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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

> This is why I bought a DK2, I believe VR IDE's are going to be a thing, and they're going to be great. The fonts aren't very crisp in this video, but once we get some nice editors in there it's going to rock

To a degree. But I when I work I have two WQHD monitors (2560x1440) with one turned on its side so I have one text editor with a vertical resolution of 2560. When ever I work on a laptop, even an HD laptop, I miss this setup so much as it feels like I am drinking through a straw.

Because of this I am unsure if VR, which is going to be much less than what I am working with now, is going to be a serious replacement.

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At the moment, the effective vertical resolution is about 3240p, and the horizontal I'd guess would be around 6000p. And that's just the technology preview, I don't see how you think VR is going to be less than your setup, when it's already more..

Those are very strange numbers - Are you getting those figures from the ability to look around? So in terms of the 180 degrees from straight up to straight down it's 3240p?

I think pixel density is what people want - to make full use of that 3240p you would have to move your head quite considerably, to make use of a large monitor from 75cm away doesn't need nearly so much head movement.

It's what I want and am hoping for, but the current DK2 is in no way usable for this

OP here. Your numbers are definitely off. The effective resolution of the DK2 is more like 320p or something. Definitely lots of room for the tech to improve there but I'm hopeful. Despite this limitation, the experience is pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

Why 320p? I say 3240 because the height res is 1080p, and I think you can comfortably tilt your head to get three times that height resolution. The horizontal guesstimate I made similarily.

edit: ah I see, I hadn't factored in the warping of the optics, if you're correct then the effective resolution would only be around 900p so I'm being too optimistic :)

Oh you're factoring in head movement. I see. Well you still haven't accounted for the warping that the optics do. They stretch that 1080 pixels across a 100 degree vertical field of view, so the pixels directly in your sight (not including peripheral vision) is really only about 320.

Funny coincidence, the oculus has a similar appearant resolution as the vanilla doom game on the crt's had.

Since a headset could occupy your entire field of vision I would imagine that any setup could be replicated in virtual reality.

The display technology and software is still a long way away however.

> The display technology and software is still a long way away however.

OP here. Well, I'm a bit more optimistic. Oculus now has ties with Samsung's display manufacturing, relationships with Nvidia and Facebook's cash. I wouldn't be surprised if they become the driving force behind high-density 5" displays and graphics horsepower in the next few years.

John Carmack trying to figure out how to get Samsung to believe him on display technology fills me with confidence. That dude is clearly thinking very hard about how to make everyone happy to encourage technology to push forward.

It would be great to have a text input device which allows to move freely, something like the key glove: http://www.keyglove.net

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