Once VR is high enough fidelity, we should be able to just use a VR headset and virtual monitors, hopefully. There is even pretty good hand tracking software such that if you look at your hands with the VR headset on you'll see your hands, and you can also project the keyboard for the times when you need to look at your hands and / or keyboard.
I remember a couple years ago reading that to get roughly of 1080p of at VR headset distances would require the equivalent , from a pixel perspective, of several (I believe it was 8) standard sized desktop monitors. The implication of this was that we were a LONG way off from having that level of resolution so I would be very interested to know current state of the art.
> to get roughly of 1080p of at VR headset distances would require the equivalent , from a pixel perspective, of several (I believe it was 8) standard sized desktop monitors
Can someone provide a link to elaborate? My intuition would be that you wouldn't need any more pixels, just smaller pixels. It feels like the aforementioned claim is comparing apples to oranges: to fill your entire FOV with desktop monitors at normal distances would also take about eight monitors.
The key metric is pixels per degree, which is going to come from both the field of view in VR as well as the monitor resolution.
To put this in Snellen eye chart perspective, in order to read the 20/20 line and distinguish letter details to tell them apart, you have to be able to see details as fine as 1 arc min - 1/60th of a degree.
So basically if your math comes up with less than 60 pixels per degree, you are going to essentially be near sighted inside of the VR environment.
Let's say you have a set of VR goggles with a 140 degree field of view. You need 140 degrees * 60 pixels/degree =8400 pixels to get that same visual acuity as 20/20 vision in real life.
Using HP's new G2 goggles (coming out soon) as an example, they have a screen resolution of 2,160 pixels,and (I've read) about a 100 degree horizontal FOV. That works out to about 22 pixels per degree. Which is about like having 20/55 vision. This is why in VR, you can't read things from a normal distance if drawn to scale. You have to either get closer to them (in VR) or scale them up to make them readable.
You CAN give the user effectively better vision by reducing the field of view. If you don't mind having a 36 degree wide field of view, you'll have 20/20 vision.
I already do a little work in vr. I only work on one 1080 monitor in an Index. It's great for isolating yourself from distraction, but we have a ways to go for sure when it comes to UX. Pixel density, might be starting to get there, but it's still a compromise. I would guess it get there in the next few years with the big push at work from home, and all those Zuck-bucks funding development in portable VR.
