I’m wonder why some daily Pimax users like it more than standard lenses. Read somewhere that after lenses installtion pimax software must be restarted and calibrated once again.
Meta spent big on their pancake lens development, lenses like those in BSB are off the shelf, less advanced versions
Yes it does. Extreme brightness gives you additional optical issues, lots of heat and power consumption. I really don’t think pancake is great for vr applications. Only 5-10% of the light actually makes it to the enduser. Extreme brightness to overcome that also introduces uniformity issues and kills your contrast because to get 300 nits you need 3000 nit baseline brightness. When it’s used manufacturers have to go to crazy lengths to seal out external light as well.
***That said it does have huge implications for other use cases where portability is key.
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But 99% of headsets sold now use pancake if you take all the Quests, Picos and now AVPs into account. Only a few niche companies are sticking to Aspherics.
It seems aspheric lenses have limitations when it comes to size and non convex shapes.
I’m not sure what optical technology will emerge in next 10 years that will beat pancake lenses.
Are Pimax going to stick with aspheric lenses and huge HMDs in the hope pancakes don’t close the gap? We’ve already seen some Youtubers state The difference in clarity is very close. Or will Pimax continue to use Hybrid Fresnels?
Once companies like Hypervision deliver on clarity, FOV and price all barriers to VR adoption will come tumbling down. What will Pimax come back with?
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You really think a 3000 nit brightness to get on average 200 is a good thing? It’s incredibly inefficient and there are multiple other competing methods out there.
On your last statement that can apply to anything. Hey X car company what are you going to do when some non existent product is perfected, cost optimized, has a low price and is mass produced and gets 500 mpg? How will you ever survive? Heck when somebody does that I will be very happy to see it, as I am a VR enthusiast and hope to see great things in our industry.
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Yeah it is because it reduces the size considerably.
No one cares about the 10:1 light loss as long as it’s not cooking your face off.
Quest Pro2 is going to be the death knell of a lot of VR companies. Zuckerberg is out to beat Apple and all these small VR companies that have had a free run so far are about to be taken out by the wake.
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I agree. My Q3 nor my AVP has any heat issue’s at all. I don’t think it would be much of a problem if it heat would even increase 20, 30%. To each their own but I just love pancake. No distortion, there’s sharpness from edge to edge, great clarity, there’s just so much to love.
EDIT I must say though that even though I don’t feel that much heat myself, my Q3 did once run into an issue where I got an error, the Q3 said it was running too hot and needed to cool down and it wouldn’t let me use it for a while. So yeah there’s that. I do believe it will become a bit more challenging for companies to deal with it but so far they’ve been doing pretty good.
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So are you saying panel design isn’t going to get cooler? Or Pancake lenses aren’t going to get more efficient?
Even Somnium have come up with dual aspheric lenses to get a wider FOV.
Pimax could be onto a winner with hybrid Aspheric/Fresnel and good for them if they do.
I think the inherent problem is that light gets bounced various times inside the pancake lenses and since only a very small percentage makes it to the end, the rest ‘disappears’, but since in physics energy can’t just ‘disappear’ it’s being converted into heat. So, pump more light into the lenses, some more will make it to the eye but you will also get more heat. I think that’s what @PimaxUSA is talking about. I have hope companies will still be able to mitigate that even when brightness increases a bit, but sure, at some point this will start to become difficult.
Fair point but as coatings get better then lost light is reduced. If we take glare as a indicator of stray light then from what I’ve heard the Quest 3 is pretty good. I guess the trick is to convert all light from the panel to visible light. One day that might happen.
Also the Polymer used will advance and clarity will get closer and closer to glass. I don’t see any way to reduce the size of aspherical glass when it comes to wide FoV, not when the human eye moves around.
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Meta’s pancake lens is the result of serious expenditure and development, I’d expect to see lens competitors to catch up within a product cycle.
Each lens type has best in class, competent and cowboy
Google 2017 Daydream Fresnel lenses were stunning work, result of billions of light ray simulations on super computer. Shame hardly anyone got to use them.
The original Vive lens is Valve reference design that HTC uses for Vive/Pro 1 not undergoing any further development until Vive Pro 2 (less said there the better).
Index is Valve second generation reference lens boasting excellent geometric stability and optical comfort for wider group of users, though Achilles heel of internal glare kinda spoiled the party in high contrast scene.
Sony psvr2 lens very interesting attempt to mitigate internal reflection of fresnel lens using patented manufacturing technology on Fresnel stepping edges. Personally found it more comfortable than psvr 1 with its large aspherical lenses with big eye box to accommodate as many users as possible using software ipd, it just gave me pupil swim.
Interesting using Crystal with it’s glass aspherical lenses very impressive though chromatic aberration in certain conditions and very eye position dependent leading to pupil swim unless very dialled position, found the eye tracking a big help with aspherical to maintain geometric stability and optical comfort
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