Comment by XorNot
3 years ago
I see a bunch of use-cases I might like, but they all have a big asterisk of "how well does it actually work".
And it would have to be pretty damn spectacular for me to drop ~AUD$5200 on it in a "I will be using this all the time, pro-actively sense". Which maybe it is!
But this press-release spends a lot of time talking around the hard numbers - i.e. 23 million pixels is a lot of things but its not a resolution. Nor is their any mention of the FOV angle (this data is obviously out there, but avoiding mentioning it in your own marketing copy means you know it's not what you want people up front comparing).
Same boat. $5k is massive. I'm considering buying a new ~$2k screen that would then be bound to either home or office, so there's budget to solve the visual side of work and be portable, but I wouldn't bet it on this before a lot of hands-on reviews.
And the reviews would have to be outrageous for me to not wait for a future, cheaper version.
One thing I don't like is the idea of being bound to their idea of what a spatial interface is. I use three screens and like more density, so my current situation is more useful than their demo. Give me that and good control over the environmental backdrop, and I'd start to be convinced. I like my work, but if I could do it while feeling like I'm in the desert permanently at golden hour, that'd be an upgrade.
Giving the total number of pixels is actually more honest, compared to competitors who claim that 2Kx2K*2 is a 4K headset
23 million is comfortably more than 4K resolution per eye, putting this at one of if not the highest resolution of any headset. It seems like they are telling the whole truth when they say you can view a 4K virtual screen on this - there is enough resolution headroom
That said, the lack of FOV is suspicious. Between that, the lack of proper VR game demos and the focus on virtual monitors, I get the feeling this headset will have poor FOV traded for sharpness across the whole image and reduced nausea
> 23 million is comfortably more than 4K resolution per eye, putting this at one of if not the highest resolution of any headset
But still at a density (pixels/degree) lower than my $70 4K display at normal viewing distance.
VR companies are always so damn excited about their innovations that allow a headset to display text at a fraction of the fidelity of a display that costs almost two orders of magnitude less.
I get that the innovation is mostly in the rest of the headset, but companies really need to stop skimping on the display resolution.
> I get the feeling this headset will have [...] sharpness across the whole image
One can hope.
I mean it's not skimping, it's right at the limits of our technological capability. VR is weird in that once you cross a certain pixel density, no further improvements will matter because the eye won't be able to resolve the image better. But until you get there, it's much more limited.
The cross-over point AFAIK is about a 16K screen resolution (per eye) - i.e. at that point a screen in a VR helmet is "retina" and you won't see pixels no matter what.
It's just that's an enormous number of pixels, in a tiny surface area, and a colossal amount of data to move.
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They said 'anywhere you look, so I'm guessing the FOV is nearly all the way around to your peripheral vision. If not, the first review to say 'pay $3500 to experience glaucoma' will torpedo the product entirely.