[Wear-Hard] Perhaps a cheaper HMD

[Tony Havelka]

 > Certainly QVGA, on which a simple clock face looks ragged, can only be
useful as a speedometer or heart rate monitor. As a video display it is
rated "suck". 
 
Oliver, being one of the Grandfathers of HMDs, you should remember a time
where QVGA was considered high res.  You were still making good products
with what would be considered "low res" today. What's changed other than the
availability of better, higher resolution displays?

> SVGA gives a good enough image and will likely be the one that Makes It
Big... if ever people integrate enough useful functions to make a HMD worth
wearing in the mass market. 
> Say 40° diagonal FOV:  any less feels like tunnel vision;  any more just
can't be eye-scanned without muscle strain... and the optics becomes
cost-impractical.  
> That's why a million night vision goggles have 40° FOV. 
>
> Say the eye's resolution  limit at these modest light levels is about half
of the ultimate eye resolution... oh, about  2.4 arcsec.  = 1/1000 of 40°. 
>
>So there is no (zero, nada) value in ever putting better than a 600x800
display in a 40° FOV HMD. 
>
>For anything less than SVGA -- either scale down the FOV to tunnel vision,
or learn to love jaggies. 
 
You have it right - consumer acceptability is going to be about the optics
and not the resolution of the panel - we've reached the apex of panel
resolution.   New and innovative optics will give the industrial designers
something to work with to design an appealing product.  The panel really has
not much to do with the consumer acceptance of a product.  No panel can
compensate for bad optics - yet.
 
-Tony
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.haven.org/pipermail/wear-hard/attachments/20070907/5c2ea9a8/attachment.html