Oculus's 'Half-Dome' Headset Offers Wide Field Of View, Better Close-Ups

[kcarbotte]

Oculus today revealed the 'Half-Dome' VR headset prototype, which features a 140-degree field of view and cameras for hand tracking.

Oculus's 'Half-Dome' Headset Offers Wide Field Of View, Better Close-Ups : Read more

 

[bit_user]

The varifocal lens sounds potentially bulky, noisy, slow, fragile, and frustrating (e.g. if it focuses on a bush in front of you that you're trying to look through to see the baddies on the other side). Magic Leap's approach is more brute-force, but really so much more elegant.

On the other hand, I'm all for room scanning. Definitely hope we see that in Santa Cruz. Makes much more sense in an untethered HMD, although it would probably burn a lot of battery power.

The extra FoV sounds nice, but not sure that's the way I'd want to spend so much additional resolution. If they have a good foveated rendering approach (i.e. better than the static one in Oculus Go) that can deliver a "free" resolution bump to accommodate, then perhaps.

 

[milkod2001]

3D TVs have failed because people refused to wear literary paper weight glasses. VR will never get to this size and weight of glasses. Even if ,it will fail for the very same reasons. Wonder why they still push for this already dead tech. Hoping for miracles?

 

[Sakkura]

[quotemsg=20936748,0,328798]The varifocal lens sounds potentially bulky, noisy, slow, fragile, and frustrating (e.g. if it focuses on a bush in front of you that you're trying to look through to see the baddies on the other side). Magic Leap's approach is more brute-force, but really so much more elegant.

On the other hand, I'm all for room scanning. Definitely hope we see that in Santa Cruz. Makes much more sense in an untethered HMD, although it would probably burn a lot of battery power.

The extra FoV sounds nice, but not sure that's the way I'd want to spend so much additional resolution. If they have a good foveated rendering approach (i.e. better than the static one in Oculus Go) that can deliver a "free" resolution bump to accommodate, then perhaps.[/quotemsg]

The new lens system fits in the same space as the old one, so the bulk isn't a major issue. But there are definitely other questions to answer. I still think it's worth investigating whether the upsides can outweigh the downsides.

Magic Leap is not comparable at all, they're doing AR and with vastly inferior FOV. And yes, FOV is quite important for immersion. We do need to get to higher FOV for next-gen devices.

[quotemsg=20937328,0,368223]3D TVs have failed because people refused to wear literary paper weight glasses. VR will never get to this size and weight of glasses. Even if ,it will fail for the very same reasons. Wonder why they still push for this already dead tech. Hoping for miracles?[/quotemsg]

VR and 3D are completely different things. Equating them just shows you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[McWhiskey]

Does this incorporate eye tracking at all? IMO Using the eye instead of content would be a far superior approach. The mechanism would have to be lightning quick (maybe unrealistically so.) But being able to choose what you want to focus on and have that adjusted on the fly would be insanely better than being forced into being near sighted or far sighted.

This would also give the added bonus of requiring less resources to fill the peripheral with low res content.

 

[bit_user]

[quotemsg=20937328,0,368223]3D TVs have failed because people refused to wear literary paper weight glasses. VR will never get to this size and weight of glasses. Even if ,it will fail for the very same reasons. Wonder why they still push for this already dead tech. Hoping for miracles?[/quotemsg]
Someone apparently doesn't understand the concept of cost vs. benefit.

Besides, 3D TV is a bad example, since it has other compromises and doesn't add much to the experience. I have several dozen 3D blu-rays and even I can't be particularly bothered about whether or not I can see a movie in 3D. It's nice, but if it's a good movie I tend to forget about the 3D. If it's a bad movie, the 3D doesn't usually redeem the experience. In contrast, playing a VR vs. non-VR game is fundamentally different.

That said, I've heard good things about watching 3D blu-rays in VR. Maybe it makes the experience more worthwhile, even though you can still see it only from exactly one angle.

 

[bit_user]

[quotemsg=20938102,0,2086603]Does this incorporate eye tracking at all? IMO Using the eye instead of content would be a far superior approach. The mechanism would have to be lightning quick (maybe unrealistically so.) But being able to choose what you want to focus on and have that adjusted on the fly would be insanely better than being forced into being near sighted or far sighted.[/quotemsg]
That's how I'm imagining it works.

But see my point about looking through virtual bushes or a virtual window - unless the eye tracking can read the shape of the your eye's lens, it won't always correctly guess on what you're trying to focus.

 

[237841209]

It's up to the software developer who creates the 'bush' to make it work well with the technology. That's how it's always been.

 

[bit_user]

[quotemsg=20940531,0,2565163]It's up to the software developer who creates the 'bush' to make it work well with the technology. That's how it's always been.[/quotemsg]
But you're assuming the content is custom-made for a device with the varifocal lenses. But if you consider Oculus Go, they can run stuff made for Gear VR. Presumably, this HMD would be running stuff made for Go or Rift, etc. So, it would need to work well without developer customization and tuning.

I'm just saying it feels a bit gimmicky to me. And how often would it have to focus on the wrong thing or "hunt", before users get frustrated and turn it off? A feature like this needs to be rock-solid.

 

[cryoburner]

[quotemsg=20936748,0,328798]The varifocal lens sounds potentially bulky, noisy, slow, fragile, and frustrating (e.g. if it focuses on a bush in front of you that you're trying to look through to see the baddies on the other side). Magic Leap's approach is more brute-force, but really so much more elegant.
...
The extra FoV sounds nice, but not sure that's the way I'd want to spend so much additional resolution. If they have a good foveated rendering approach (i.e. better than the static one in Oculus Go) that can deliver a "free" resolution bump to accommodate, then perhaps.
[/quotemsg]
Actually, since you would need eye tracking to enable proper foveated rendering, that could also likely be used in conjunction with the motorized lenses for more accurate focusing. If the eye tracking is suitably accurate, it should be able to detect your eyes crossing slightly, as happens when viewing something up close, and based on their positions, triangulate the approximate distance that they would naturally be focusing at. The lenses could in turn move to the appropriate position to allow the viewer to focus on things more naturally. To look right, this would likely also need to be combined with simulated depth of field on the software side of things, since the lenses would be adjusting the focus of the entire screen at once. The lenses being able to focus might also eliminate the need for many eyeglass wearers to wear glasses inside the headset, since a simple calibration could keep the screens within their focal range.

Such a focusing system might not necessarily have issues like being noisy or slow either. Depending on how the lenses are designed, they might not need to move very far, or be particularly heavy, and unlike most cameras with autofocus, the headset should have better data to work with to know where the lenses should be positioned, so that they can instantly move there.