high frame rate 1080p [anandtech.com]/1440p monitors can cost more than your TV.
I have mentioned the idea of putting eye tracking on a monitor for foveated rendering or other effects. It could be more difficult to implement since your head can move towards and away the display, unlike with a VR headset.
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