[HN Gopher] Holographic Glasses for Virtual Reality
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       Holographic Glasses for Virtual Reality
        
       Author : dcminter
       Score  : 70 points
       Date   : 2022-12-09 18:38 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (research.nvidia.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (research.nvidia.com)
        
       | curioussavage wrote:
       | I was excited to see this. And it's nice that headsets are
       | thinner now.
       | 
       | That said I feel like locomotion in vr is a disappointment. The
       | sliding based solutions are weird and treadmills are huge and
       | noisy. Is this even remotely feasible to solve in the next
       | decade? I'm assuming maybe not since there seem to only be a few
       | small companies working on it.
       | 
       | If you try "room scale" VR IMO it's a totally different
       | experience to walk around a simulated space.
        
       | dcminter wrote:
       | Ok, not super new as the paper is from August '22, but I missed
       | it at the time so maybe others did too - the submission video is
       | quite intriguing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGzj-AgI6RI
       | 
       | I'm moderately enthusiastic about the state of VR, but the bulky
       | uncomfortable headsets are definitely one of the flaws at the
       | moment which this technology looks to (maybe) address one day.
        
         | ehnto wrote:
         | I think unspoken is how intentionally isolating VR is of your
         | real world surroundings. It only takes me 30 seconds to get
         | booted up into VR but there is a mental block that makes it
         | seem like a much bigger undertaking, and I think that is due to
         | it being mentally similar to going to an entirely different
         | place.
        
           | RupertEisenhart wrote:
           | I never thought about it like that but that's a great point.
           | And switching out when someone comes into the room and eg.
           | asks you if you want lunch is quite jarring, and then having
           | to get out regularly for comfort breaks etc.
           | 
           | Plus working on eg. a train in VR would be a pain, you need
           | some spare input channels to watch out for conductors or
           | people taking your stuff.
        
             | tlarkworthy wrote:
             | I tried VR on an airplane and movements of the cabin affect
             | the in game world in extremely weird ways. You can't use VR
             | under acceleration presently, it messes the stabilization
             | up.
        
           | dcminter wrote:
           | It's also anti-social towards others sharing the space. I
           | refer to using my VR headset as "sticking my head in a
           | bucket" as it's so bad in that respect.
        
             | chaostheory wrote:
             | Yeah, mass adoption of XR won't happen until the form
             | factor evolves from face bucket to weird looking glasses
        
             | curioussavage wrote:
             | Non issue with the quest pro though. Even with passthrough
             | disabled.
        
       | opdahl wrote:
       | What would be interesting to see is if they are able to do these
       | with curved screens. If they are able to do that then potentially
       | getting a very high FOV should be possible.
        
       | tmikaeld wrote:
       | About the limited FOV, it can theoretically be increased up to
       | 120*.
       | 
       | From the paper: "The implemented FOV of the wearable prototype
       | was 22.8* diagonal, which is far smaller than commercially
       | available VR/AR displays. However, the FOV was mainly limited by
       | the size of the available SLM and the focal length of the GP
       | lens, both of which could be improved with different components.
       | For example, the focal length can be halved without significantly
       | increasing the total thickness by stacking two identical GP
       | lenses and a circular polarizer [Moon et al. 2020]. With a 2-inch
       | SLM and a 15 mm focal length GP lens, we could achieve a
       | monocular FOV of up to 120*"
        
         | gurumeditations wrote:
         | What is it about the size of the display that limits the FOV?
        
           | tmikaeld wrote:
           | Lens, color and light distortion are caused by bending of
           | lenses or bouncing of light, there have been attempts to
           | resolve this by moving the entire screen at an angle to where
           | the eyes would look. But such solutions are expensive and
           | error prone, mechanics don't last long.
        
       | throwaway23597 wrote:
       | > Our binocular wearable prototype provides a diagonal field of
       | view of 22.8deg...
       | 
       | Definitely some cool tech, I'm glad Nvidia is innovating in the
       | space, but they're really gonna need to crank up that FOV to make
       | this viable. I hope it's physically possible to get a full-eye
       | FOV in a glasses form factor...
        
         | ehnto wrote:
         | It wasn't clear to me if this is a transparent or opaque
         | display. For VR I agree, 22.8deg is pretty narrow but as an AR
         | overlay you could do a lot with that. Those are two very
         | different applications of course.
        
           | daniel_reetz wrote:
           | The displays used are opaque, and directly in front of the
           | eye. Have another look at the video or pictures from the
           | article.
        
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