Shouldn't all this research have been done, and published, already? And re-verified, folded, spindled, mutilated, then recycled as firelighters. It's been 30 years and should mostly be adapting numbers optometrists know already.
Notably, while it fits comfortably on my Western friends' faces, none of my East Asian friends or family, including any women, found it bearable (too tight on forehead, tilted downward, light leaking from around nose) or were able to focus it cleanly and assumed "VR was not for them".
However, a Japanese headset, often reviewed in English as being too small or uncomfortable, fit me perfectly, and the optics were clearer despite having lower technical specs. How illuminating!
I do wish that companies that designed wearables would either disclose the dimensions of their testers or provide what dimensions matter. I'm larger than 50% of the people on the planet, and I fall within a standard deviation of the mean in the United States. However, no product designed by a US tech company has ever fit me.
The real answer is probably the same as the Alf Landon election prediction by Literary Digest in 1936. Because they only sent out ballots to addresses of registered car owners and people listed in the relatively new telephone directory, the poll results skewed wealthy, urban, and conservative - class bias in action.
Are tech companies in the US making the same mistake?
Yes, but slightly different, because they're missing less of their "addressable market" than the Landon prediction was. Their addressable market generally being people outside of Asia who have lots of disposable income. People in Asia tend to buy homegrown products which approach or exceed the quality, are easier to get, and cheaper. People with disposable income outside of Asia still trend toward the Westerner morphology. Still it's amazing with all the East Asians in big tech companies, that so many domestic products seem ill-designed to fit them.
Meanwhile tons of my furniture and other items that are designed and manufactured in Asia and then shipped to the USA seem to be shrinking and I don't fit in so many of them anymore. Not sure if that's just selling cheap things that have less material/shipping cost, or if it's matching the optimal sizes for East Asians.
I based my recent purchase of a office chair on its copious complaints from very tall people after I found I couldn't sit back on a couch I ordered from Costco without my feet dangling in the air.
If we were neighbors, I'd offer to trade you!
I have had experiences translating a professional model (similar to optometry prescriptions) and learn the model isn't described well enough to write in software.
It is scary once you see what the actual VR research landscape looks like.....
There is a clear disconnect between users of vr and vr researchers.
I don't know even where to begin. Too much incompetence. Too much disinterest. Too much bullshit just to get grant money. And nobody has any clear idea of what VRs application should be.
So far even for me there are very few applications where vr gives an actual advantage for anything.
Take it situational awareness, overview, ux, visual quality etc. Most of the vr apps I have seen have no reason to be in vr.
Actually had a chance to provide my perspective to a FAANG Research Group, but I was laid off (and they were disbanded).
Even if you did find a way to make VR work for you at work, current headsets are just too heavy to want to wear them 8 hours/day.
They're still incredible for gaming, though.
I think that really showed me the potential of the VR business and the spirit with which it would be pursued.
The reason I was there to sell it was that my software had a round up / "fudge factor" applied to the models, based on real world experience; where as the competition consistently under estimated things because they used the nice clean textbook formulas.
Just because a machine has a 2.6 yd^2 capacity doesn't mean it will move that much dirt per load. And so on.
Applying back to the original discussion of VR; I expect there's been enough time and enough experience with the things like head mounted displays that there shouldn't need to be much original research into "how to do the optics" of same. I'm ignorant of optics generally (and much else) but there should be textbooks and people arguing over where those are wrong and such; by now. For this specialized purpose even. See the amount of literature on LCD displays by comparison; the basic optics there are known, right?