When it comes to virtual reality (VR) there are two important factors to consder when considering immersion. The first is the visual presentation. If the picture is so bad you can’t believe your eyes, chances are you won’t. The second is audio, an important factor we’ve discussed on VRFocus several times. However, it’s the former that Google is focusing on, at least according to a keynote made earlier during SID’s (the Society for Information Display’s) Display Week 2017 conference in Los Angeles, California.
As reported by Consumer Electronics Daily, the Tuesday keynote saw Google’s Vice President on matters relating to VR and augmented reality (AR) Clay Bavor take to the stage where he revealed that the power behind the Cardboard and Daydream were in a parnership with an unnamed manufacturing company and that the pair were working on a prototype display that is, in Bavor’s word’s “spectacular”.
The prototype made by Google and “one of the leading OLED manufacturers” is set to provide a quantum leap in displays if what was said is realised. Bavor mentioning that there would be ten times as many pixels “than any commercially available VR display today”, “the pixels of two and a half 4K TVs”.
Google have of course recently announced a partnership with both the Vive team and Lenovo to create a new “standalone” VR head-mounted display (HMD) at this year’s Google I/O event which will have all components needed built-in to the headset. Whilst there was no suggestion from Bavor that this was related to this project no real details were released regarding the standalone project’s specs.
Bavor described visual quality as one of virtual reality’s “fundamentally unsolved problems” and Google is not alone with their efforts.
Elsewhere Samsung has also been revealing new screen technology both for OLED and LCD, with the Korean manufacturer revealing an LCD display with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 4K, a significant improvement on that of other headsets including that of their mobile VR partner Oculus’ Rift headset. Meanwhile at the same event as the Bavor keynote the eMagin Corporation were also at showcasing their OLED displays which can be used in VR HMDs and other wearables.
This “secret project” (as it was described) is a developing story and VRFocus will bring you more information when it is available.