This topic shall be used as a little discussion about a technical consideration.
PLEASE DON’T CONFUSE IT WITH A MAJOR ISSUE!
During the Berlin meetup I found one thing, that nobody talked about before. Since I had more time to test than others, I noticed this:
Very close objects (<10 inch) in the middle of the screen were very out of focus. This seemed odd to me, as objects farther away were crisp and sharp in the same display area. I thought, why should perfectly rendered pixels seem sharp at one point, and out of focus the next?
I figured maybe it’s a texture problem, but a lot of tests showed: holding e.g. the virtual controllers close to your eyes, MY EYES couldn’t focus on the sharply rendered controller, making them blurred.
Since it’s a minor issue in few situations, I dismissed this peculiarity at first. But then one night it hit me: ANGLED SCREENS!
In normal headsets, our eyes are always focused on the same distance. But since the angled screens of Pimax have a depth value, our eyes are being forced to readjust the focus depending on the position of the objects on the screen.
This is in most situations not a problem, but as soon as objects in the center come close to you, your eyes would be physically forced to focus in the OPPOSITE direction, since the panels in the center are farther away! This is causing a discrepancy in the brain: It knows the object is very close and it tries to focus on a near plane, but the correct focus would be way behind! In real life, a situation like this can’t exist, so I think there’ll be no way to solve that problem.
Just find it interesting what you guys have to say about this
Jup, this is where accomodation becomes a problem and we need eye tracking and moving panels or lenses. That’s where true next gen comes in. This wide fov headset is still gen 1 in my opinion, just wider. Next gen will have these focal distances solved and hopefully even better resolutions as well
You are not focusing your eyes on the panels themselves, but on the focal distance defined by the lenses. What is the focal distance in different directions probably depends on the overall optical characteristics of the lenses.
Maybe this is what the famous “hot lady” in berlin applied to by saying it looks somewhat blurry in the center? Maybe she too was looking on closer objects but couldn’t accomodate?
If so, I hope our brain can adjust to it just like it did with other VR related stuff like standing still in reality but moving in VR. What at the beginning make me quite sick (on htc vive) is longer no problem at all.
I wouldn’t worry!
Actually this is quite a big deal for certain VR experiences. I work with a program called Virt-a-mate, yes it’s adult but this often requires being close up to the model especially when creating/editing. If what you are saying is correct then this isn’t a good sign. I assume also then it’s present on both 5K+ and 8K. I wonder if it would be possible to make software corrections for this?
Your image could use an update with panel -> lens -> focal point.
This is pretty misleading otherwise. The lens further complicates the matter as Fresnel lenses are contoured in a step pattern that when viewed from outside of center alignment causes further issues.
The panel display image itself can be distorted using eye tracking and a dynamic distortion profile to correct the perceived image for the user. Star VR does this and to be honest this would be something that can be done software side once the eye tracking peripheral ships. I hope Pimax supports this themselves, if not I am pretty confident if the software is open source someone eventually will.
Was it the same on 5K+ and 8K? Can it be due to the fact as been said that they both using the same lenses? For me it’s a bit strange, but I don’t know if the screen dimensions of 5K+ and 8K are the same.
The tech in Oculus’ half dome prototype exists to deal with this problem of vergence accommodation. Even standard.HMDs have this issue in the near field, but amgled displays would aplify the issue.
It can be fixed, but not without a mechanism similar to the half dome prototype.
