6 ms·

Isn't a 0.6 micron pixel size at the limit of diffraction? How on earth do you get an accurate XY attitude control with a piezoelectric element at that scale? W

Isn't a 0.6 micron pixel size at the limit of diffraction? How on earth do you get an accurate XY attitude control with a piezoelectric element at that scale? What about vibrations? Timing/sync issues, etc? Anyone care to speculate?

oillio 10y ago
Patents don't need a working prototype. Maybe they calculated a theoretical limit of the smallest pixel size possible and used that number.
tedsanders 10y ago
I can't speak to most of those issues, but piezoelectric actuators can move precisely on nanometer scales. They control the positioning in many modern atomic force microscopes. So it seems plausible to be that they could achieve very fine control. Dealing with noise seems like the harder problem. Perhaps embedding sensors in the glass could give you real-time adjustment feedback.
Lorkki 10y ago
It's not like it's the only thing that sounds a bit too hopeful. Driving content to a light-field display at a decent frame rate and a resolution "much higher than [4375 x 2300]" is orders of magnitude beyond any mobile GPU now or within anyone's manufacturing plans. Speculation is all that the article is, and it sounds rather like it's intended to feed the hype.
- dharma1 10y ago
  I also have doubts about this being powered by a mobile GPU adequately, but I guess we will see pretty soon. I've read they are starting manufacturing and tech demos lined up end of 2016/early 2017
- IshKebab 10y ago
  Unless you only draw to part of the display. Given that it is AR, maybe they rely on most of the display being blank. Still, I agree that sounds infeasible.
  - dharma1 10y ago
    driving the display is just a part of it - they need to do super accurate SLAM, object recognition/machine learning inference, and if the visuals are interactive and not pre-rendered then all the lighting, texturing, rigging, physics etc of the rendered models - all this on the same cpu/GPU. It's just about doable on desktop VR setups with latest desktop GPUs
    - sapphireblue 10y ago
      With their budget they can afford to make a custom SLAM ASIC, push more cores into their SoC and create some special GPU. Such capital-heavy ASIC approach can give 10-100x performance boost.

oillio 10y ago

Patents don't need a working prototype. Maybe they calculated a theoretical limit of the smallest pixel size possible and used that number.

tedsanders 10y ago

I can't speak to most of those issues, but piezoelectric actuators can move precisely on nanometer scales. They control the positioning in many modern atomic force microscopes. So it seems plausible to be that they could achieve very fine control. Dealing with noise seems like the harder problem. Perhaps embedding sensors in the glass could give you real-time adjustment feedback.

Lorkki 10y ago

It's not like it's the only thing that sounds a bit too hopeful. Driving content to a light-field display at a decent frame rate and a resolution "much higher than [4375 x 2300]" is orders of magnitude beyond any mobile GPU now or within anyone's manufacturing plans. Speculation is all that the article is, and it sounds rather like it's intended to feed the hype.

dharma1 10y ago
I also have doubts about this being powered by a mobile GPU adequately, but I guess we will see pretty soon. I've read they are starting manufacturing and tech demos lined up end of 2016/early 2017
IshKebab 10y ago
Unless you only draw to part of the display. Given that it is AR, maybe they rely on most of the display being blank. Still, I agree that sounds infeasible.
- dharma1 10y ago
  driving the display is just a part of it - they need to do super accurate SLAM, object recognition/machine learning inference, and if the visuals are interactive and not pre-rendered then all the lighting, texturing, rigging, physics etc of the rendered models - all this on the same cpu/GPU. It's just about doable on desktop VR setups with latest desktop GPUs
  - sapphireblue 10y ago
    With their budget they can afford to make a custom SLAM ASIC, push more cores into their SoC and create some special GPU. Such capital-heavy ASIC approach can give 10-100x performance boost.