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Text in virtual worlds

lukevanderhart
Honored Guest
Just got my dev kit today. I am very excited about the technology and possibilities, but I must confess that it doesn't appear quite ready yet for some of the things I was hoping to use it for.

Specifically, I am personally less interested in gaming applications than I am in novel immersive virtualized approaches to tasks which are currently accomplished textually: specifically, programming, since that's something I know a lot about. I would love to be able to visualize my program and dataflows in a 3d virtual environment.

One thing that stands very much in the way of this, though, at least with the dev kit, is that it seems nearly impossible to render readable text in the VR world. The resolution just isn't there, and I, at least, haven't been able to calibrate my headset to the point where I feel like I can focus on details in the world, something required for comfortable reading.

The only thing I've been able to read through the display at all is the info panel in the Tuscany demo, but that's just rendering text directly in front of the user's eye, pixel-for-pixel... it's not really helpful when it comes to rendering text as part of the environment.

Has anyone been able to do this, or have any thoughts around it? It's not even limited to weird goals like mine... a lot of games I enjoy would become pretty much unplayable if it were impossible to read anything in the virtual world.
7 REPLIES 7

gallantpigeon
Honored Guest
Reading text without depth parallax could give you a headache as you would constantly be trying to focus on infinity. I guess you could render your text to a texture, then draw the texture on a quad and let the oculus pixel shader handle converting this to stereoscopic 3D. Taking it a bit further, you could use multiple quads for multiple text locations, e.g. for rendering names over over other characters / folders etc.

Not sure if programming with a rift will catch on though - the display resolution will limit the amount of text you can display and not being able to see your keyboard out of your peripheral would mean a lot of typos.

cybereality
Grand Champion
Well reading text in Windows (for example web browsing, programming, etc.) is probably not a good idea. The resolution and quality is just not there yet. However, you should be able to find a solution to display text in-game (for example, avatar names above a player).

The first thing is that the text should be displayed at the proper depth (i.e. the depth of the player or object it is over). You may also have to use a larger font size, so that the text is clearly readable. So it can be done, it will just need to be tweaked from what will work on a 2D monitor.
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Oneironaut
Explorer
I think in-game text will really work well if the consumer Rift has head tracking. A higher resolution display combined with the ability to bend down to get a closer look at a book or letter will be great. Of course, the ability to pick up the object and move it closer to your face, like in the Hydra demos, would also be useful.

atavener
Adventurer
Of course there's limited resolution right now. But once that improves text should be better. Why better? Because you have depth control -- placing text glyphs at whatever desired focal distance you wish, while background can truely be background. I've done some experiments just with duplicated columns and letting my eyes focus deeper... I find I prefer a "depth" of about twice where my monitor physically is as that is more relaxed. Clarity is better than if I am sitting twice as far from my monitor, even if I enlarged the text, because I have mild nearsightedness.

Note that text in a virtual environment increases your "deskspace" immensely... more than just being able to glance around, as you can truly take advantage of varying depth and translucence due to focal depth.

I think the limits right now with the Rift Devkit are the low resolution, and bilinear sampled warping. You might try making a more expensive shader that performs a convolution, maybe with a Lanczos filter. Right now I imagine any 1-2 pixel details get smeared by the warping-shader.

chrisboyce
Honored Guest
I have a similar project in mind, and I don't plan on treating the displays at terminal screens themselves. Rather, you are encased a virtual dome of terminals, and can look/move around to see more.

yubinhydin
Explorer
Having the text converted to an image and put, a bill board type display in the game would be a supported effort. I am sure Advertisers are looking for new ways to exploit the new market. Virtual Billboards.

Regards,
Mike

Inscothen
Explorer
the only way text would be readable, that i can think of, is projecting it onto a surface, at least with this devkit.

There's a game called splinter cell conviction where you can see this. It would be limited in how much text can be displayed though.