First VR Headset with a 2.5K Display | Hacker News Reader

First VR Headset with a 2.5K Display

roadtovr.com

40 pointszizee19 comments

This headset sounds terrible. Resolution is the least important factor in presence (of resolution, persistence, latency, frame rate, tracking). It sounds like they have bubkis for the other areas, and low standards besides.

Oh and what is that higher resolution going to do for latency and frame rate? Hmmmmmm.

It kind of shocks me how uncritically positive this article is. The situation to me reads differently, more like "any joker can plug a higher-res LCD into an Oculus DK1 spray painted white."

GameFace is putting the computer (CPU and GPU) into the headset itself. They may be about a year behind Oculus, but I think a self-contained wireless mobile unit could be more interesting.

Let the competition begin.

John Carmack has been working on an Oculus Android project since he joined the company.

Woah, can you point me to an article or something with more detail?

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/18/oculus-rift-john-carmack-...

After reading this story it became immediately clear why Facebook bought Oculus: the VR war is in full swing. Virtual reality is a happening thing and before we all know it, every major company will have a VR headset they're selling.

Interesting thoughts below that Apple could be making a VR headset, I doubt they would be entering the market considering the lack of content, but for all we know Apple have been working with developers launch a new VR product with a lot of content.

Microsoft recently said they're not interested in VR, but surely they're not stupid enough to miss out on a potentially new market once more like they did with mobile phones and tablets, are they? I think it is safe to assume most companies are working on a VR product in some way, shape or form.

I think 2015 is going to be a very interesting year for VR. Exciting times ahead.

Seems like a giddy puff piece. 2.5K is scarcely higher resolution than 1080 (1.9K) and they have far poor latency than Oculus and borrowed optics. Wireless is good though.

This was bothering me too. The article goes on and on about resolution and no mention of latency or motion tracking at all. Those are the hard problems.

Is the latency that bad? Because you wouldn't want to go below the Oculus there; the Oculus is great because of it's low latency. More latency will just make people vomit and definitely not sell units.

Latency in general is bad. This is why theres a big rush to get DisplayPort 1.3 variable framerate monitors onto the market (should be out late 2014, early 2015)

80% more pixels is a lot.

It's 34% more linear resolution. It's hardly going to be noticeable, especially when they haven't designed their optics for it. And if the refresh rate and latency are even slightly worse than Oculus's 2nd generation device (and they're only claiming parity with the 1st gen device) it will be pretty poor.

As good as Oculus is, it's really not good enough. And the idea that 2.5k (i.e. 1440p) is the key thing vs. 1080p and far lower latency is ridiculous. Bear in mind, Oculus uses the best displays they can get in the quantities they need, these guys are simply showing off in-house prototypes.

I have a hunch that Apple is working on a similar device too (and that is what actually motivated the Facebook deal; Zuck had inside information). Everything about the deal sounded that they don't want 'someone' to beat them to the punch. After all, it doesn't require anything else but strapping an iPod in the housing. A7 runs 2K display already very well on the iPad. There has been rumors of two new large iPhones, because Apple has sourced displays in two new sizes (4.7 and 5.7). Actually, one of them might be for the VR display.

I do not believe a mobile GPU can handle rendering in 3D @ 1440P. Even desktop GPU's have problems rendering it at 75hz.

A $250 card from 2006 had no problems rendering in 3D @ 1440P at a solid 60Hz. Sure, it couldn't do Crysis 3, but there were games available that ran fine. Android games aren't anything like Crysis, a K1 should run most of them @2560 @75Hz without breaking a sweat.

For VR you want 120 Hz, to avoid motion sickness and you need 2 images.

I think what you say is true when the entire display is used for each eye, not when half the display is used per eye. (No need need to send a full frame that will be discarded by filtering glasses.)

Can someone tell me how headset manufacturers will differ from any other display manufacturers? Won't VR content eventually standardize to work across different headsets to reach the broadest audience?

Was thinking the other day, VR is the perfect use-case for those outrageously high-ppi displays Sharp and Samsung have been showing off recently.

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