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210 Degrees of Heads-Up Display: Hands-On With the InfinitEye
First time accepted submitter muterobert writes "InfinitEye is a prototype head mounted display that uses dual 1280×800 displays to create a massive 210 degree field of view. I traveled to Toulouse, France to be the first journalist in the world to go hands-on with the unit. These are my thoughts on the trip, the team, and the HMD itself. 'Natural and Panoramic Virtual Reality' is the best phrase I can come up with that summarises the InfinitEye's capabilities. If using the Oculus Rift is like opening the sunroof on a virtual world, the InfinitEye takes the roof clean off — at least if you base your opinion solely on horizontal FOV. But the new HMD also offers 1280×800 per eye in comparison the current Oculus Rift Dev Kit's 640×800 (and only slightly fewer pixels per eye than the Oculus Rift HD prototype)."
This might be a new record or maybe not. The headline currently states "120 Degrees..." when it should say "210 Degrees..." Summary and article both state 210 degrees.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
First you allow a submission with a summary that completely contradicts the article; then you put the wrong specs in the headline when it's clear from both the summary and the article itself what the correct specs should be? Get yourself a cup of coffee, come back and try again.
Everyone wants these for VR, but I want something I can code with. Anytime, anyplace. Maybe even laying in bed with a feeding tube snaked down my nose. :-)
How close are these to being a replacement for a reasonable monitor? (Absolute minimum would be 24x80 text that's usable without headaches/etc for several hours at a stretch.)
I'm much more interested in having a single display that is ultra wide, with the possibility of it being curved. For work, it's not bad to have a bunch of monitors as they will most likely contain separate windows anyway. But for gaming, having a single, continuous monitor with no borders in the middle works a lot better. Currently, you either have to have 3 monitors, so the middle of the screen isn't obstructed, or have 1 monitor. Having a single monitor that's as wide as 2 monitors would probably be wide enough for a lot of tasks. Also, even for work, It would be nice to have an ultra wide monitor, because there would be more usable space. There's kind of a dead zone in the middle because you don't want windows sitting between 2 monitors. If you have 2 monitors, it's hard to display 3 things side by side (Firefox , IE, and Chrome for instance).
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
You'll find that the original InfinitEye prototype actually pre-dates the Rift. And it's not just the resolution, it's the Field of View that makes this HMD special, soemthign the Rift in it's current form has no plans to address - unlike resolution.
CastAR has a higher resolution and it can switch between AR and VR as well as Projected AR. Get on the Kickstarter now!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system
boom goes the dynamite....
There was a lot of hype about VR stuff in the 90s, and the whole thing did not get much traction.
Because they were rubbish. Back in the 90s you'd have to pay $100,000 for something that was worse than the $300 Oculus Rift devkit.
(plus another million for a computer powerful enough to drive it)
Are things significantly better now?
Yes.
No sig today...
The Occulus has a ~100% overlap factor, meaning that the same arc of FOV is presented to both eyes. Put another way, the left and right sides of both eye views are the same.
This device has less than 100% overlap. I'm guessing it's around 60% from looking at the monitor images. When the overlap decreases too much, it gives you the impression of having a very large nose that blocks each eye from seeing part of the other eye view. This can be annoying.
The overlap factor for real people varies, of course, due to facial structure. But you don't really want a device that has a much smaller overlap than your actual body has.
It is extremely difficult to maintain a large overlap factor as FOV is increased. The right side of the left display will encroach into the space needed for the left side of the right display. Avoiding this requires making the displays smaller and closer to the eye, which increases the demands on the optical system to refocus the image. In addition, there is less space for eye glasses, and other useability parameters may also be reduced (although weight can be decreased). At some point, you can no longer look at lens-based optics, and have to take a different approach altogether.
Note also that increasing the FOV tends to make the rendering a more difficult job as well. Fortunately, this isn't as big an issue these days.
There was a lot of hype about VR stuff in the 90s, and the whole thing did not get much traction.
They're developing consumer versions that are far superior (and cheaper) than the $1000 minimum 256 color, low FoV junk from the 90's (looking at you VFX-1!). Better, professional units quickly went up to the 10s of thousands of dollars.
Are things significantly better now?
The reason why it's better now is due to cheap high resolution displays (thanks to phones and tablets) and precise accelerometers and gyros.
On the Occulus Rift side, they sidestepped the old design requiring two separate screens by using one screen split between your two eyes and using optics to make the narrow (per eye) screen appear wide. Also the optics concentrate more pixels in the center of your field of view (where you need them most). The distortions created by this are counteracted in software. So this new approach + cheaper displays + cheaper sensors = time for cheap and awesome consumer VR headsets!
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