Svelte VR headsets coming?
According to researchers from Standford and NVidia, the adoption of virtual reality is slowed by the bulky headsets required. They want to offer a slim solution. A SIGGRAPH document from earlier this year outlines their plan or you can watch the video below. There's also a second video, also below, that covers some technical questions and answers.
The traditional headset has a screen right in front of your eyes. Special lenses can make them thinner, but this new method provides screens up to a few millimeters thick. The technology looks quite intense and appears to create a hologram at different apparent locations using a laser, geometric phase lens, and pupil replicating waveguide.
The original method uses a beam splitter to divert light to the eye, but the novelty is the use of a waveguide instead of the beam splitter. Of course, there are downsides, many of which can be mitigated using the techniques described in the article and video.
Of course, these are far from practical, although there are small bezels that have giant ribbon cables that would make you frown. In fact, they look like comically raised eyebrows themselves.
If you want to build it yourself, you might be better off using something more traditional. We will admit, however, to being fascinated by the whole idea of holograms.
According to researchers from Standford and NVidia, the adoption of virtual reality is slowed by the bulky headsets required. They want to offer a slim solution. A SIGGRAPH document from earlier this year outlines their plan or you can watch the video below. There's also a second video, also below, that covers some technical questions and answers.
The traditional headset has a screen right in front of your eyes. Special lenses can make them thinner, but this new method provides screens up to a few millimeters thick. The technology looks quite intense and appears to create a hologram at different apparent locations using a laser, geometric phase lens, and pupil replicating waveguide.
The original method uses a beam splitter to divert light to the eye, but the novelty is the use of a waveguide instead of the beam splitter. Of course, there are downsides, many of which can be mitigated using the techniques described in the article and video.
Of course, these are far from practical, although there are small bezels that have giant ribbon cables that would make you frown. In fact, they look like comically raised eyebrows themselves.
If you want to build it yourself, you might be better off using something more traditional. We will admit, however, to being fascinated by the whole idea of holograms.
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