> their VR has mostly been focused on mobile so them focusing on the high end market is really interesting

The one consistent thing about Google's VR/AR strategy so far is that it's extremely inconsistent. Different groups within Google are taking a lot of shots on different technologies and form factors with different partners. Some examples include Google Glass (built by Google X, now revived as Glass X for Enterprise) which was supposed to be picked up by Tony Fadell of Nest who then ended up leaving Google altogether, Google Cardboard (a side project by 2 smart Google France engineers for a conference), Google Dream w/ Daydream View, Google Tango (built by ATAP group and shut down after announcement of ARCore), and now ARCore w/ Asus and LG.

There is no discernible Google VR/AR strategy other than - let's see what bubbles up from different dev groups and, when needed, react to market forces (ARCore was a direct reaction to Apple's ARKit). IMO until Google really "focuses" on VR/AR with a dedicated group and strategy this new tech will remain a sideshow without much traction.

>There is no discernible Google VR/AR strategy other than - let's see what bubbles up from different dev groups and, when needed, react to market forces.

Clay Bavor's presentation at Google I/O[1] and SID Display Week[2] seems to outline their strategy concerning AR/VR pretty well.

>Some examples include Google Glass

Released in 2013 and pivoted to enterprise use. Now under the control of the Google hardware division.

>Tony Fadell of Nest who then ended up leaving Google altogether

Yes, he did leave Google, but only after being assigned to the roof.

>Google Cardboard (a side project by 2 smart Google France engineers for a conference)

A low cost VR solution developed in 2014 by two Googlers during their 20% innovation time off. I believe it's also the most widely used VR solution in the world.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tto90e-DfeM

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlADpD1fvuA

Their inconsistency can be a result of them releasing products not to actually have a consumer goal but to just collect massive amounts of data and killing it when they are done.

Of course that’s a problem with all of Google, not just VR. The last major top-down strategic direction they had was social, and that didn’t go very well.

I would also add that the price of the panel is one thing, the price of the systems needed to drive those resolutions is another. I wonder how they'll pull off appropriate frame rates at that resolution per panel.

All you need is a hardware upscaler in the display cable to take lower resolution up to native resolution of this display.

Clarity isn't as important as getting rid of the screen door effect.

This can't be overstated. You can achieve really convincing presence with nothing but flat shaded primitives, but the effect is greatly diminished if it appears there's something external in your field of view.

The other bonus here is that with the huge resolution bump, other use cases become available. Reading text in VR is tricky with the shipping headsets right now, but with this, a virtual desktop could be realistic.

This seems like a dumb question, but why is it that SDE (screen door effect) is dependent upon resolution? It seems to me like extremely high resolutions would force SDE to be solved but that SDE could also be solved by making "fatter" pixels at the same PPI. The cheapest way to do that would presumably be some slightly diffusive layer on top of the screen that diffuses by about 1/2 the distance between pixels. This seems like such a simple solution that it would have been tried already though, so why is the focus on resolution?

The diffuser will blur the image, the opposite of what you want.

Higher resolution screen with upscaled input does not sacrifice clarity for blur/no SDE. Upscaled input won't have as high detail as a higher resolution input, but the performance gains of the upscaled input far outweigh the negatives.

It seems like there should be a middle ground where you blur enough to remove SDE but not enough so that pixels overlap. The whole problem with SDE is that there is a perceptible gap between pixels - blur will spread the pixel over the gap but the gap is what ensures that the pixels do not become blurred ontop of each other. I assume this doesn't work in practice (since I don't think anyone is doing it), so I'd be interested in an argument for why it doesn't.

Conceivably, a higher resolution display would have a worse SDE than a lower one. If the pixels became smaller, then the gaps between pixels could get worse even if there are more pixels per inch. For example, [1] shows a game of Tetris played on a building and the problem with it is not that the resolution is low, but that the pixels have too gaps between them. Doubling the resolution would only help a little but make each pixel a big square instead of a dot would help immensely. A diffusive screen over that building could help potentially quite a lot. This is obviously an absurdly exaggerated scenario.

[1] https://mashable.com/2014/04/06/building-tetris-philadelphia...

Instead of blur, microlens arrays can be used to increase the pixel size to cover the gaps.

The microlens can also be designed to blur the RGB together to provide a true white pixel from the approx three coloured subpixels.

Absolutely something I was thinking, but not sure what the right terminology is! "Microlens" sounds fancier than you need, I'm really happy to just diffuse it but with a limited blur so that they don't bleed.

Only if the diffuser is in the optical chain and not the surface target at the focal plane of a projection.

Whenever we crumple our eyes up to squint we're creating a diffraction grating that works a treat for the myopic amnesiac I am when without my spectacles.

The ground glass of the focusing screen in my Nikon is diffuse. This particular diffusion assists with guaging the lens focus, bit only for smaller apertures than f/2.0, so that expensive 85mm f/1.4 prime lenses need autofocus. Dunno how I managed for two decades professionally before the digital switch rendered great optics practically redundant*

So what's preventing the projection of the high resolution display information into a kind of focusing screen like the old fashioned Single Lens Reflex cameras won the market with in the fifties and sixties?

Is it more physical constraints of the imposition of the display into the field of vision for infinity focus?

If long ago my amateur interest would have carried my thinking further, sadly I have no applicable reading even on the subjects, so forgive me if this is a beginner supposition in error.

I certainly see the opportunity to directly encourage the hardware development, even if the equipment will be unwieldy to use, even more so than today, for specialist fields such as fabric design and magazine printing. I have been involved in the latter for the entirety of my career, two decades of that running the company I hoped would open up enormous markets and that field even defenestrated Google in 2004, leading to the most epic narrative and pivot story if I manage to get things kicking again. * Surely there is a very good overlap between the current generation of customers for whom the budget simply isn't the obstacle, and the same customers who will allocate whatever you want to charge in the future, if you can deliver real advantages? I'm optimistic about VR, but not in any kind of short term horizon. I founded my own business on a thirty year plan.. that still could be met, and made decades one and two, kinda just the latter. Maybe this is what we all need: real long term benefit analysis and commitment. This isn't a factor of the youthfulness of the Valley to which short termism is often ascribed,when flighty CEOs are discounted, I was very young and junior by a generation and some to my co-founder, when I realized how I had found my calling. Surely the VR sector has plenty of similar thinkers young enough to put such time to their dreams?

*I kinda continue a bit in my profile, where I may be more bold soon. I welcome any feedback or inquiry, I may be less than the epitome of clarity when I come close to professional engagement with ideas I can't believe.. the industry hasn't destroyed my hopes because of politics not technology, not yet anyhow..