210 Degrees of Heads-Up Display: Hands-On With the InfinitEye 80
First time accepted submitter muterobert writes "InfinitEye is a prototype head mounted display that uses dual 1280×800 displays to create a massive 210 degree field of view. I traveled to Toulouse, France to be the first journalist in the world to go hands-on with the unit. These are my thoughts on the trip, the team, and the HMD itself. 'Natural and Panoramic Virtual Reality' is the best phrase I can come up with that summarises the InfinitEye's capabilities. If using the Oculus Rift is like opening the sunroof on a virtual world, the InfinitEye takes the roof clean off — at least if you base your opinion solely on horizontal FOV. But the new HMD also offers 1280×800 per eye in comparison the current Oculus Rift Dev Kit's 640×800 (and only slightly fewer pixels per eye than the Oculus Rift HD prototype)."
Which? (Score:2)
210 or 120? :>
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"210 or 120? :>"
It's 240 but they use 30 degrees to filter out the nose.
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No mention of overlap factor (Score:2)
The Occulus has a ~100% overlap factor, meaning that the same arc of FOV is presented to both eyes. Put another way, the left and right sides of both eye views are the same.
This device has less than 100% overlap. I'm guessing it's around 60% from looking at the monitor images. When the overlap decreases too much, it gives you the impression of having a very large nose that blocks each eye from seeing part of the other eye view. This can be annoying.
The overlap factor for real people varies, of course, d
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This device has less than 100% overlap. I'm guessing it's around 60% from looking at the monitor images. When the overlap decreases too much, it gives you the impression of having a very large nose that blocks each eye from seeing part of the other eye view. This can be annoying.
100% overlap is not my any means normal for the human vision system. 60% to 70% is normal for most people.
Abandoning lens based optics seems count-intuitive. Using lenses that more closely copy the human eye would seem the wise choice.
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How will we see all the snakes???
Typo in first word of Headline (Score:5, Informative)
This might be a new record or maybe not. The headline currently states "120 Degrees..." when it should say "210 Degrees..." Summary and article both state 210 degrees.
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This might be a new record or maybe not. The headline currently states "120 Degrees..." when it should say "210 Degrees..." Summary and article both state 210 degrees.
How long before 360 degrees is crammed into it? Now that would be cool, but I don't know if it has already been tried yet.
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That was mommy 1.0. Mommy 2.0 replaces the 3rd eye with a digital camera.
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The submission had it right in the title. Timmeh fucked it up when trying to edit the title.
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Summary and article both state 210 degrees.
210 degrees is far more than the human field of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye#Field_of_view [wikipedia.org]
Re:Typo in first word of Headline (Score:4, Informative)
From your citation: "horizontal field of view is as high as 270"
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You didn't even need to cite it - 210 degrees is greater than 180 degrees (or be able to outstretch your hands and see both hands whilst looking forward). 210 degrees means you can look straight ahead and see a little behind you (15 degrees each way) which given human eyes are pointed forwards, means even directly left and right vision is already almost impossible, nevermind vision to the reverse.
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Your eyes can move in their sockets.
With eyeball rotation of about 90(deg) (head rotation excluded, peripheral vision included), horizontal field of view is as high as 270(deg).
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Yes, we all instinctively rotate out eyeballs 45 degrees when we see things in the corner of our eyes.
Oh, wait... We don't. We're not chameleons, we turn our heads.
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Yes, we all instinctively rotate out eyeballs 45 degrees when we see things in the corner of our eyes.
Oh, wait... We don't.
Oh wait, we do, so we can get a look at the possible snake as fast as possible. And then we move our heads as well. And if our heads are immobile or we're feeling lazy and not especially threatened, we might not even do that.
I'd say 30 degrees would be a quite normal range of everyday eyeball rotation.
Re: Typo in first word of Headline (Score:1)
I can stick my arms out, and without moving my head (but moving my eyes) see both hands. My hands are further back than my eyes, that implies greater than 180 to me. 210 may do it though.
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Of course, the eye is not in a fixed location relative to the display. I can see more than 180 degrees without moving my head through solely moving my eyes.
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Are you a chameleon?
I'm pretty sure we mostly turn our heads instead of rolling our eyes around to look at things.
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This might be a new record or maybe not. The headline currently states "120 Degrees..." when it should say "210 Degrees..." Summary and article both state 210 degrees.
And, lest we not forget "Heads-Up Display"? Really, it's a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), a Head-Up Display (HUD) is something completely different. [wikipedia.org] I think timothy should lose his geek card for this last ungeekly act.
[shakes head and wonders what happened to the real /.]
Not bad (Score:1)
From the video the latency seems acceptably low.
The border edges don't need to be very high res, since our eyes are only high res at a small area, and you don't normally use only your eyes to look all the way to the left/right, you'd normally also move your head a bit towards the area you want to look at.
Come on, Timothy. (Score:2)
When Can I Code With a HUD? (Score:2)
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Um, Oculus rift is very codeable. The only purchasable version comes as part of a dev kit that includes a C++ SDK, and a specialized version of Unity, both of which support the rift.
(You can also use source or unreal)
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Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.
Oh.
I see.
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??
You're not going to be able to read much source code on the current Oculus Rift.
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If the oculus rift is any indication, not even close yet.
I've found text that isn't directly in the center of my field of view very hard or impossible to read.
That said, the rift is a fun toy, and maybe the consumer version will be better in this regard.
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We've had technology to replace monitors for well over 20 years now. I tried one on at a trade show back in 2000. It was like the old "Private Eye" [ecloud.org] monitor from the early 1990s, which was red-on-black CGA only, but this one was 1024x768 full-color SVGA IIRC. You wear the device on your head like glasses, and it has a small arm that extends in front of your eye. While wearing it, a virtual screen appears to hover in front of you.
What ever happened to these devices, I have no idea. They'd be great for wo
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Why not just one ultra wide display (Score:4, Insightful)
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Since it's face worn, it's a binocular: the screens are so close it will look like a seemless scene, stitched together by the brain.
also, since it's so close to your eyes, you will probably be blinded by the light in about 10 minutes...
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...you will probably be blinded by the light in about 10 minutes...
On the upside, you may also be revved up like a deuce and therefore become another mover in the night [youtube.com].
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How does Fury even see these?
He turns.
Sounds... exhausting.
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As the screen is very close to your face, you need an eyepiece. One for each eye.
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If you have 2 monitors, it's hard to display 3 things side by side (Firefox , IE, and Chrome for instance).
Maybe these people can help you: http://www.digitaltigers.com/zenview-arenaelitexl.asp [digitaltigers.com]
Display so big 210 becomes 120 (Score:2)
Bandwagon jumpers (Score:2)
These people are just jumping on the wave being created by Oculus Rift.
The current Oculus Rift is concentrating on latency, not resolution. Extra resolution is a given once all the other problems are finally sorted out. Delaying the high-res screens is a good move because it gives screen technology a bit of time to advance and keeps the dev kits dirt-cheap at the same time.
So...don't put too much emphasis on big headlines about screen resolution. The final Oculus Rift may well be lag-free and 1080p per eye
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Of all the many serious problems with the Oculus Rift, field of view is not a pressing one... they're planning to address the most serious things as best they can by the consumer launch, but when faced with painfully low resolution (and the InfinitEye has the same perceived resolution as the Rift, since all the extra pixels are shoved into peripheral vision) or near incompatibility with myopia, FoV isn't as important.
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I think we're approaching a point where it's within the right price range for the most practical consumer use: gaming.
VR was hyped heavily because people thought a 3D world would naturally be more intuitive than a 2D world. Evidently this is no longer a big deal, and VR for the office environment (aside from a few niche areas) probably doesn't really add much at this point.
But the novelty factor and immersion capabilities combined with the decreasing price point (both the head gear and the PC to actually dr
Re:90s again? (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a lot of hype about VR stuff in the 90s, and the whole thing did not get much traction.
Because they were rubbish. Back in the 90s you'd have to pay $100,000 for something that was worse than the $300 Oculus Rift devkit.
(plus another million for a computer powerful enough to drive it)
Are things significantly better now?
Yes.
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Because they were rubbish. Back in the 90s you'd have to pay $100,000 for something that was worse than the $300 Oculus Rift devkit.
(plus another million for a computer powerful enough to drive it)
Your second point has more validity than the first. Computing power was the real issue. Reasonable (if heavy) HMDs weren't even $10k, much less $100k. Its been a long time, but I think most of the ones I used in the mid 90's were in the $2k-$3k range.
But even more than that, the market for that kind of device is vastly different now. In the 90's, you didn't have anything close to the kind of market for real forward looking devices like that. It was a time when AOL ruled the space for what little of the gene
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Memory of stuff like that is hazy at best, and it's been 20 years....
I remember trying a few systems back in the '90s and being distinctly underwhelmed(and that was back when just being near an SGI workstation was exciting)
I bought an Oculus VR dev-kit last month and I'm quite impressed. Yes, the screens are low-res, but I knew they would be (and I know it will be addressed). The overall impression is very good though.
Re:90s again? (Score:4, Informative)
There was a lot of hype about VR stuff in the 90s, and the whole thing did not get much traction.
They're developing consumer versions that are far superior (and cheaper) than the $1000 minimum 256 color, low FoV junk from the 90's (looking at you VFX-1!). Better, professional units quickly went up to the 10s of thousands of dollars.
Are things significantly better now?
The reason why it's better now is due to cheap high resolution displays (thanks to phones and tablets) and precise accelerometers and gyros.
On the Occulus Rift side, they sidestepped the old design requiring two separate screens by using one screen split between your two eyes and using optics to make the narrow (per eye) screen appear wide. Also the optics concentrate more pixels in the center of your field of view (where you need them most). The distortions created by this are counteracted in software. So this new approach + cheaper displays + cheaper sensors = time for cheap and awesome consumer VR headsets!
CastAR has it beat already.. (Score:2)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system
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castAR is 1280x768 per eye with 90 degrees FOV in VR. It supports projected AR, AR, and VR.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system
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1280x768 per eye on a 90 degree FoV will appear to be enormously higher resolution than 1280x800 per eye on a 210 degree FoV. For a given fixed resolution, the wider a FoV you stretch it over, the less pixels are in the center of your vision that you focus on.
Considering that the InfinitEye and the Rift dev prototype use roughly similar screens at about the same distance from the eye, they should appear to the user to be about the same effective resolution (painfully low): the InfinitEye will just extend fu
Wide FOV... Great... (Score:2)
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It would be easier to pick the iPhone since it's only one or two shapes that changes a lot less often than the hundreds of Android phones out there.
On the other hand, is there any way to use an iPhone as a low-latency display?
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So, open up cellphones to get their LCD displays to build your own heads-up display? In this case I guess the earlier iPhones are also good candidates.
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So, open up cellphones to get their LCD displays to build your own heads-up display?
No, you don't do that, because it makes no bloody sense. You buy LCDs* from (a middleman who buys them from) the same factories phone makers buy them from. Whether you go through a middleman or talk to the factory depends on the volume you're buying and whether or not you have a presence in China.
*note: don't say "Liquid Crystal Display displays" unless you work for your employer, the Department of Redundancy Bureau.
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But using LCDs from older cellphones would be a good idea to reduce price, help promote the "hacking" spirit (i.e. hacking as in SparkFun and Adafruit, not as in black hats who target banks) and be more ecological by re-using older technology. BYOLCDP*.
* Panels
Chromatic aberration (Score:2)
The problem is that LCD panels have horrible color and brightness shift issues as you view them at an angle, and the eye here is so close that different parts of the screen are at dramatically different angles to the eye.
It _may_ be possible to solve some of that in software. Or it could require the use of OLED displays.
Why do VR systems have crappy resolution? (Score:2)
Given the availability of the high density display technology in use in cell phones and such, I think it's absolutely shameful that the VR companies keep plugging crap like this instead of actual high quality displays. There is just flat out no excuse for it.