Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I found the paper critically lacking where they attempted to make reference or comparisons to virtual retinal displays. Saying that a VRD is functionally restricted to moderate FOV in comparison to the 120 degree FOV of the Rift - using only the embodiment of the deform-able membrane mirror as reference is ridiculous on it's face.

Even a rough version of the deformable mirror AR VRD described by researchers at UNC Chapel Hill [1] accomplishes 100 degrees FOV with accommodation.

They went further with the Pinlight achieving 110 in 2014 [2]

The technical limit according to our own work for VRD FOV is H: 200o, V: 140o (Combined). So either they're ignoring work in the field intentionally cause they don't want to do VRD or they don't know about it. My guess would be the former.

[1]http://telepresence.web.unc.edu/research/dynamic-focus-augme...

[2]http://www.cs.unc.edu/%7Emaimone/media/pinlights_siggraph_20...

edit: I find this whole thing extremely frustrating. Facebook could throw 2 billion dollars at VRD tech and actually get to a working stable consumer grade system if they wanted to - everything is there for it. Why aren't they?

2 Billion? I'm ignorant on the topic, but maybe the route they are investigating is potentially cheaper?

Doubtful at scale...

I use 2B as an anchor based on the "official" oculus acquisition.

> Why aren't they?

You can say that about any other multi-billion dollar company, let it be Google, Microsoft, Xerox, Cannon, anything.

The short answer is that VR is not their core business.

Zuckerburg spent his entire keynote talking about AR - he effectively told everyone that they are a social AR company. They are investing the most into AR/VR and creating glasses etc...

How is that not what they are planning as their core business?

Might not be. Might as well be strategy to discourage others from pursuing the same while Facebook works things out eventually.

- Hey Mike this is VP John Smith, until yesterday we were interested in investing round A of $10 million in your VR startup but unfortunately we heard today that Zuckerberg plans to be deep in it, therefore I regret to inform you we will be unable to go with the round. Sorry and we wish you good luck!

I think I have about 20 of those email responses at this point!

There is a market for 5 vr systems tops

Because the requirements to do it well makes it costly, which in turn makes it a gimmick.

Why would it be a gimmick if it's costly? Or are you saying the proposed thing is gimmicky?

It won't get traction if it is costly, and without traction noone will bother developing more than demos and proof of concepts for it. And thus for the mainstream it won't have any real value.

Niche markets is another thing but not lucrative enough for a big investment.

I think the problem is fun. All it would take for Oculus to win is a World of Warcraft type success that only runs on Oculus hardware. But such gems are rare -- usually one every few years. Almost every other game fades as quickly as it comes.

Well, on top of that ridiculously expensive VR headset you still need a $1500 PC. Even if a World of Warcraft type success would run on, any, VR hardware noone would even know.

Except for that dozen hard core early adopters. World of Warcraft was only successful because of availability. Same with Minecraft - same with any imaginable success.

VR will either be available to lots of people, or good. Not both, not for a long time.

I mean the whole point of these companies is that they have the cash and clout to subsidize the future. So they could make it as cheap as they want.

I think the point is that the rift is already too expensive and adding more expensive components isn't going to help put more Oculus in people's hands.

Oculus needs to shrink their BoM.

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