Just my IMHO, but after all the information I’ve seen in the last two weeks, I think there is something wrong with VR current state.
In 2015 eMagin announced dual 2Kx2K OLED headset (they even demoed it to Karmack who was impressed). At that time their 1280x1024 OLED displays were running at 120Hz. The FOV was 100 diagonal (!). In January 2017 Kopin announced 2Kx2K OLED displays running at 120Hz. Again?
Two biggest players in VR are HTC and Oculus. What we’ve been expecting from them and what we’ve got:
expecting CV2 with less SDE and higher FOV, and we got Oculus Go, that is 60 or 72Hz, not compatible with high-end gaming;
expecting Vive 2 with higher FOV, and get Vive Pro with 1440 (x2) x 1600 OLED running at 90.Hz but the same FOV;
Now we have 3 wide FOV headsets: Pimax 8K, XTAL and StarVR One.
I’m not discussing Pimax here because of there is a big subforum named Pimax 8K discussion above.
Let’s talk about XTAL and StarVR.
XTAL - 70Hz refresh rate and OLED resolution with 2x 2560x1440.
StarVR One - 90Hz and 2x 1464x1830
How people can say that these are top notch wide FOV headsets, I’m not getting the idea?
XTAL - is 70Hz refresh is really good? Why they can not make it 90Hz?
StarVR - is generally Vive Pro with weird resolution (the only difference is vertical resolution that is 200 pixels more) and stretched FOV over the same horizontal resolution. Vive and StarVR are OLED both.
Then what about the resolutions - I can understand 2560, 1440, 1600 maybe, but 1830? 1464?
Why is that?
EDIT: I’m a bit wrong here in comparing Vive Pro and StarVR One - first has PenTile and second has RGB pixels order, with StarVR to have more accurate colour reproduction.
eMagin doesn’t focus on consumer markets, but military market etc. I think they’re making micro displays, which are not very suitable for wide FoV anyway
Kopin is delaying and delaying. Problem is that Kopin doesn’t have its own production facility but is depending on others. They had a deal with Olightek for production of their 2k*2k panels this year but it seems they’ve broken up the deal and are now planning to produce their panels in the new BOE fab which is due for Q1 next year.
So generally it’s really the display panel industry that’s the problem. Pimax is the only one using 4k panels. Only LCD 4k panels currently exist and they have their own set of drawbacks (like black level in the Pimax 8k isnt good at all). Also Pimax just used a standard 4k LCD panel, I think exactly the same one Sony uses in their premium phones. Using a standard sized panel comes with its own set of challenges when designing the lens. I think this is the main reason that the Pimax 8k lenses can only see 50% of the panel.
So yeah, the problem is the display panel industry. The good news is that this is going to change in half a year. BOE already started ordering equipment for their new fab, which should be ready Q1 next year. Also JDI is also aiming for Q1 next year for their next gen panels. So 2019 is finally going to become interesting.
No sure why you insist that the Pimax8k can only use 50% of the display area. From en engineering point of view it would be completely nonsense. So it looks like your on some kind of super weird FUD campaign.
Not sure what PimaxVR is doing and where they get their lenses from, but technically it’s not impossible to get well beyond 80%
although i don’t expect PimaxVR using high precision quality products from Jenoptik, but in principal they use the same technology for sure.
back on topic!
the disaster is the super expensive GPUs. The price per performance went up during the mining craze and it still didn’t go down. With nVidias new products it won’t go down anytime soon. The addressable market for high resolution VR is a fraction of the ones who can afford GPUs to run it. There simply is no good investment money as long as there is no chance for mainstream. That is also the reason Oculus went GO first with a lackluster interest in upping the game for PC driven VR…
Hmm that would be super weird indeed, even more so because of the backer meeting next week. If I’m wrong then people with Pimax 4k could easily confirm that it was all BS what I told you guys since SDE/resolution should be at least on par with the Pimax 4k. Why would I do that? That would just be super weird indeed!
Well I know for a fact some of the testers complain about SDE/resolution (at least noticeably worse than the Pimax 4k). Explain that to me then. Also I’m not sure if your theories are correct about the lens angle, I’ve never seen the 8k myself.
What i will say is think about the lense experiment proposed & read that topic. While it won’t answer all it will establish that lens test is flawed as that applies to parallel screen to lens. Special lenses are required to see the screen on an angle & look like its not being viewed on an angle.
Worst than 4k but better than vive pro? because some people tested the v5 said that the sde and resolution was better than vive pro. Pimax change something in m1 and m2 that made worse?
It could be that tests that have been done are flawed, I’m not going to dismiss that as a possibility of course. Yet fact remains that some testers, coming from the Pimax 4k, where quite disappointed with the SDE/resolution when they first put on the Pimax 8k. So I’d still think there’s something really flawed in the Pimax 8k.
Assuming all achieve same lens quality taken Oculus CV1 as the base comparison in my model the 2eyes resolution potential per degree of field of view diagonally of a Pi4k is roughly 184% and the Pi8k is the same. Whereas on a single eye the Pi4k can do 195% vs the Pi8k only 165%. The Pi8k will have less resolution per eye pDFoV as the Pi4k, that is almost a given.
SDE is not equal to resolution, it is loosely coupled. I expect as little perceivable SDE as with the Pi4k in the Pi8k, 5k should not fall behind by far and end up comparable to PSVR, just being way sharper (110% single eye).
Whatever the claim is on usable display area, it all comes down on how much worse or better they are compared to CV1 and Pi4. And there is not a single good reason why they would in this case be substantial worse than all the other examples.
The big if with wide FoV is rather how you manage to stretch out the used display into peripheral vision area vs. concentrating it on focal view with stereo overlap. And then that is the point where in the focal area they achieve more than 50% usage of the display. If we only talk about that area that figure would be reasonable to discuss.
AFAIK in that video he tested the Pi5k first and compared it to the VivePro. Claim was better resolution but in my model the Pi5k has slightly less resolution pDFoV but way better SDE, so this could have made him think slightly better res. With the prototype of the Pi8k he is just blown away… so lets assume the Pi8k can do more display coverage than the VivePro, i think it would be reasonable to settle on that statement @Sjef
Unfortunately he can’t speak … But I’m sure the berlin testers WILL speak next week, so the verdict will be in soon, just a little more patience is all we need
