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What is the effective resolution like on the Rift

Yam
Honored Guest
Looking forward to my development kit but I will likely get mine much later than others being a late backer

Having a bit of experience with stereo imagery I am already aware that the combined image creates effective resolution higher than you would expect.
So my question to those already with a Rift. Is the effective resolution on the Rift capable of say simulating a multiple monitor desktop environment effectively?
I understand that this is not what the Rift is designed for but it is defiantly an exciting prospect if practical. As a user of Maya you can never have enough screens.

*edited title
16 REPLIES 16

phoenix96x
Protege
"Yam" wrote:
Looking forward to my development kit but I will likely get mine much later than others being a late backer

Having a bit of experience with stereo imagery I am already aware that the combined image creates effective resolution higher than you would expect.
So my question to those already with a Rift. Is the effective resolution on the Rift capable of say simulating a multiple monitor desktop environment effectively?
I understand that this is not what the Rift is designed for but it is defiantly an exciting prospect if practical. As a user of Maya you can never have enough screens.

*edited title


No, unfortunately. The resolution of the dev kit is quite poor - I've found it's practically impossible to read the menu text in TF2, for example. I'd say the resolution is the biggest letdown with the Rift.

sambeckett
Protege
I agree. all text is unreadable. pixels are very obvious.
Maybe if someone made a menu that worked for low resolutions, huge bubble text, it might work.

PPI needs to be twice as high than even the current highest.

craigotron
Honored Guest
Sounds like we need to start lobbying Oculus to move to a configuration that allows devs to swap in new screens with higher PPIs. Do you know if the SDK provides any support for this?

I'm really interested in providing people with a very high-end VR experience, so even if headset-only VR ends up in every living room in the world I'll still be able to provide people with an immersion they won't get at home. Very high resolution displays sound like it might be a necessity.

bretspot
Honored Guest
If you read how the sdk reports ipd and screen size it sounds like the sdk allows for higher res. It seems to be built around ipd/size and lens distortion numbers.

craigotron
Honored Guest
Thanks, Bretspot
Anyone want to start a project to up-rez the Rift?

I'm not a developer but I'm a pretty good Producer and I'd love to help manage the project.

If yes, I'll start a thread for it in the Collaborations section.

Let me know...

Thoth_The3x
Explorer
I remember Palmer saying that replacing the screen would be trivially easy and require only a new panel mount which would probably be a few bucks. Unfortunately I don't remember how old that post is or how relevant it is now...

I don't care about a HUD, but is the resolution so bad that you wouldn't be able to read 3D model text from about 10 feet away (ingame of course)?

Quick example of 3d text is the MegaFiers addon for Unity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdPzy9JAFac

craigotron
Honored Guest
That's exciting to hear. I wonder if the panel mount is something that can be 3d printed. I have access to one.

I haven't even gotten my Rift yet, and already I want to rip out the display. This will end in tears. I'll probably do it anyway.

MrGeddings
Explorer
I think this is being overplayed. The Dev Kit is more or less the "more professional prototype" for the Rift. Its clearly not good enough for consumers the average consumer will find it dissiponting the type who wants HD displays and shiney graphics however it seems from one youtube post that overall it provides a great feeling and the low res may be an issue with things like menus and such but for now the overall experence will be best.

We just all need to keep that in mind when making things for the dev units. To be honest with VR you really most likely want to limit menu texts anyways it breaks immersion. or perhaps a very larger menu with 3d rendered text? might be that because of the resolution the text isnt able to be properly rendered right on the screen.

I dont care. I am glad to know of that limiation but it seems that overall it still is rather nice and for the money you cant get anything better then that right now sure there better screens but then you get trade off of FOV or head tracking and honestly for me the whole point of VR is to feel immersed some screen resolution issues i think woudnt be a huge problem compared to the feeling of "being in the world" just perhaps not wearing the most clear glasses ;-).

some pointed it out at GDC some of that issue but someone still said "its worth 300 bucks" so thats good praise 🙂

but good to know about the text. either way cant wait to get mine!

XavierMidnight
Honored Guest
When you hit the spacebar in the unity example, the popup text window is easily readable until you get to the edges of the screen where the warping seems to blur it. I don't believe they made any real effort to modify the text in tf2. Simply making the text bigger and allowing you to "scroll" around it using the head tracking should work just fine.

In the end, just be creative. With actual 3D, UI's can be very different.