Google To Reveal 'World's Highest Resolution OLED-On-Glass Display' For VR Headsets (roadtovr.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Last year at SID Display Week 2017, Google's VP of VR/AR teased a "secret project" that the company was working on -- a VR-optimized OLED panel capable of 20 megapixels per eye -- which was being undertaken with "one of the leading OLED manufacturers." This year, the schedule for SID Display Week 2018 indicates that Google plans to reveal its made-for-VR panel on May 22nd, which it calls the "world's highest resolution (18 megapixel, 1443 ppi) OLED-on-glass display." The company plans to detail the display in a presentation at the event, which will be co-presented with engineers from LG, suggesting the identity of the second partner on the project. Ideal for VR, the 4.3-inch panel is capable of 120Hz refresh rate and is expected to have a resolution of some 5,500 by 3,000, representing a massive leap over today's leading VR panels which offer 1,600 by 1,440 resolutions at 90Hz.

Comments

Re:Still a long ways to go

[The Raven]

This is not false, but it is not quite true either.

How often do you look as far left as possible? Rarely. We only actively look around directly within about 30-50% of our full view capability, except in the rare cases when we're trying to look at something without others knowing (ie, side-eye). So only the central visual field needs this level of pixel density to be nearly indistinguishable from real life's resolution. The visual fidelity could drop to 1/2 or even 1/4 outside this and you'd barely notice. Now, that's still 12-15000 pixels across. It's still massively higher than we're capable of now. But about a quarter of the pixels Solandri posited would be necessary.

In addition, we can render even fewer pixels with eye tracking. This has already been successfully tested on current equipment with eye tracking and foveated rendering... rendering the center at full resolution, but increasingly fewer pixels per inch as you go away from the center of vision. And it already workes very well, quartering the rendering power needed. With a massive full-vision FOV, it would reduce rendering by needs by 20-40 times.

So that gargantuan 24k by 18k panel becomes a 16k by 12k panel (with a detailed center, and slightly fuzzier edges), with foveated rendering reducing the practical rendering needs down to 4k by 3k.

That's still a huge ask for a modern system, but give it five years and that kind of rendering will be cake. We have fun times ahead of us.