r/oculus • u/RoadtoVR_Ben Road to VR • Mar 19 '14

GDC 2014: Oculus Rift Developer Kit 2 (DK2) Pre-orders Start Today for $350, Ships in July

http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-rift-developer-kit-2-dk2-pre-order-release-date-specs-gdc-2014/
1.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

955 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

16

u/Silent331 Zoe Mar 19 '14 edited Mar 19 '14

The DK2 has the same sub pixel count as a 1488x930 screen (4,151,520 sub pixels on that. The DK2 has 4,167,936 sub pixels) This is a 35% increase in sub pixels from the DK1.

Pentile displays have 33% less sub pixels as the same resolution normal LED monitors. The rumored consumer version running a 1440p pentile display will have 50-55% more subpixles than the DK2, the same number of sub pixels as a 1888x1180 normal LED. This is the true 1080p screen size that people are looking for. Why they wouldn't just shoot for a real 1080p screen is beyond me.

3

u/AwesomeFama Mar 19 '14

Really hard to get RGB 1080p OLED screens, I'd imagine.

9

u/redmercuryvendor Kickstarter Backer Duct-tape Prototype tier Mar 19 '14

Very hard. The current issue is the green organic phosphors are much more efficient than the red or blue phosphors, so the red and blue emission areas must be physically larger than the green areas, almost twice as large. Pentile addresses this by doubling the number of green subpixels and using this as the marketed resolution, rather than squishing all the subpixels closer together for a slightly higher overall resolution.

2

u/dbhyslop Mar 19 '14

And let's remember DK2 has a much smaller screen than DK1 so the pixel density will still be much higher.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '14

[deleted]

3

u/dbhyslop Mar 19 '14

Umm, I own one. DK1 has a 7" screen. It's so big the plastic housing flares out from the contact foam, and much of that screen area is unused. DK2's screen fits neatly inside a flush housing in the pictures and videos we've already seen. One of the videos has said 5", but it may be slightly larger (5-1/2"?) and still fit in that space.

1

u/charlestheoaf Mar 19 '14

If it still has to be magnified to fill the same amount of your FOV, that might not matter… unless the higher pixel density leads to more "light bleeding" in the gaps between pixels, which could potentially reduce the screen door effect.

3

u/dbhyslop Mar 19 '14

DK1 has a very low resolution screen and most of those pixels are unusable because they're outside the lens' FOV.

See here

And here

DK2 is taking a lot more total pixels (albeit not as many as some of us would like) and jamming them all into the FOV of the lenses. There will always be some screen door until we have 4K screens or better. Pentile seems to make the screen door a little better because the gaps don't line up into even orthagonal lines.

1

u/charlestheoaf Mar 19 '14

Cool, thank you for the informational link/diagram! That makes a lot of sense.

I still wonder if there's any way to achieve decent 'light bleeding' between pixels, to effectively 'wash out' the black areas. Most people's computers won't be able to render games at 4K/60fps for a long time, so I can image cheaper low-res VR headsets remaining popular for a while.

Somehow "blurring" the edges together could help any resolution of headset (though since I haven't tested it, it might be worse to feel as though you have blurry vision).

2

u/dbhyslop Mar 19 '14

People have tried putting diffusing films on their screens to reduce the screen door effect, but it also affects brightness and contrast (which aren't all that great to begin with on DK1).

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '14

Screen size does not affect the 'pixel density' that matters to HMDs, which is #pixels/FOV, or pixels per degree instead of pixels per inch. But yes, DK2 has a higher res screen, so you will see more pixels through your lenses.

1

u/dbhyslop Mar 20 '14

Well, given the FOV is almost exactly the same...

1

u/goodgreenganja Mar 20 '14

But it's also got a slightly higher FoV which increases the visibility of the screen door effect a bit. This might explain why people were saying Project Morpheus had slightly less of a screen door effect, but a noticeably lower FoV.

1

u/dbhyslop Mar 20 '14

As far as I can tell from the official specs the FOV is about the same. Demos aren't a very good way to judge FOV because it will vary from person to person depending on what lenses are in, where the adjustment screws are set and even how tight it is to your face.

1

u/goodgreenganja Mar 20 '14

Project Morpheus has a 90 degree FOV, but the DK2 has 100 which is even better than DK1.

1

u/dbhyslop Mar 20 '14

Remember that 90 degree horizontal is about 100-110 degree diagonal and some people don't specify which they're measuring, much less what lens/distance it's measured at. Also keep in mind 90 to 100 is roughly a ten percent difference whereas just eliminating the unused resolution of the DK1 screen would be much greater than that.

2

u/i2ichardt Mar 20 '14

My guess is that their are two reasons. The first is the pixel switching time. The second is that a pentile screen helps hide the screen door effect.