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Comment by Maursault | Hacker News Reader

> Not until you take it home and turn it on do you realize the resolution of 1080p strapped to your eyes is a pixelated mess

Well, that sucks. Thanks for the clue to never purchase without a personal demonstration. I figured SD would be like that, but really hoped that 1080p would be satisfactory.

But doesn't this depend on pixel density? If the displays approach the pixel density of displays of high end smartphones, I'd probably be satisfied with that. Even though those pixels can be seen (at 10x magnification), at high enough pixel density, pixels can be ignored when focusing on the video content. I used to sit really close to CRT televisions, which have huge pixels, so there is bound to be some improvement from the way it was in the dark ages.

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I’ve repeatedly tried to get into virtual dev work on my Quest 2 (1920x1832 per eye) but the screen density still isn’t there yet. Feels similar to trying to code on a classroom projector screen if that analogy makes any sense.

Quest Pro is hitting in October (supposedly) with 2160x2160 per eye but I still don’t think that gets density to where it needs to be for doing desktop work.

I think Apple has realized this, which is why every screen resolution leak I’ve read has it pegged at 4K per eye or more. But who knows when that thing will even get announced?

Regarding the Apple headset, I'll only believe it's real when Apple officially announces it — it's been bouncing around the rumour mills as "6-12 months away" for at least half a decade, with whatever specs sounded good that year.

(Also, I remember the initial rumours for the iPad; everyone I saw was saying it would run normal Mac OS X).

Yep, that’s why I personally don’t think the recent news about Apple trademarking “Reality” names has any bearing on the device’s imminent release.

That said, I do think we’re approaching an announcement since it was apparently demo’ed to the board earlier this year. I just want it to happen so I can get excited at a keynote only to go “holy moly, I’m not buying a first-gen Apple peripheral for $3000, Mister Tim Apple”.

HP Reverb G2 has a 2160x2160 full-matrix LCD. I would say it comes very close to being usable as a virtual monitor, but the virtual screen still needs to be quite large. Extrapolating from this and older generation headsets, I would guess 4K per eye should be enough for a true office experience.

On top of that, the headset itself must be comfortable to wear for sessions longer than 30 minutes. None of the current models are that comfortable.

How far away from 4k120 x 2 are current video cards?

4k120 x2 in $LATEST_AAA_GAME or in notepad?

The problem is that Apple, if they ever do release such a thing, will not provide an HDMI input to make the product versatile and useful. It'll be gimped by Apple's fear of connectivity, just like all of their iOS devices.

I dunno, I think with the recent EU legislation they’ll probably stick a USB C on it.

Doesn't matter. USB-C is not a video input. And if it were, Apple would still gimp it. I'm sure developers can't access the USB port on iPad Pros, just as they can't access the shitty Lightning port on anything else.

> USB C is not a video input.

Debatable. You can run monitors and these ar glasses over usb c and I’m pretty sure you can get hdmi to usb c adapters if that’s what you need.

> Apple would still gimp it. I’m sure developers can’t access the USB port on iPad Pros

This is semi-true. According to this stack overflow post you can get access if you’re part of their MFi program but that’s mainly aimed at corporates. You can try working around it using midi or raspberry pi if you’re doing personal tinkering https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/13605/how-to-get-s...

I think you're talking video output, not input. Yes, there are USB-based video digitizers (for ingest), but you have to be running capture software on the host device. Very different from simply having a video input going to the screen.

You are entirely correct, my apologies.

More info on this stack overflow post for any future readers who stumble on this thread:

https://superuser.com/questions/1218848/hdmi-input-through-u...

Oh I fully expect to have to jump through several hoops to get a workable office environment on any Apple XR product.

I look at it like the newest MB Pros: if the hardware is way ahead of everyone else, I’ll hold my nose and put up with some amount of kludgy workarounds (eg: Parsec because no Bootcamp, etc).

I'm so glad Apple finally shitcanned their inexcusable "butterfly" keyboard and embarrassing emoji bar. Jony Ive's departure was the best thing for Apple in the post-Jobs era. The guy is a pompous hack.

The Valve Index does 1440×1600 per eye and it probably needs to be at least double that before artifacts become hard to notice.

I am starting to see resolution doesn't matter. According to the specs, Valve Index has a very low average pixel density of about 13-15ppi. Criminal. Compare that to the high end iPhone display's pixel density of 128ppi. So if we could have ocular displays around 100ppi @720p, that would look a lot better than that of Valve Index displays at its seemingly impressive 1440x1600.

Valve index has a PPI of 598. What I assume you are talking about is PPD, or Pixel per Degree. Iphone doesn't have a fixed PPD since the distance to your eyes is not fixed.

An ocular 720p display at 100ppd would be be about an inch diagonally at 10cm from you eye balls. That's basically unuseable

Firstly a definition PPI: pixels in a single dimension / size in that dimension in inches.

A nice high end phones screen is like 300 PPI a 20 year old laptop screen is around 100. A nice desktop monitor is 160-240.

A calculator https://www.sven.de/dpi/

It's hard to discuss a monitor being 100ppi@720p because those 2 variables are related via a third variable size. A 720p screen would be 100dpi at about 14" and indeed that is a common size for crappy laptops. A tiny screen with that PPI strapped to your face would look like shit. For instance a 2" square screen would be 200px x 200px.

Resolution matters a lot.

A 20/20 or 1.0 visual acuity equals 1MOA(1/60deg).

A 20/20 equivalent 360 degrees panorama image is has a size of 21600x10800px minimum. For a VR headset with 120x120 degrees H/VFOV(178deg diagonally), you need a 7200x7200px panel. 2 x 7200px x 7200px x 24bpp x 144Hz = 360Gbps, or worth 4x 100GE LAG’d, or one PCIe 4.0 x23 link, or one DDR5 channel.

That’s a bit hard to put onto a face cheaply…

Could be done with fiber. I wonder if fixed pipeline optical processing could be used to transform the signal straight to display.

Our retina only needs ~8 megapixels - the same number of pixels as 4K/UHD (3840x2160 is 8,294,400 pixels).

High pixel density is only required at the middle of where our gaze is - the surrounding can be highly compressed because our eyes are not very sensitive. No pixels are required where our blind spot is, and our colour and light level sensitivities varies from fovea outwards, so there are other compression possibilities too.

If the display can "move" with your eyes (high pixel density only for fovea e.g. contact lens) then the display also only needs a limited number of pixels.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/what-is-the-resolution-of-the...

But the portion of the visual field that actually has good resolution is very tiny, so if you can get good eye tracking built in, you can cheat.

The difference is that VR headsets have 120 or so degrees of viewing angle, whereas this is much narrower. This will look as sharp as an HD TV, probably.

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