Is VR dead?

[RCHeliguy]

I have stopped waiting for new videos from him on the Crystal. His videos, albeit mentioning the Aero being an amazing headset, in essence clearly state he thinks the Crystal has the better package. Those single comments don’t fit into that.

And yeah it is funny how on both the Crystal and Aero side there are those „I want to believe guys“, that take every grain of information and use it to strengthen their point.

It becomes noise after a while, doesn't it?

I've watched one video and then in the comments section read comments where people cherry pick what they wanted to hear from the video.

I'm fully aware of the limitations of the Aero and I'm not on a holy crusade to suggest everyone should buy one. I consider it a stop gap, and my Index is still better than the Aero in a number of ways, but I found I couldn't go back to my Index. I'm hoping my next headset will be one that I can completely embrace and be happy with for many years and I'm hoping to replace my Aero after less than 1 year of ownership.

Unfortunately the BSB has changed my idea of what I want for my next headset. I also hate pinning all my hopes on the next Index. Given the next Index will likely have eye tracking in the high end version, it can't be tiny like the BSB. However that doesn't mean it can't be smaller and lighter than the last Index.

I remember when I got my Rift CV1 thinking that what I really want will be 5 years out. Now I'm thinking that my next headset will still be a compromise.

 

[blekenbleu]

Aero is sharper when looking in the distance

I recall him commenting about Aero revealing more distant detail.
Many photographers will be familiar with differences between sharpness and resolution,
where one shows higher contrast across edges, while the other better sorts e.g. fine line pairs.

 

[Leynad777]

The VR Flight Sim Guy is saying in Aero/Crystal AB comparison that the Aero is sharper when looking in the distance. He says either it's the Pimax's Mura or the higher quality lenses in the Aero for this. He also is still saying that he still prefers the Aero over the Crystal.

But he also said the Crystal is sharper in closer distance and it seems to me that VR-headsets have similar limitations than optical lenses in terms of focus. I had issues with distance clarity in the 8KX and key was to setup the IPD and IPD-offset correctly while there was always a small compromise to make between sharpness in the distance but a bit blurriness in the HUD and cockpit vice versa. The curvature and angle of the lenses might also play a role, but I guess tweaking the IPD-offset might 'fix' the distance clarity, but blurry the instruments a bit.

The great thing about such high ppd headsets in combination with current gen GPUs is, that both is really sharp enough now

 

[metalnwood]

He seems to say he prefers the crystal when he is in it, then when he is not he mentions he likes the aero. It seems it is very close however you may look at it as an observer.

Bigger FOV and much deeper blacks on the crystal, why doesnt he say what balances that out on the aero because those two things are big, I love night driving.

 

[Spinelli]

You mention the two factors that are involved, the world scale and the fov.

The fov in the headset is constant, how much you see of its potential is different person to person and mod etc. i.e. the game does not change the fov, the closer you get to the lens the more you may see. like looking through a 5cm hole in a piece of paper at arms length, you only see a small fov, bring it closer and you see more, bring it up to 2cm of your eye and you get a fov like a typical vr headset.. interestingly the scale of the world doesnt change whereever that paper is, just like it also doesnt when you look through the headset, even if you put the headset at arms length and look at an object while bringing the headset towards you, the object you are looking at wont change scale while the apparent fov increases. Not the rendered fov of course, just the snippet you see.

It relies on the world scale being right for the person using the headset, so that their ipd is set correct which will lead to you seeing the correct world scale. As far as the game, all it needs to know is delivered to it in the steamvr/openxr api layers.

When you throw an FOV app on the computer it doesnt know the screen size because there is nothing in the api between the monitor/gpu/os to provide that information. If there was then the fov app would query the additional information to be able to make the calculation.

As this kind of thing is more important to vr working the needed information is made available through the api layers.

How could the world scale stay correct relative to the user as the user moves closer or further away? If I look at the lenses of my headset from 3 meters away, the steering wheel on the screen will look the same size as my thumb nail, lol, no different to looking at a regular monitor from far away (every thing displayed will look smaller and smaller).

VR headsets are essentially 2 monitors shoved up to our face (not exactly) so, just like monitors, the world scale could appear different to different people, different thickness face foams, different headsets (different distances from VR screens to the users' eyes), etc.

Unless the game knows the distance from the eyes each different brand and model VR headset's screens are to the user, and unless the VR headset (or game) knows the distance to each person's eyes depending on different faces, different face foams, etc., then I don't see how we can all be guaranteed to experience a proper 1:1 FOV consistently across all users & headsets.

 

[metalnwood]

Only the FOV alters by how far your eyes are from the lenses as all that changes is how much of the screen can be seen, again, not how much FOV the sim renders - it renders the same FOV no matter how far you are.

Have you tried? Put the headset in a stationary position and find something you can see, move your head back and you will see that its size is not changing because you move your head back. How optics work it will be harder for you to see the image as you move back from the lense but what you do see should not shrink dramatically. You will just see less of what is presented but not a very different scale.

The distance of the eyes to the lense is not the determining factor for the scale. The IPD which the game know, passed in from the headset, will help it render two scenes generated by two camera with a seperation the same as your eyes - hence showing the world in a scale that you are used to.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Once again the comfort factor seems to make the experience better than the specs would suggest. If they can squeeze a little more FOV out off these as was posted by someone who claimed to work for BSB, it might make all the difference.

However she did mention it getting warm and requiring being wiped off occasionally. That does make me wonder how well it handles fogging. This morning it's 97% humidity here. Granted in my house the humidity is a chunk lower, but I don't miss having to spray an anti-fog solution on my lenses like I did with my Rift. The Valve had ventilation holes and my fan blew right through it preventing fogging at least on my rig and the Aero's fan accomplishes the same thing in room scale or on my rig.

 

[mechsicko]

Once again the comfort factor seems to make the experience better than the specs would suggest. If they can squeeze a little more FOV out off these as was posted by someone who claimed to work for BSB, it might make all the difference.

However she did mention it getting warm and requiring being wiped off occasionally. That does make me wonder how well it handles fogging. This morning it's 97% humidity here. Granted in my house the humidity is a chunk lower, but I don't miss having to spray an anti-fog solution on my lenses like I did with my Rift. The Valve had ventilation holes and my fan blew right through it preventing fogging at least on my rig and the Aero's fan accomplishes the same thing in room scale or on my rig.

Unless the screenshot itself was fake (what forum was that from?) my guess is he knows what he's talking about. I looked up that dude cause he seemed familiar.. turns out he's the CEO/founder of Bigscreen lol https://twitter.com/dshankar?lang=en

edit: figured out the original convo took place on MRTV's discord so probably legit?

 

[RCHeliguy]

June will be big with Meta and Apple announcements, but it will be interesting to see what Google/Qualcomm/Samsung have coming.

Mentions some "pretty big news" may be coming soon for the BSB very quickly at the end. Hmmm... Maybe they got that extra FOV that was hinted at??

 

[RCHeliguy]

SadlyItsBradley just mentioned this.

eMagin has announced it has entered a definitive merger agreement with Samsung Display This is the Micro-OLED company I’ve been covering for a couple years. And believes they worked with Valve on their next gen 4K uOLED display

He just dropped a video.

 

[battistadonati]

June will be big with Meta and Apple announcements, but it will be interesting to see what Google/Qualcomm/Samsung have coming.

Mentions some "pretty big news" may be coming soon for the BSB very quickly at the end. Hmmm... Maybe they got that extra FOV that was hinted at??

I wonder how Google will try to come back after their Google Glass scandal...

 

[RCHeliguy]

Around 9:30 he says that BSB will increase the FOV to the same as the Index before it ships!

I'm now a LOT more interested in seeing how this turns out, however he dinged it for a few issues including hand tracking and mentioned that you may need a 3rd lighthouse for the tracking to be "perfect". That remains to be seen. It is possible that because it is so small that it could use another lighthouse, but I don't understand the hand controller tracking being off.

Sure it won't be the same pixel density as what I have now, but I will watch this closely. Everyone keeps saying remarkable and game changing things about this headset. He referred to it as a wet dream in VR. It is still supposed to have zero screen door effect.

I won't pre-order one. What I have works well, but I will be watching. For room scale I would LOVE something that small and lite weight and I've gotten used to my IEM solution for audio. I am still hoping to hear an announcement from Valve, but I think something this size is in a completely different category.

 

[RCHeliguy]

FWIW I just saw a person say they got a tracking number from Pimax and expect delivery at the end of this week.

 

[Captain Beardface]

Around 9:30 he says that BSB will increase the FOV to the same as the Index before it ships!

I've not seen this mentioned in an official capacity, but would love it if true. Coming from an Index, giving up FOV for sim racing is a hard sell.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Interesting!
3552x3840 per eye 1.3" displays.
1,000 nits for now 5,000 nits coming.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've not seen this mentioned in an official capacity, but would love it if true. Coming from an Index, giving up FOV for sim racing is a hard sell.

And then you see what is coming in the above video and wonder how much longer it will be before we can see that.

BSB 1" = 2560x2560 vs. 1.3" = 3552x3840 and still micro OLED but also much brighter.

6.5Mp vs. 13.6Mp

That would put us extremely close to retina resolution and could be mapped to a wide FOV while still maintaining an ultra sharp display. At some FOV ranges it would be retina resolution.

Of course it will also require DFR and a 50 series GPU and even that will likely not run at full resolution except for non-sims. As shown in that video they were only displaying images or looped video streams likely because it was all they could display.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Just realized I've been waiting over 6 months for the Seasonic PX-1200 to drop!

 

[RCHeliguy]

Wow! I hope this is coming in the not too terribly distant future.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Looks like they made a few improvements before hitting production.

 

[gamma123152]

Looks like they made a few improvements before hitting production.

Quite important one's from what I understand. He didn't mention it, but I think that it's not the panel that is changed but the lenses. Since they probably have more control over the lenses then the panels. And both can fix/improve the Mura I think. But anyway it seems to be fixed which is great. I'm also surprised that they even improved the plastic of HMD. Now I need to get my crystal.. it will still take a while probably.