vivster said:
We're currently gen 1. Gen 2 will have nothing more but higher resolutions a few small optimizations and maybe bigger screens for bigger FOV. Gen 3 has the chance for going wireless completely and even more upped resolution and FOV. |
You're forgetting about eye tracking, which will bring the biggest benefits to VR headsets. I'm very interested in how the Fove will turn out. Foveated rendering will make VR games easily surpass the quality of games rendered on traditional screens. Which will make it possible to use the 5" 11K screen that Samsung is developing at not much more grunt that you need for 4K at 30 fps.
Actually VR is a lot older than I thought. First VR headset dates back to 1965!
Sword of Damocles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISJWZpFIAlQ
The 90's can be considered gen 2 of VR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVn3H93Ysag
Yet the extremely low res, low framerate and high prices killed it.
So we're in gen 3 already. Prices are now affordable, low persitance displays with better resolution and high fps make it a lot more comfortable to use for long periods. PCs and consoles are now powerful enough to create believable experiences. Headsets are lighter and control methods have improved as well.
This was VR in the 90's on Amiga 3000 at 276x372 at ~50ms latency on the Virtuality 1000CS
played on this
It was consigned to arcades, but if you're lucky you can find them on ebay now
This is VR now on ps4 pro at 960x1080 per eye at ~18 ms latency and custom low persistence OLED
I would say many problems have been fixed. Motion sickness is not a result of the display mode anymore, it's a result of the disconnect between preceived movement and physcial movement. That will always be a problem for titles where you do more than simply stand around or move in a small area. It was a problem on monitors already. There are ways to make it more comfortable, yet it's also something you can get used to.
Motion sickness will likely get a little worse at first when the fov expands. Your peripheral vision is best at motion detection, the more that is engaged, the more your brain gets pressured into believing you're moving when you're not. Perhaps some people will never be able to play certain VR games comfortably. Some people can't take a trip on a boat either. That doesn't doom the tech.
Gen 4 I believe will bring eye tracking as I mentioned before. Higher res screens first sure, still gen 3 imo. Wireless won't happen until the headsets are fully self contained. Beaming the necessary data over is simply impossible, PSVR already uses 5.56 Gbps bandwidth over hdmi, for 4K headsets that would be over 22 Gbps. HDMI 2.0 can't even handle that yet, has to throttle back to 90fps to fit over the cable!
Gen 5 will bring self contained (wireless) headsets. The headset is the console. Perhaps it will be able to beam a social screen image back to the tv. There it can afford to send a compressed h.265 4K image at 15mbps, as latency isn't a problem. You don't want any compression between console and headset, low latency is key to the experience, plus any compression artifacts will be noticeable in 3D so close to the screen.
Anyway looks like VR is good enough to stay around this time. Plenty headsets around already with more to come.
