Do you have any insights into that more in-depth explanation as to why it's so hard to achieve HD or better res in VR? I'm interested in doing a followup that touches on this.
I kind of assume it has to do with strange side-effects of the eye being so close to the monitor. Resolution and distance has a similar relationship as toxicity and dose.
Let me know of any helpful links or even your own insights/opinion.
Thanks
VR done
properly requires a huge amount of processing power. Using an Occulus Rift or an HTC Vive requires a further expense of $400 or more on a good graphics card to drive it. Realistically though, you are probably looking closer to $600 or more to drive VR properly.
In PC gaming, rendering a game at 4k and at 60+ fps takes a lot of processing power from the video card, and thus is an expensive thing to do. Now take VR where two images need to be rendered (one for each eye), then be at a high resolution and a high frame rate to avoid being motion sick. This effectively makes VR a $1000 investment for the VR unit, + $400-$1000 for a graphics card + a PC which is from the last 3 or so generations of processors.
VR done improperly can make people motion sick due to low frame rates, or low frame times which gives the user a delay in what they see in relation to their head movement which confuses the brain. Essentially there are so many implementations out there trying to get past the hardware 'horsepower' requirements which are not giving people great experiences. That $400+ investment is something for the enthusiast market, so trying to cut that fairly necessary expense out to be compelling to the main stream is a situation set up to fail.
Looking at it a different way:
Enthusiast PC gamers have more needs for features and quality of their monitors. A standard $200 monitor will be a sub par experience probably due to pixel response time alone. In order to get a good high res monitor, with the features desired, the enthusiast will be spending probably $700+ on a monitor. The enthusiast already has the PC and graphics card to run it, therefore I would argue that a $1000 VR rig is competing with monitors for that segment.
However VR is trying to appeal to the mainstream right off the bat, especially when the hardware required for a proper experience is not there for an obtainable price. I think if they had first tried to tap into the enthusiast market, where their product is actually pretty price competitive considering experience/price, they would have a segment to leap frog their products into the mainstream.
Luke Lafreniere of LinusTechTips has been a spokesperson for VR in the PC gaming community. He would be one of the best people to talk about VR: