Holographic Glasses for Virtual Reality | Hacker News Reader

Holographic Glasses for Virtual Reality

research.nvidia.com

76 pointsdcminter16 comments

About the limited FOV, it can theoretically be increased up to 120◦.

From the paper: "The implemented FOV of the wearable prototype was 22.8◦ diagonal, which is far smaller than commercially available VR/AR displays. However, the FOV was mainly limited by the size of the available SLM and the focal length of the GP lens, both of which could be improved with different components. For example, the focal length can be halved without significantly increasing the total thickness by stacking two identical GP lenses and a circular polarizer [Moon et al. 2020]. With a 2-inch SLM and a 15 mm focal length GP lens, we could achieve a monocular FOV of up to 120◦"

What is it about the size of the display that limits the FOV?

Lens, color and light distortion are caused by bending of lenses or bouncing of light, there have been attempts to resolve this by moving the entire screen at an angle to where the eyes would look. But such solutions are expensive and error prone, mechanics don’t last long.

Ok, not super new as the paper is from August '22, but I missed it at the time so maybe others did too - the submission video is quite intriguing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGzj-AgI6RI

I'm moderately enthusiastic about the state of VR, but the bulky uncomfortable headsets are definitely one of the flaws at the moment which this technology looks to (maybe) address one day.

I think unspoken is how intentionally isolating VR is of your real world surroundings. It only takes me 30 seconds to get booted up into VR but there is a mental block that makes it seem like a much bigger undertaking, and I think that is due to it being mentally similar to going to an entirely different place.

I never thought about it like that but that's a great point. And switching out when someone comes into the room and eg. asks you if you want lunch is quite jarring, and then having to get out regularly for comfort breaks etc.

Plus working on eg. a train in VR would be a pain, you need some spare input channels to watch out for conductors or people taking your stuff.

I tried VR on an airplane and movements of the cabin affect the in game world in extremely weird ways. You can't use VR under acceleration presently, it messes the stabilization up.

It's also anti-social towards others sharing the space. I refer to using my VR headset as "sticking my head in a bucket" as it's so bad in that respect.

Yeah, mass adoption of XR won’t happen until the form factor evolves from face bucket to weird looking glasses

Non issue with the quest pro though. Even with passthrough disabled.

I just wish it wasn’t $1500. If it’s tax deductible for you, it’s easier to justify though I doubt it will be for most enthusiasts when the Apple headset will supposedly release in 2023

What would be interesting to see is if they are able to do these with curved screens. If they are able to do that then potentially getting a very high FOV should be possible.

> Our binocular wearable prototype provides a diagonal field of view of 22.8°...

Definitely some cool tech, I'm glad Nvidia is innovating in the space, but they're really gonna need to crank up that FOV to make this viable. I hope it's physically possible to get a full-eye FOV in a glasses form factor...

It wasn't clear to me if this is a transparent or opaque display. For VR I agree, 22.8deg is pretty narrow but as an AR overlay you could do a lot with that. Those are two very different applications of course.

The displays used are opaque, and directly in front of the eye. Have another look at the video or pictures from the article.

I was excited to see this. And it’s nice that headsets are thinner now.

That said I feel like locomotion in vr is a disappointment. The sliding based solutions are weird and treadmills are huge and noisy. Is this even remotely feasible to solve in the next decade? I’m assuming maybe not since there seem to only be a few small companies working on it.

If you try “room scale” VR IMO it’s a totally different experience to walk around a simulated space.

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