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As far as I can tell Magic Leap is working on light field technology. Essentially the big problem with AR right now is that it only fools half of the human visu
by slackingoff2017 9y ago
As far as I can tell Magic Leap is working on light field technology. Essentially the big problem with AR right now is that it only fools half of the human visual system.
Parallax is one way your eyes estimate distance. All the AR headsets have this down.
The other is focal length. Your eyes need to set focus distance properly for the object you're trying to look at. This is where existing AR falls flat. And why it doesn't quite look real.
The way to fool the focal system is through bending light. Much harder than two offset displays. Not sure exactly how they're doing it but it sounds like they're doing something with optical fibre to project images on the retina itself.
The second hard part about faking focal length is that unless you can manage to bend all the light coming from the scene properly all the time you need to have really good eye tracking. Not sure how they're solving this either...
Whoever solves the focal distance part of tricking the human brain will rapidly develop AR/VR that is indistinguishable from reality. I just wish magic leap would focus on regular headsets to make some money instead of betting all their billions on light fields.
- fish_fan 9y ago> will rapidly develop AR/VR that is indistinguishable from reality Wow you sound like me from the 90s. You severely overestimate GPUs and underestimate the human eye.
- slackingoff2017 9y agoI'm not talking about real time though. Pre-recorded light field videos would already be high enough resolution. It might not be perfect but like the CGI nowadays close enough where there's moments you can't tell
- fish_fan 9y agoPerhaps, but realistic scenes are bounded by the number of lights and triangles more than resolution. There are heuristics and approximations to get around this, but I think we will only be able to fake a subset of the human visual experience. Lots of smooth surfaces and simple lighting setups: think car shows and apartment renders, not nature. Realism can be extremely complex!
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoWhoever solves the focal distance part of tricking the human brain will rapidly develop AR/VR that is indistinguishable from reality. Probably not. Yes it is a big part of it, but Avegant put out a system which allows accommodation (the term for what you describe for multiple depth fields) and it hasn't really made much of a difference [1]. [1]https://www.avegant.com/blog/company-news/introducing-avegant-light-field https://www.avegant.com/blog/company-news/introducing-avegan...
- mrfusion 9y agoMost folks seem enthralled by the vive but the fixed focal length makes it feel very off to me. I feel more like I'm being surrounded by tv screens than actually immersed in an environment.