A 2560x1440 VR Headset That's Mobile

New submitter oldmildog writes: "GameFace Labs may very well be the furthest along in the quest to create a mobile VR headset. It's based on Android, and their latest prototype is the first VR headset (mobile or tethered) to include a 2560x1440 display, with 78% more pixels than 1080p based VR headsets like the Oculus Rift DK2. CEO Ed Mason said, 'The upgrade to 1280 x 1440 per eye is monumental. Individual pixels are hard to detect at first glance, making it a more immersive and comfortable experience in every single game and experience that we've tried. A lot of the ‘presence’ described by devs at the Valve [prototype VR headset] demonstration can be attributed to their use of higher resolution (and lower persistence) panels, which has a noticeable impact in suspending disbelief and tricking the brain."

Comments

Transparent OLED

[Charliemopps]

These things really aren't going to hit their stride until they start using Transparent OLED displays so instead of cloaking you in VR it's overlays info on the real world.

Re:Transparent OLED

[ensignyu]

Then it'd be Augmented Reality (AR), not Virtual Reality (VR).

Re:Transparent OLED

[catmistake]

These things really aren't going to hit their stride until they start using Transparent OLED displays so instead of cloaking you in VR it's overlays info on the real world.

Nope... that's not going to help them "hit their stride," or become the next radio, TV, iPod, etc. No manufacturer of HMD has yet figured out what they have. They are getting hints from their R&D, but they, and everyone, are so excited about how cool VR is that they are ignoring the mechanism that allows immersive VR to occur, and it has nothing to do with the resolution of the display components. It has to do with the human brain, our capacity for the suspension of belief, not of our conscious mind only, but of the semi-conscious awareness of what ALL our senses (not just the regular suspects) are reporting. In the research and science of brain and mind is where the breakthroughs will occur. Also, as in all technology weighted heavily towards vision, gaming will not drive this forward to manufacturers hopes of a regular, ordinary consumer device that everyone will soon have just like a TV. Only the pornography industry will do that, as only it always has and and only it always will.

Re:Transparent OLED

[sexconker]

We need a VR version of goatse

Re:Transparent OLED

[Ceriel Nosforit]

I was about to say "Use the Force Luke," and hope GP remembered the blast visor.

Resolution is not the hard-to-solve problem..

[mgemmons]

Display resolution is not the hard-to-solve problem. This quote from John Carmack sums it up best:

The latency between the physical movement of a users head and updated photons from a head mounted display reaching their eyes is one of the most critical factors in providing a high quality experience. Human sensory systems can detect very small relative delays in parts of the visual or, especially, audio fields, but when absolute delays are below approximately 20 milliseconds they are generally imperceptible.

According to the article

[...]the latest GameFace SDK significantly reduces latency to a point that it is easily comparable to the DK1. The company plans to benchmnark their latency soon to get a quantitative latency figure.

Notice that is DK1 latency, not DK2. DK1's latency was notoriously bad and made many people nauseous. So, while I'm happy to see competition in this space, as far as GameFace is concerned, there is not a lot to see here yet.

Re:Resolution is not the hard-to-solve problem..

[Electricity Likes Me]

This is a lot of words without actually explaining why one problem (display latency) is not a suitable proxy for the thing you call the actual problem (perceptive latency).

They're obviously related, but one of these we can measure directly, the other we cannot. Ergo, we get our proxy suitably low until we find a point where the trade-offs are acceptable.

Re:Resolution is not the hard-to-solve problem..

[__aailob1448]

Lol. Are you for real? If you're not , then that was a magnificent way to say a bunch of stuff without actually saying anything, just as grandparent said. Subtle trolling. Solid A.

If you are for real, then can you lay off the empty platitudes and come up with concrete suggestions? These guys are building real stuff. They got real tons of investor money. You are just producing empty words in a useless slashdot post.

The Onus is on you to produce a headset that blows theirs away before you can start shitting on them. Those are the rules of life, you dig?

Re:Resolution is not the hard-to-solve problem..

[Immerman]

I think that's exactly what they said. Resolution is an easy problem to solve. Lots of high-res screens out there. Latency is a far more challenging problem as it involves the entire system from head tracking, to rendering, to projection. And even just for the screen's contribution to latency, refresh rate is only a small part of the equation. A 60Hz panel refreshes 60 times per second (~17ms), but there may well be substantial internal latency between receiving the new frame and actually updating the image.

Think HD TVs where the refresh rate may be even higher at 120Hz, or even 240Hz (4ms), but you may see several hundred ms of latency between when an image change is sent to the TV and when the change appears onscreen - hence the need to calibrate the Rock Band, etc. timing-based games to your TV. That latency is mostly in the image-processing circuitry rather than the screen itself, but it illustrates the point.

And then there's ghosting to consider as well - just because the screen refreshes once every 17ms doesn't mean the previous image is completely gone yet, you may actually see the "remains" of several previous frames on screen at any given time, especially where there's sharp changes in brightness. And that latency in removing previous images can be nauseating as well, even when gaming on a normal monitor.

Re:Oxymoron

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There's also the question of what, exactly, the 'mobile' use case for something even harder on your situational awareness than a bag over your head...

Having lived through the era of 21+ inch CRTs, I certainly want any VR headset to be relatively lightweight(especially the part I attach to my face) and nobody likes dealing with devices that require three dongles, an external PSU, a processor box, and a couple of line lumps to operate, so my (perhaps naive) assumption would be that 'non-mobile' would still mean 'fairly lightweight thing you put on your head, probably with a smallish support box that takes the video inputs, handles the motion-tracking camera, if any, and either houses or is connected to the power supply'.

So, um, even the non-mobile units are going to be easy enough to toss into a (suitably protective) laptop bag, which makes them pretty 'mobile' for something that's dangerously useless when actually walking around.

I'm also a trifle baffled about the 'Android' element. What is based on Android? Did they drag a gratuitous smartphone/tablet interface into the firmware that handles location tracking and such because, um, some reason? Is this VR system tied directly to the output of yet another probably-doomed niche Android Gaming Product? I hope it has video-in for when that flops.

bout time

[Osgeld]

I hate it when I have to bolt my VR helmet to the floor, now I can get a neck-ache with 78% more pixles while it runs on a phone that has about the same horsepower as a decade old computer!

the future is finally here!

Re:Resolution is everything

[Osgeld]

resolution is really not even that big of a deal (course you would know that if you have used one... ever) its input lag, poor focus, weight, cables and refresh rate.

After all that you dont give a shit if the image is a bit grainy

Re:Resolution is everything

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Latency counts: People were happily fragging cyberdemons back in the Doom days; and you could practically cut your wrists on pixels that size; but a nontrivial portion of the population can't, even with nontrivial effort of will, suppress the nausea and sometimes vomiting associated with mismatches between motion perceived by the inner ear and motion inferred visually.

More resolution is better, and with smartphone screens locked in an arms race it can't be all that expensive to provide; but the product that doesn't make you want to vomit will have a certain edge.

Re:Done with Oculus

[pushing-robot]

Except I'm waiting for these guys to get sued into oblivion for copying Facebook's amazing groundbreaking invention.

...no, not the hardware, the word 'Face'.

Re:Makes a ton of sense to me

[SuperKendall]

I've seen a few arguments that claim a less detailed but more fluid world is more immersive than a very detailed world with any immersion hiccups.

Re:congrats

[Anonymous Coward]

in the meantime : WHERE is my cheap 2560*1440 resolution monitor ? i want more than 1920*1024 !